Anchor My Faith

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Author: Stephen Weller
738 words, 4 minutes read time

My Friends

Scripture: John 15:14-15

In the previous lesson we covered the command to love others as Jesus loved us. In this lesson we will learn how to become a friend with Jesus.

^{Jn 15:14} “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.

When we covered John 10:11, Jesus identified himself as the “good shepherd” and stated that a good shepherd is willing to lay down his life to protect his sheep. Here in John 15, Jesus is identifying the sheep of John 10:11 as friends that he is willing to lay down his life for as a demonstration of his love for us. Jesus then clarifies who these sheep who he calls his friends are. These people are his friends if they do what he commands them to do.

In this life we are not 100% obedient to his commands. At the beginning of next year, I have planned for a series of lessons on 48 commands of Jesus as our daily verse study. In addition to these commands is the law that Jesus obeyed perfectly during his life on earth. How close do you think you come to complete obedience? On the condition of being perfect, would Jesus have any friends? The answer is yes because in this life we live in a fallen body of flesh that will continue to live in partial disobedience. If we are truly born again, there will be a growing progress in our obedience, and that for now is acceptable.

I believe it will be different in heaven when the body of Christ is complete, and each member has been given a perfect body. Then we, as many members of that one body with Jesus as its head and the Spirit as the nervous system for that body, will respond with perfect obedience to his request to us just as any part of my body responds to my brain. It will be a time of beautiful harmony between the members and with Jesus, totally immersed in an environment of agape love.

Here in our text we are experiencing a transition from servant to friend in which we are provided with more information about the planning and thinking of the master. A servant is told what to do and is expected to do it. A friend is told why something is being done and eagerly goes and does it. The context of John 15 seems to support the idea that a friend is one who abides in Jesus and abides in his love and is thus receiving the nourishment to obey and produce fruit and is saturated with his love which provides the lifestyle to bear fruit. These two aspects of abiding lift a person from being just a servant to being a friend who obeys, not because he has to, but because he wants to and has the ability and means to do so.

As our focus shifts from self to Jesus, we move from being a servant to being a friend who is then privy to knowing more about why. We are friends in that Jesus is making known to us what the Father has made known to him. As I write Bible lessons each day, I marvel at what I am being taught about God and his thinking. I am gradually learning how awesome the next life will be with Jesus Christ and other believers. When sin is fully removed and all relationships are expressed in agape love, life will be radically different.

Conclusion

In your relationship to Jesus would you identify yourself as a servant or as a friend? If a servant, are you serving well? If a friend, what took place in your life that transitioned you from servant to friend? In what ways has your life deepened in your relationship with Jesus since transitioning from servant to friend? The Word is God and is alive, and as you study the Scriptures you are studying the life of the one who spoke the universe into existence, and he wants to explain to you what eternal life is about.