Jesus Calls Us Friends If we do what He Commands

12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

Communication is essential to friendship.

Friends speak to one another. They bare their souls and tell their troubles. They share their aspirations.

When you’re not friends you don’t speak to one another

It is no surprise then that in the upper room, in the midst of those conversations in which Jesus calls his disciples friends, the Lord of glory shares his thoughts with them.

Men who in a matter of hours will either deny knowing him or run in fear before they do the same

Already he has done this in reference to his death and resurrection, heaven, the coming of the Holy Spirit after his ascension, and other doctrines.

Now he does so in reference to his special calling of them to fruitful service.

He declares that they are his friends because “everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you”[1]

a cornerstone of friendship of true relationship is a transparency, a not holding back

Christ’s Friendship for Us

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” John 15:12

Jesus loves his people so as to take us as his friends.

It is not common or easy for men and women of different stations to enjoy friendship.

Learned men are seldom close companions with the unlearned. You tend to hang with people who have a similar station in life.

People in high positions are isolated from others and isolate themselves, often being more admired than known and loved.

“For sinful men and women like ourselves to be called ‘friends of Christ,’ is something that our weak minds can hardly grasp and take in.

The King of kings and Lord of lords not only pities and saves all them that believe in Him, but actually calls them His ‘friends.’ ”1 J. C. Ryle

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

We are brought near to his heart, he says, by the greatest love imaginable.

how is this friendship actuated?

There is no love greater than that of one who lays down his life for others.

Anything else must be less.

This is the supreme test of love.

In the context this must refer primarily to the love of Jesus shown on the cross. There he laid down his life on behalf of his friends.[2]

There are differences when it comes to Christ that makes his death the greatest expression of love ever.

Jesus died for us when we were not really his friends. He was our friend.

...but he died to save men and women who had done nothing but wrong to him and would in fact hate him until he saved us.

“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

Jesus died for us, knowing all the details of our wickedness, knowing all our sins and every corrupt twist in our hearts, but loving us nonetheless and giving his life for our salvation.

There are no dirty secrets for Jesus to learn about us later that will cause him to turn his love from us.

Christ’s friendship “is unchangeable, resting upon His knowledge of what we are by nature,

and of what He means His grace shall make us to be.”

We may therefore rest on Christ’s friendship, knowing that it originates in his sovereign, unchanging grace and not in ourselves.[3]

The friendship is established only when God acts in Christ to remove the barrier. It is only after he has spoken of laying down his life for us that the Lord Jesus speaks of his disciples as friends.[4]

Our Friendship with Christ

Recognizing Christ’s love for us, We receive his friendship as the single greatest possession of our lives,

and also as the great calling on our lives.

We are God’s friends—by grace.

But that does not mean that we can approach God as his equal or dictate the terms of the friendship.

It means that we must approach him in gratitude always bearing in mind that the friendship exists because he has stooped to our estate.[5]

“You are my friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:14).

This is not teaching salvation by works, but rather a salvation that necessarily involves obedience to our Savior and Lord, since,

as branches in the vine, we have his Spirit working in us.

Obedience is the test of discipleship. The friends of Jesus are those who habitually obey him.

At the heart of our obedience to Christ, then, is our treatment of other people, especially our fellow believers.

How far it is from Jesus’ brand of obedience for us to attain some man-made code of conduct while scorning or neglecting other Christians.

Loving one another requires us to bind our temper,

to speak in ways that build others up,

to turn from envy and contempt

to respect and goodwill, and to sacrifice readily for the well-being of others.[7]

Jesus will no longer call them “servants,” that is “slaves.”

John 15:15 (ESV)

15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

Jesus did not intend to convey that Christians are no longer his servants,

for in this very passage he speaks of the necessity of our obeying his commands.

What he does mean is that our relationship with him is not merely one of hierarchical submission.

Even when a friend is in a subordinate position,

he is a confidant and companion.

Jesus emphasizes the idea of our entering into his confidence and his full disclosure of his plans and practices.[8]

“All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).

We have likewise been entrusted with the revelation of Christ.

Friends bare their souls, and Jesus has opened his mind to us in the Scriptures.

Through God’s Word, Paul said, “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16).

Friends will often spend long hours sharing ideas and talking about their plans for the future, and Jesus wants to do this with us.[9]

The characteristic of the slave that Jesus picks out is that he “does not know his master’s business.”

The slave is no more than an instrument. It is not for him to enter intelligently into the purposes of his owner. His task is simply to do what he is told.

Jesus showed His friendship for His disciples by confiding to them the deepest things His Father had confided to Him.

A master does not confide in a servant, He said. However, He had told them all things His Father had commissioned Him to make known. This is the way of a friend.[6]

In the Bible, Jesus has clearly told us the purpose of history and of his kingdom, informing us of his plans, explaining his works, and entrusting to us his promises.

We are to receive his teaching not as reluctant servants

but as eager friends and partners in Christ’s kingdom, knowing that his commands are good and filled with blessing for us and for others.

They still have much to learn, and Jesus will disclose it in due time through the Spirit.[10]

Appointed for a Purpose

John 15:16 (ESV)

16 You did not choose me, but I chose you

and appointed you

that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide,

so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

“But I chose You”

Paul clearly taught this sovereign choosing, writing to the Ephesians that God “chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4).

The Greek word for chose is eklego, from which we derive our word election.[11]

While it is true that to believe in Christ is to choose him,

the greater reality is that he first elected or chose us,

and we decided for him only as a response to his choosing of us

and as the result of his own grace first working in our lives.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8–9).

Why would Jesus at this point tell his disciples that they did not choose him but that he chose them?

1. He intended to remind us of the grace he has had for us so that we will share it with others.

The doctrine of election reminds our tender consciences that we are not saved by our works but by God’s sovereign grace.

2. The fruitfulness of the followers of Jesus is rooted in Jesus’ choosing them.

It is not dependent upon a choice they make

or on their effectiveness or attractiveness

or anything else about them. It has been established in the fact that Jesus chose them and appointed them.[13]

“go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide” (v. 16).

Not all fruit does last. In fact, in purely agricultural terms no fruit really lasts.

Pears perish. Apples become rotten. Berries, oranges, and grapefruit spoil. In human terms much that we do also belongs in this category.

We work, but much of our work and the fruits of that work pass away.

In time we will ourselves pass away. Does nothing remain? Does all pass?

One thing remains, and that is the fruit produced in the life of the Christian

by the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is eternal. Therefore, his work is also eternal and will never perish.

Only one life! ’T’will soon be past.

Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Is Christ at work in you? Or is it just you working?

All of us should pause and ask what we are accomplishing in the light of eternity.

We should remember that it is possible to build great monuments out of wood, hay, and stubble. A haystack can be quite a large thing. But these will not last. Rather, we are to build with the gold, silver, and precious stones provided by God and assembled by the Lord Jesus Christ according to his blueprint.[14]

Intercession

Jesus links our abiding in him and our bearing fruit to his promise to answer our prayers: “so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you” (John 15:16).

The context in which Jesus speaks of this new friendship and of his command that we love one another,

it seems to me that he is probably thinking here of that particular type of prayer known as intercession.

Intercession is prayer for others.

If they are Christ’s friends, then they are our friends too. And we must pray for them,

as indeed they also must pray for us. In this respect we must be like a towering vine, anchored upon earth but reaching up to that rarefied and invigorating atmosphere of heaven in which we meet the Lord and have our requests met by him.[15]

This repetition indicates the emphasis that Jesus places on our prayer.

We tend to think of prayer as a privilege, but here we find that it is a duty.

We are not to be prayerless!

In the context of Jesus’ reminder of his matchless love for us and his calling us to be his friends,

we are no doubt to remember that his friends are our friends and that we must pray as an essential ministry of our love for others.

Jesus gives prayer an emphasis that it is not merely a means to an end. Note that Jesus does not say that we are to pray in order to bear good fruit—true though that is—but that

We are to bear fruit so as to pray.

Leon Morris comments:

“We ought not to think of prayer as something in the nature of a tool that enables us to do better service.

Rather, we do better service in order that we may pray more effectively.… Jesus is here telling his followers that it is important that we should all have set before us the goal of being more effective in our praying.”5

Love One Another

“These things I command you, so that you will love one another” (John 15:17).

Everything to which Jesus calls his disciples is summed up in love. Our salvation originates in the love of God and manifests itself in love for God and others.

We may gauge the quality of our Christianity by our loving treatment of others,

our loving concern for the needs around us,

and our loving prayers for God to help one another.

The measure of a church is not merely the faithfulness of its doctrine but also the fervency of its love; indeed, Jesus indicates that the efficacy of the doctrine is measured in the love of the believers.

“The aim of our charge,” Paul wrote, “is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5).[16]

What is service to Christ without love, but tyranny and self-righteousness? What is evangelism without love, but winning arguments and defeating enemies? How little prayer there will be without love! It is surely in part our lack of love that accounts for our lack of prayer.

Prayer stirs up our love for one another, and especially our love for God, with whom we speak in prayer.

To realize that while we are yet sinners, God receives us with love at his throne of grace, and that he cares for and meets the needs we express in prayer, is to grow in our love for both the Father to whom we pray and Jesus in whose name we ask.[17]

We are to love one another because of God’s great love toward us and because of Christ’s command.

Do we love one another within that bond of friendship created by the Lord Jesus Christ and according to his own love and standards?

Love is giving and receiving the gift of Friendship

As we hold to Jesus and look to Him for ultimate friendship, we can extend love to others in imitation of how He first extended Himself to us. Biblical, Christian friendship not only starts with God and is modeled for us by Christ, but it ends with Him too. God is the object of our love toward others.

Keeping Him as the object of our love and worship is the only way we can extend friendship toward others without constantly looking for something in return or having demanding expectations of others.

A Christ-centered friendship will not demand more from friendship than God intended it to provide.

In other words, we mustn’t demand perfection from imperfect people, nor seek some ideal version of Christian community that will always elude us on earth.

Christ-centered friends remember that the gift of human friendship, though from a perfect Gift-giver, comes to us in the form of imperfect people who will disappoint and hurt us, as we will them.

[1]Boice, J. M. (2005). The Gospel of John: an expositional commentary(p. 1184). Baker Books. 1 J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: John, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1999), 3:125. [2]Morris, L. (1995). The Gospel according to John (pp. 598–599). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. [3]Phillips, R. D. (2014). John (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; 1st ed., Vol. 2, pp. 303–304). P&R Publishing. [4]Boice, J. M. (2005). The Gospel of John: an expositional commentary(p. 1184). Baker Books. [5]Boice, J. M. (2005). The Gospel of John: an expositional commentary(p. 1185). Baker Books. [6]Sproul, R. C. (2009). John (p. 293). Reformation Trust Publishing. [7]Phillips, R. D. (2014). John (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; 1st ed., Vol. 2, p. 307). P&R Publishing. [8]Phillips, R. D. (2014). John (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; 1st ed., Vol. 2, p. 305). P&R Publishing. [9] Phillips, R. D. (2014). John(R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; 1st ed., Vol. 2, p. 305). P&R Publishing. [10] Morris, L. (1995). The Gospel according to John (pp. 599–600). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. [11]Phillips, R. D. (2014). John (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; 1st ed., Vol. 2, p. 308). P&R Publishing. [12]Phillips, R. D. (2014). John (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; 1st ed., Vol. 2, pp. 308–309). P&R Publishing. [13] Hamilton, J. M., Jr., & Vickers, B. J. (2019). John–Acts: Vol. IX (I. M. Duguid, J. M. Hamilton Jr., & J. Sklar, Eds.; p. 242). Crossway. [14]Boice, J. M. (2005). The Gospel of John: an expositional commentary(p. 1186). Baker Books. [15]Boice, J. M. (2005). The Gospel of John: an expositional commentary(p. 1187). Baker Books. 5 Morris, Reflections on the Gospel of John, 527. [16]Phillips, R. D. (2014). John (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; 1st ed., Vol. 2, p. 310). P&R Publishing. [17]Phillips, R. D. (2014). John (R. D. Phillips, P. G. Ryken, & D. M. Doriani, Eds.; 1st ed., Vol. 2, p. 310). P&R Publishing. [18]Boice, J. M. (2005). The Gospel of John: an expositional commentary(p. 1188). Baker Books. [19]Hamilton, J. M., Jr., & Vickers, B. J. (2019). John–Acts: Vol. IX (I. M. Duguid, J. M. Hamilton Jr., & J. Sklar, Eds.; p. 243). Crossway.

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