Jesus as a Friend

🎵What a Friend We Have in Jesus🎵

 "No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not understand what his master is doing.  But I have called you friends, because everything I have learned from My Father I have made known to you."  -  John 15:15

Best Friends

Last month I shared from Diana Butler Bass's book, "Freeing Jesus - Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence".  You can read that HERE if you missed it.  This month I'll share what she has to say about Jesus as a friend, as well as my own experiences.  

A year after I received Jesus as my savior my family began moving---five different towns, three different states, 10 different neighborhoods, seven different schools.  As a shy child this meant I there were times I did not have a friend.  Thankfully, I eventually made one close friend from school or the neighborhood.  Knowing Jesus as a friend is what enabled me to survive leaving my best friend in one place and eventually make another.  He filled in the gaps.  I never felt alone.  Interestingly, in DBB's chapter on Friends she talks about the Quakers (as you will recall I wrote about my experiences with the Quakers).  She writes,

Quakers [known as the Religious Society of Friends] believed that every human being was filled with the 'inner light,' or the presence of God.  Because of this, there was no need for clergy or even a church.  The Friends met to encourage one another to listen to and experience the light.  As a result, they formed distinctively egalitarian communities, with shared responsibilities between men and women, and rejected class divisions....They were friends of God and to one another [no matter a person's class]......Such practices of friendship---based on the belief that since we are friends of God, we are all friends of one another---were deemed radical, heretical, and a threat to the good order of society.  Thus, the Quakers found themselves at odds with authorities, sentenced to prison, and exiled for the crime of being friends.  As the movement spread, Friends advocated for all sorts of social justice causes, including abolition and women's rights.

Jesus was a friend to sinners and tax collectors (Luke 7:3-4) and "the poor, crippled, lame, and blind" (Luke 14:13).  He ate with them, touched them, treated them all as friends.  He counted children as his friends in a time when children were treated as not worthy of His attention.  I loved the picture in my children's Bible of the little children sitting on Jesus' lap!  Jesus said, 

"Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them!   For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.  Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it."  And He took the children in His arms, placed His hands on them, and blessed them. (Mark 10:14-16)

Research has shown that having a friend is all important for our well-being.  Jesus is our first and foremost Friend, but friends in the flesh (and not just on-line) was God's plan for us from the beginning.  God saw that man needed a mate.  Your spouse should be your second closest friend if you're to have a happy marriage.  In Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 we are told that two are better than one because if one falls down the other can help him up.  Then in verse 12 that three are even better because a cord of three strands is even stronger. With Jesus as the "third strand " we can prevail against all manner of difficulties.  Then we each need friends of the same gender.  Ideally, a married couple should have another couple as friends so they can spend more time together.  Having individual friends is not a bad thing, but couples should be careful to not let them supplant each other.  Above all else, though, we should never let another person move Jesus down the line in our friendships.  It is His love for us and our love for Him that enriches our human relationships.

In this chapter DBB addresses the verses that precedes the one at the top of this post, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this, that you lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you." (John 15:12-14)  She says this may sound like He's put conditions on His friendship with us, but it's not. . .

Friendship is contingent on love---real love:  compassion, empathy, reaching out, going beyond what we imagine is possible.  That is the command:  love.  And if we reach out in love, friendship is the result, even friendship with God.  Friendship is mutual, a hand extended and another reaching back.

It is rare that we'd be called to actually die for one of our friends.  What we do often have to "lay down" is a self-serving life.  We have to make ourselves available to people in order to be a friend.  We may have to leave our comfort zone, make time in our busy lives for them.  Having a friend doesn't always mean they'll be just like us, like what we like, do what we want to do.  Having a friend sometimes means stretching and growing.  

Jesus is that kind of friend.  The best part, though, He is always with us.  Communication with Him is even more instant than texting!  He's always available, even when we aren't aware that He is guiding us away from harm or towards what's best for us.  People can't fill that relationship in our lives.  Only Jesus can.

Father, thank you for the friendships in my life, but especially for Your friendship!

Link to Scripture:  1 Corinthians 3:16

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