Jesus is a Friend

Today we are continuing to look at the gospel of John. We are looking at chapter 15 verses 12-17 and specifically looking at the last hours in the life of Jesus as he is preparing a way to the cross. It is the Thursday night before the crucifixion on Friday and Jesus is spending an intimate time with His disciples. And really what we have said during this whole time is that this time is an outpouring of Christs love on His disciples. He intends to comfort them and prepare them for His absence. It is a time of great love for His own. And for the purpose of study, I believe this is a significant section for us to look at because it not only shows how Christ relates to His twelve, but by extension, how he relates to us, His believers as well. Lets read…

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.

{Prayer}

I’ve entitled this message today “Jesus is a friend.” This is the thrust of what Jesus is saying to his disciples: He is lovingly reminding them of their relationship to Him. And the disciples probably counted themselves among friends with Jesus. But Jesus, as He is preparing to leave them, He leaves nothing open to interpretation, He leaves nothing to be doubted in the strife that they are about to endure. They are friends of Jesus.

Really, in today's world, we have a poor grasp of what friendship is. Even the word friend has taken on a completely different meaning. Asking the question, how many friends do you have, gives a completely different answer than it would have received 50 years ago. In the age of social media, we have “friends” that we have never even met. And really, for the most part, friends today--worldly friends--are usually people that share some superficial common interest. Not all the time, but for the most part. Friends are people who share pleasurable activities or recreation. Sometimes they are friends based on their social status or wealth. We are sometimes outright about having friends, essentially for what they provide us. I have asked men before, “hey do you see so&so much anymore,” and the reply could be something like, “no not really since he lost the lease on the hunting land, or sold the ski boat, or lost his membership at the country club.” We have really superficial connections of friendship.

Occasionally, we’ll have friendships are made from something more. Friendships that are born out of adversity, that are tested and solidified out of the fires of life. And that seems to make for a greater connection. I had a trip with a group of men that were backpacking in Utah for about a month. When you are traveling for that long, you hire groups to bring you food—to re-ration your supplies over the excursion. And the timing of is very important because you are burning a huge number of calories and so food is super important. When our time for re-rations came about we had some hard rains that flooded the roads in below us and the group that we hired was not able to get us food. Three days later, they were able charter a plane and drop food to us by parachute in a vast Utah wilderness. {PAUSE} If you want to talk a trial that strengthened a friendship…when you’re that hungry, and one of buddies starts to look like a honey-glazed ham. That’ll strengthen a friendship!

But you know as I think back on my life, and the friendships that I have—the most longstanding and loving friendships I have, are with those that I share one thing in common with. And that is a mutual love for one another under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Jesus is a friend of mine and the very best friendship that one could have.

Today I want to look at four ways in which Christians are friends with Christ. Four ways that we find identity in Jesus and with each other.

Division #1—Friends of Jesus Love

First and foremost, those who are friends with Jesus love. They love God, and they love others. This has been at the center of these last teachings—these final outpourings –that He was given His disciples in the upper room. He is teaching them how love serves, how love endures, and how love abides. In our verse today, He once again, speaks again to the new command He has given them. He says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.This is a heavy charge for the disciples. This is a heavy charge for us. That we love one another as Christ loved. The very beginning of Christ’s time with His disciples in the upper is summarized by John in chapter thirteen saying that Jesus loved them to the end, or to the fullest. He has loved them utmost capability that He had. And we are to love in this way? Is this really the charge for us? That we love to the fullest extent of what Jesus could? How could we possibly measure up to that?

Scripture is jam packed with the command to love. In fact, we know that we cannot claim to be of friends of God and not love. The very things that drives us away from God is sin, and sin is the absence of love. All of the Gods commands are contained in the ability to love God and love others. This is the story of our fall as mankind. Sin enters the picture through the first man and they have an inability to perfectly love God and love others. Look at Genesis chapter 3 with me for a moment. Adam, the first man has had perfect relationship with God in the garden. And God seeing that it was not good for man to be alone presents Adam with a perfect gift of Eve. So Adam not only has perfect relationship with God and perfect relationship with Eve. But then comes the temptation and sin enters the world through their disobedience. God confronts Adam and Eve… And look at verse 12 with me at Adam’s response.Chapter 3 verse 12: Adam said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”His words here capture the full embodiment of sin. This is the absence of love for God and for others. Adam in a moment has become a lover of self. That’s the greatest way we sin, through a love of ourself. He is more concerned with looking inwardly at himself than towards God or towards Eve. And so He attempts to preserve his own self by first blaming God—“it’s the woman you gave me.” This perfect relationship that he has with God and the perfect gift God has given him, he now throws that back at God. And then he turns his attention to blaming Eve saying “she gave me fruit of the tree.” He has broken all of the commandments of love in this moment. Unloving towards God, then unloving towards others and sin rules the moment.

In Luke chapter 10 Christ lays out the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus is challenged by a lawyer to know what must be done to have eternal life. Christ cleverly asks Him for a read on the law. Give me your interpretation of the law. The lawyer answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”Jesus knowing that the man could not accomplish such a thing, but also knowing that his motive wasn’t really to find out he said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”To which the lawyer, still trying to trap Jesus, replies well who exactly is my neighbor. In the parable that follows Christ explores the really shocking scenario whereby a Samaritan man showcases his love for someone in need. Essentially the point of this is to show how the Samaritan cares for this man moreso than himself.

So if love is this important concept all throughout scripture, how is that Christ has given a NEW commandment to love? Well it’s in this very concept that the good Samaritan displays. Here in the next verse (verse 13) Christ says: Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.Without a shadow of a doubt, Christ is alluding to the cross. He is mere hours from His death and He is pointing to the fact that He is laying down his life for friends—for those that are in Him. But also in the great depth of Christs words we see the NEW in the new commandment. That Jesus’ life is a pattern for how to live out this love. Christ is saying that friends of His love others, love God, in a manner greater than they love themselves. In a manner like the good Samaritan. In a manner that Christ exemplifies by going to the cross. We are friends of Christ attached in the commonality, in our very nature, to lay down our life. What does that mean? It means that you set aside your goals, your focus, your self-interest, your hobbies, your free time, and if need be your very life for the love of God and others. Christ says whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and pick up their cross and follow me. The cross is not an allusion to a Christian culture. He is not saying put down the world to pick up an appearance of Christianity. No, He is taking it much further than that. Picking up the cross is picking up the very instrument of your death. It is an emphatic response that says to love others as Christ, is to be killing everything about yourself. To die unto self!

If we are counted as a friend to Christ, we are marked by a love that puts others before ourselves. That put God before ourselves. This is the opposite of Adam in Genesis 3. Friends of Jesus love in a way that fulfills the pattern that He has shown us—the way that He has loved us.

Division #2—Friends of Jesus Obey

Next, friends of Jesus obey. Verse 14 saysYou are my friends if you do what I command you. I just want us to notice what Jesus is doing. How Jesus fully understands the sinful nature of man. So, He gives a command in verse twelve and then follows up it in verse fourteen by saying that friends of His does what He says. This speaks to the deceitfulness of our own heart. We so often will take what God has commanded of us and say, but did He really say that? Or better yet, we put on our lawyer hat and say things like, “but was that really the intent of what he meant.” And I’m not saying we shouldn’t try our best to interpret scripture and interpret the law, but I mean we, as humans, have completely twisted what scripture has said to validate sinfulness. I have heard preachers take a commandment and perverted it so badly that they explain it as the opposite of what it meant. And Jesus knows this, that’s the reason He follows up His command with the statement that friends of His keep His commands. Better than that, He ties it to us relationally. This is the use of the word friend. He says that those that do what I command are MY friends. Those that are near and dear to Christ do what He says, are obedient to what He says.

There are always those that claim to love Jesus, that claim to be His followers, claim to be a friend of Jesus but never obey Him. I desperately worry about these people, don’t you? We all have people like that in our lives. I don’t pass judgement on the particulars of their disobedience. I am really in no place to do such a thing. But I do know, that as Pastor Jonathan said last week, that those that abide in Christ, produce fruit. Those they are in Him, obey Him. Those that are firmly rooted to the vine produce much fruit. And so, I end up worrying for many that I love that claim to know Christ but do not produce any fruit. I worry that they, in fact, do not know Jesus. In John 14:15 Jesus saysIf you love me, you will keep my commandments. One verse. That simple. And if I can say the same verse negatively, if you don’t keep my commandments, you don’t love me. You can’t claim to be friend of someone and then not love them. You can’t claim to be a friend of Christ and not be striving towards obedience to Him.

One of my favorite preachers to listen to is John MacArthur. He airs all of his sermons for the week and every so often he’ll take a time on a Sunday night and open it up for questions from his congregation. I love listening to these because they are just so helpful and he has such a great knowledge of scripture. One of the times I was listening, a little girl came to the microphone to ask a question. She couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6. And she asked, “how do we show God we love Him?” Really sweet moment! And without missing a beat, MacArthur replied to her, by being obedient to Him. And that was it. And I thought man that is rough answer for a kid. You kind of blew it. Why not tell her by praying or singing songs of praise or reading your bible or being kind to others. The more I thought about it, the better his answer became in my mind. All the things that I would have told her were fruits of obedience. They were the end result of a faith that, in obedience, produced a fruit.

In Hebrews, the writer summarizes all the Old Testament heroes of faith demonstrated faith by obedience. They demonstrate a friendship to God through obedience. By faith Abraham when God tested him….By faith Moses chose to be mistreated by being counted with people of God…by faith Jacob, Joseph, David, all the prophets…proved the substance of their faith, of their trusting in God, through obedience. We live out our faith in obedience. And listen, the order of this is very important!!! Don’t hear me say that we are saved through obedience. We are NOT saved by our works. All of these Old Testament heroes lived during the covenant of the law. But the law and obedience to it, is not what saved them. In fact, the works system never saved!!! Rather it pointed to something. It pointed to the fulfillment of all promises in our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. It pointed towards a love and trust, a friendship with Jesus!

The difference between those that are truly friends and those that just know who just acknowledge the historical and theological existence of Jesus, are those that love Him in obedience.

Division #3—Friends of Jesus are Servants

The next truth that friends of Jesus share is that friends of Jesus are servants.Verse 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. In this verse, Jesus says no longer do I call you servants, but I call you friends. Jesus is explaining the nature of our relationship to Him. And, not to argue semantics too much, but really the word here for servant is slave—which has a little bit of a different connotation. Because of our sensibilities to the atrocity and sinfulness of slavery in the Western world, we have modified modern translations to reflect the word servant. But the word slave would have made more sense in the time that it was written. Slaves or servants were an integral part of life in the ancient world. There were all types of jobs that servants did during that time. They were all different levels from the most debasing of jobs to the highest and most influential of jobs. Servants had various levels of education (both low and high) and were dispersed throughout all levels of economic positions. You could be a well-educated, influential, doctor that was a servant to a master. One author said that during those times, anyone who didn’t own was owned.

Servant/slave is the language by which we continue to relate to Jesus. It is a key descriptor in our relationship. When we confess that Christ is our Lord, we also admit that we are His servant. He is our master, we are slave. Many of the apostles that write New Testament epistles introduce their letter as being a servant or bond-servant to Christ. Even James and Jude who were the half-brothers of Jesus, don’t introduce themselves as brothers or family of Jesus, but rather introduce themselves as slaves of Jesus Christ. But this our relationship to Christ, all of us hope to hear when we get to heaven, “well done my good and faithful…servant.” We are servants of Christ! And according to the bible, all of humanity serves one master or another. Romans 6:16 says“Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.” Everyone in the world is a slave to sin to produce a fruit of destruction or slaves of Christ to produce a fruit of righteousness.

Listen, if that were the end of it, I would be grateful to be counted a slave of Christ. There is a great joy in that. But Christ says I no longer do I call you servants for the servant does not know what the master is doing. The average slave of that time was not a friend to the master. It was a strictly professional relationship. However, there were those that had faithfully and obediently served their master, they were so committed about doing their Lord’s work, that they became like a friend to the master. They were a close companion that intimately knew their master, every detail of their lives. And the master counted them among their friends. They did not cease in being a servant, but their master saw them as a friend. In that they had no trouble letting them know all things to them. They knew the master’s business. We are still servants of Christ that are also counted as friends. And being friends, we have been brought into the loop and we know all things. Christ has fully revealed who He is to us. Not that we understand everything, but Christ has revealed who He is and all that He has been busy about from the creation of the world, on out the end of time. Christ is often referred to as the mystery revealed and the prophecy fulfilled. That is exactly what He is to us who are counted as friends. We fully see how He is the mysteries of scripture revealed while fulfilling every promise of the Old Testament. Christ has made all things known to those who are friends.

We then are friends and we are servants, bond-servants, or slaves. If this offends your sensibilities or perhaps doesn’t quite sit the right way with you. Let me remind you that we are imitators of Christ. Earlier in this very gospel we see Jesus wash the feet of His disciples. He gets up from His seat and wraps a towel around His waist, symbolically taking the form of the most debasing of slaves. If we have issue with seeing ourselves as slaves to Christ, we ought to remember how He came to this world. Philippians 2:6-7 says that Christ“who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant..” We are to be servants as Christ is.

Division #4—Friends of Jesus are Chosen

The last point I want to make as we think through our friendship with Christ is that friends of Jesus are chosen.V.16-17 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. These things I command you, so that you will love one another. Jesus is speaking here of the choosing of His disciples. The gospels inform us of how Jesus went about gathering followers, and then of those followers He selected His twelve. This would have been the opposite to the way things were done of the time. Typically, a disciple would choose their Rabi, but Jesus chooses His own. This is applicable to us as well, that Jesus chooses us. And let me just say that there are many doctrines that we don’t like to wrestle with. We stay away from them because we are not capable to understand them, like how is God three-in-one, in the trinity—we can’t fully understand that. But we also avoid certain doctrine because don’t like them—this is one of those. The fact that God chooses whom He wills is concept we don’t really do that well with. This is known as the doctrine of election, that God elects who will come to Him. While we don’t like it, scripture is very clear about it.

The thrust of this doctrine, especially as it exists in our scripture today is that your friendship with Christ was not a voluntary process. You did not choose to be friends with Him, He chose to be friends with you. It’s a continuation of the concept of being a slave. Christ went into the slave market, and He selected you—better than that—He bought you with His blood. You did not negotiate the terms of your purchase nor chose who would be your purchaser. In fact, if you could have chosen, you would have not chosen God. We are sinful creatures, children of wrath as the bible says. We don’t naturally select serving God, we choose to serve ourselves, and this is what we saw in Adam—we choose to be slaves to sin.

And yet God chose you. God chose all believers, and He chose them apart from any merit in and of themselves. This is the unchanging manner of God, it has been this way from the very beginning. Abraham was the human father of our faith, right? Father Abraham, had many sons, many sons had father Abraham, I am one of them and so are you… Abraham, the covenantal father of all believers was chosen. Hebrews 11:8 says “It was by faith that Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance.” Once again, the order is important—Abraham obeyed when? When he was called! The calling came before the faith and obedience. Some may say yes, but Abraham was a righteous man who loved the Lord…no he wasn’t. Joshua in verse 24:2 is giving all the tribes of Israel their history and he says “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many.” Abraham, the father of our faith, the one whom all the promises of God’s people laid was a Chaldean and a worshipper of idols. There was nothing good in Abraham that caused God to choose Him. God chose Him, because He chose Him. You see God choses servants and friends who are unmerited and undeserving. And thank God for that! I have a whole resume of undeserving and unmerited—that’s all my history is unmerited and undeserving of God’s choosing. And that’s all your history is too.

Every person that is born again has done nothing to deserve being chosen by God. That is Jesus’ message to Nicodemus in this gospel. Nicodemus comes to Jesus wanting to know what must be done—by mans own doing—to be born again? Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answers Him a few verses later to says “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” The point that Christ is making with this exchange is this—what did you chose about being born into your physical life? Nothing! You didn’t chose to be born to this world. So it is with everyone born of the spirit. You have been chosen as a friend and servant of God to do His will. It is only after you have been chosen and seen the kindness of the Lord that you truly learn to love Him and wish to serve Him. To glorify Him.

I’ll admit this is hard teaching. Some of you may reject the very thought of Christ choosing. Many will argue that if God choses some then that means He doesn’t choose others. It sounds unfair. What's unfair is that he chose anyone at all…remember we’re all undeserving unmerited. He choses by His grace. You have been saved, through faith and this is not from yourselves. You were a helpless and hopeless slave to sin. Stuck and trapped. God chose you that you would be a slave to Him. He beckons, don’t go work for the master of sin, instead come find rest with me. And when you come to Him you find this great love for Him and you in obedience and appreciation to your Lord and bearing good fruit became also His friend. And then in the most unimaginable way He gives us the ability to be children of God, not natural, but by adoption (hear chosen). We are co-heirs with Christ in eternity. Isn’t that amazing—from where you start to where you finish.

People can dislike this doctrine. We can disagree. I love it. It speaks to goodness of my God. To call me out of nothing to make me everything. That’s the story of the gospel.

Closing

What is the application of this text today? What do we do with this? First, this is a beautiful piece of scripture—I’m so grateful to have been able to preach it today. It’s difficult, but it’s beautiful. We watch Jesus speak to His disciples and tell them exactly who they are to Him. Don’t forget where we are in the story, these are the last words of Christ to His disciples. He uses His valuable time to tell them who they are to Him. It’s a loving act of friendship to the disciples. It’s a loving act of friendship towards us. This scripture, this book that we hold in such high esteem, is a love story of God to His people whom He calls friends.

This scripture also is defining about who we are and how we can know ourselves in Christ. We see so much in the goodness of a relationship to Jesus. I wish everyone could know that feeling. And that’s the biggest take-away from this message that any who would want to become friends with Christ, they would know through me what that’s like. My prayers would be that if any would want to know about being a servant to Christ—to come talk to me. That if any would want to know about being a friend to Christ—to come talk to me. That if they want to know about election—they go talk to Jonathan.

Joking aside, I want everyone to know this friendship, this relationship. I want to spread the truth of our Lord and the good news that any who would hear may become friends of Christ. Some will say, well if God choses whom He is in relationship with, then why even bother. Well, that’s the point of this scripture, and how it defines me. He tells me to go and share the good news to whomever will hear it and finding myself here as a loving and obedient servant I GO. I go on behalf of my Lord. That’s why we hold so strongly to the great commission. That’s why as a church we strive to BELIEVE. BECOME. AND BE SENT. That through love and obedience as a good servant, I go out to tell others about the very best friendship one can imagine—one with Christ everlasting.

{Prayer} Dear God, I thank you such a rich text that you give to us this morning. Most of all I thank you for such a rich relationship that you enter into with us. That from your great love, you call us from fallenness to friendship. That you define who we are by your Son. Help us then to recall these things. That we would love other in the way you have commanded, that we would be obediently serve you in our life. And most of all that we would produce fruit that the world would see and desire to come to you in this same relationship. Help us as a church to remember these things and be faithful to discharge them as our duties. We love you Lord and its in your name we pray. Amen!