The most important friendship: friendship with Jesus

Tonight though, in anticipation of camp, I want to spend time together talking about the most important friendship you can possibly have. And the answer might sound silly. It might sound churchy if I say the most important friendship you can possibly have is friendship with Jesus, but that statement is thoroughly biblical, and it’s actually incredibly profound.

It should change. That statement, that you could possibly be called Jesus’s friend, should actually be startling.

Jesus is the Lord of the universe. He’s the creator. Think about the last few months when we’ve gone through those fundamentals of the faith: who God is, who Jesus is. He’s the creator. He’s the judge. He’s the master of all. He’s the one by whom, through whom, and for whom all things were made. Before there was anything, Jesus was.

We tend to think of friends as peers, right, as equals. But with Jesus, we couldn’t be any more unequal or any more undeserving of being able to call him friend. We don’t deserve to call him Lord, much less friend.

Think back to what we learned about God and his holiness, his amazing attributes. Like, do it, think about what we learned about God. It’s easy to just say, “Oh yeah, I know who God is.” But remember, and then think: God is real. He always was. He’s perfectly holy, eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing.

And then compare that with your own smallness, your own finiteness. You had a beginning. You’re dependent. You’re sinful. God is eternal, independent, and holy. You’re created, dependent, sinful.

So, it’s crazy that I would say that the most important friendship we can have is friendship with Jesus. And I think I would hesitate to even say that if Jesus didn’t say it first.

Open to John 15 and the setting

So, I want you to open up your Bible to John 15. It’s at the top of your note page so that you can see it, but I want you not to only look at the top of your note sheet. I want you to get in the habit of opening your Bible so you can see it in context. You can see it on your own copy of God’s Word.

Open up your Bible to John chapter 15, verse 12.

Jesus is saying this to his 11 disciples. In chapter 13, they’re in… this is the night before Jesus died. There’s lots of chapters in John where Jesus is speaking with his disciples. And here he’s finished washing the disciples’ feet. Judas has gotten up and left already. So now it’s the 11. It’s the 11, and Jesus is giving them their final words.

In chapter 16, we’re going to hear he’s going to say, “I have said these things to you to keep you from falling away.” He’s going to leave. He’s going to die for them. He’s going to leave, and he’s giving his disciples final words. And we’re going to get to hear those words.

And you can see in verse 15, he says, “I have called you friends.” I have called you friends.

Prayer

We’re going to read all of this together, but let’s pray first. That’s what we want to do now, and that’s what we want to do every time we open God’s Word. So, as I pray, I want you to get in this habit: when your pastors pray, when your parents pray, when your friends pray, don’t check out. Don’t listen and say, “Okay, they’re praying.”

We all pray together. And that’s why when we’re done praying, we agree, and that’s what amen means. We’re agreeing. Yep. I want that to happen. So as I pray, try to engage your mind and your heart with my words and pray them along with me. Okay? Make a habit of that, and let’s pray together.

Father, thank you for your words. Thank you that you didn’t leave us without understanding what your plans and your purposes are. You didn’t leave us without knowing who you are. And most of all, thank you that you sent Jesus to die in our place so that we could be made right with you, so that we could be forgiven.

God, I pray that as I speak now, as we have your word open on our laps, as we’re considering it, help us to listen. It’s the end of the day. We’re tired. We have lots of things. Help us to listen well. Pray that my words would be clear. Keep our brains, God, please keep our brains engaged so that we could understand what your word means.

And I pray that we would believe it. God, we won’t believe these things apart from you changing our hearts, apart from you giving us faith. So do that. And we’re going to hear tonight of the importance of obeying your words. God, make us obedient. God, form obedience in us flowing from faith. Pray that we trust you in Jesus name. Amen.

Point 1: Jesus commands love like His

All right. So, open your Bibles if they’re not already there. John chapter 15, look at verse 12 and read along with me. This is a good place to get ourselves ready for the topic of biblical friendships as we prepare for next weekend at camp.

Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command, no longer do I call you slaves, for the slave 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.”

So the first point: Jesus commands love, and he doesn’t command any love. He commands a love like his. So Jesus’s love is commanded. Do you see that? Do you see it at the beginning, how this opens? “This is my commandment,” he says. He doesn’t just say, “Love one another.” That has been commanded throughout Scripture. Jesus has said that over and over and over again, quoting the Old Testament, quoting God’s Word, quoting the second most important command after love the Lord your God.

But he says, “This is my commandment.” My disciples, you guys, you 11 sitting here, and by extension all those who would trust in him listening, he goes, “This is my commandment. You want to know what I want? Love one another.”

It’s a commandment, not a suggestion. And Jesus makes that clear.

He doesn’t just say love generally. What does he say? Love one another. Who’s he talking to? We are commanded to love our neighbors. We are commanded to love our enemies. But who does he have in view here? His disciples. The ones who together are specifically… they’re all together saying, “I follow Jesus.” They’re defined by their discipleship to Christ, their faith in Christ.

And Jesus says to those, love one another. The target is one another. So he’s specifically saying love in the community of disciples. That doesn’t mean don’t love everybody. Yes, love your neighbors. Love your enemies. Love those who persecute you. All that much more in the church, among those who are defined as your goal.

Our goal when we’re in student ministries, Lord willing, would be that you would hear God’s Word and you’d say, “I believe.” And when you believe, you would become a disciple of Christ, and that you would grow up into the church. And that the church, not just Grace Bible Church, but all of those… especially Grace Bible Church, but all of those who are Jesus’s disciples, who are Christians, would be defined by love. And that’s Jesus’s command: you men in this room, and all those who believe in me, love each other, love one another.

And so, student ministries, you don’t have to be on hold before you can do this. Student ministries, as you hear of this love that Jesus calls you to, I want you to look around the room and say, “These are the people I’m specifically called to love.” Love one another. So this command we’re going to see is not general. It’s very practical.

The standard, what is the standard? What’s the kind of love that we’re called to? He doesn’t just say, “This is my commandment, love.” The world says that’s nice. The world loves love. We’re a day after Valentine’s Day, right? There were hearts everywhere. Love. And what do we think? What does the world think of when they think love? Hearts, emotions, crushes, we’ve talked about that, romance, butterflies, tingly feelings, just being nice. “These are my bros. These are my friends, the ones who make me feel good.”

But what does Jesus say? His standard is not just be nicer, but what is his standard? What’s the kind of love that he calls us to? Do you see it? “This is my commandment that you love one another,” and then he says, “like this.” Like this. What’s the way?

(Student response: “As I have…”)

As Jesus loved them. Do you know what he just did two chapters earlier in 13? He had said, “You call me your master. You call me Lord, and so I am.” And he took his clothes off, he had a towel around his waist, and he took the disciples and he washed their feet. He showed them what he came to earth to do: to be a servant, to be a slave, to empty himself, taking on the form of a servant in self-giving love for others.

He just did that. And he says, “You don’t understand this yet, but you will.” They might have been thinking, okay, that’s what he has in mind: love each other like that. And that’s true.

But Jesus had in mind that in just a few hours from this, he was going to go to the Garden of Gethsemane. Do you remember his prayer there? “God, if you could remove this cup from me”… we talked about that. “Do it, but not my will but yours be done.” And then Jesus was going to go from the garden to the cross.

Remember we talked about what Jesus did on the cross. He bore the wrath of God for everybody who would believe in him. For those who he would call friends, he died for them.

So they might have been thinking love like a servant love, love by washing each other’s feet, giving it up. And Jesus said, “I’m going to tell you what’s coming. You’re going to see a kind of love that you’ve never seen. And you’re going to see that this command to love one another as I love you, it raises to a whole other degree.”

Look around this room, guys. This is not a command to be nicer, but Jesus is commanding his disciples to love each other like Jesus loved.

Point 2: Greater love lays down life for friends

Look at the next verse. How did Jesus love? What did he have in mind?

“Greater love has no one than this.” He’s like, I’m going to give you the standard. It’s not something that’s achievable where you’re like, okay, I could do that, I could wash somebody’s feet. There’s a greater love that you’ve never even considered yet that you’re about to see. This is what I’m calling you to, my friends: that someone lay down his life for his friends.

There’s lots of loving things that you can do. Like, you can give somebody a glass of water. You can go be with them at really hard times. You can legitimately care for them. Give them your stuff. Be nice to them. Spend time with them. There’s all kinds of things. Those are right things to do.

But Jesus is calling us all the way to say love all the way, no matter what. If Jesus is calling you to a love that would lay down your life for your friend, is there any other kind of love that would exceed that? The answer is no. That’s what he says. There’s no greater love than laying down your life for your friends. That’s the degree of love that he’s calling you to, which means that everything else lesser would be included in that love.

There’s no expression of love for one another, for Jesus’s disciples, for Jesus’s friends… there’s no expression of love that’s off limits. That’s too much. “That’s overkill. That’s ridiculous.” Right? “Well, I won’t go that far.” In loving, Jesus is walking towards the cross. And he’s not just describing love. He’s about to do it.

Jesus didn’t die for himself. He died for who, according to this verse? For his friends.

Jesus shows us what being a friend means to him, what he does for his friends, what the love for his friends is. It means laying down his life. He isn’t laying down his life for what he gets from us.

Sometimes, think about your friendships. Who are you friends with? We tend to be friends with the people who make us feel good, with the people who we can get something from, with our peers, people who are like us. “I’m nice to you, you’re nice to me.” It’s a good relationship. When one of us isn’t nice to the other, you’re like, “Well, that person’s not my friend anymore. I’m going to go away, right? I’m going to go find somebody else who makes me feel good.”

That’s not what Jesus is calling us to here. He’s saying, “Give up of yourself.” True love aims for our ultimate good, even when it costs him.

This command is repeated throughout the Bible, this command to love. We have looked at this before. Ephesians 5:2 says, “Walk in love just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up.” First John 3:16 says, “By this we know love, that Jesus laid his life down for us.” And then John says, “So we ought to also lay down our lives for our brothers.” John was here, and so when he was writing 1 John, he probably had these words in mind as he said that we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

And then John says, “Meet your brother’s needs, other people in the church, other Christians’ needs. Meet their needs when you see them.” Because if we ought to be willing to lay down our life, if that’s the kind of love that we’re called to, everything else under that is included.

So, what are some other ways that self-sacrificing love could be included in the ways that Jesus loved us? Think about that. Because none of you are going to be called likely in your life to die for somebody. The number of people in this room who will get a chance to die for somebody else is probably exceedingly small.

You ought to do it, especially for one. That’s the kind of love: in love for each other, say, “Okay, I’d be willing to give up my life for a person for that.” Jesus did that.

But I don’t think any of us are probably going to be called to that. Not many. But what are some other ways of self-sacrificing love that you might be called to? Can you think of any? So this is a love for your friend that means you have to give something up. Can you guys think of any examples of that? Ways that you can love each other?

(Students respond: “Time, money.”)

Time, money. Yeah, those are two really good ones that you might be like, “Hey, but those are my time and money.” Love would give that up.

(Student response: “Telling your friends what’s helpful to hear, not just what they want to hear.”)

That’s actually exceedingly biblical. And you’re going to see that over and over again in Proverbs, that friends share truth with their friends, and that the wise one listens to those words. What else? Give up time, give up money.

What about comfort? What about doing something that you don’t prefer? Preferring somebody else. There’s a choice of what to do, and we usually fight for our own desires, right? “This is what I want. We’ll do what I want today and we’ll do what you want tomorrow.” A little give and take. What would a self-giving love do? Consider others’ needs as more important than their own. It’s actually the kind of love that we’re called to model.

Maybe not insisting on your own way, not being irritated with one another, being patient, being forgiving. These are words where you’re like, “Yeah, that sounds good,” but it’s really, really hard to do in the moment, right? When somebody does something you don’t like and they put you out and it’s going to cost you, you’re like, “No, I want what I want. Mine. Mine.”

We’re born… it’s easy. We’re born saying mine. And Jesus is saying, “No, that can’t be our words with one another. Instead, it’s what’s mine is yours. I die for you. So, I’m going to die to self for you.”

Jesus radically defines love and shows what it means to truly be a friend.

So this weekend at camp, as you’re learning about what makes a good friend, the world… somebody who doesn’t love God, who isn’t called to… some of you guys are in that position right now. You don’t love God, you don’t even care about the things of God. I pray that that changes today. I pray that that changes this weekend.

But for those of you who are like, “I want to follow God. I want to be Jesus’s friend. I want to be God’s child. I want to be saved. I want to be able to sing that first song: ‘You, my God, have saved my soul. I’m yours forevermore.'” As you hear what the Bible says about what friendships are, good friendships are, what they accomplish, I want you to look to Jesus first and ask him to give you faith in him to make you like him. That you say, “All right, I want to be like that.”

That’s what we’re called to over and over again in Scripture: get our minds, get our eyes off ourselves and onto Jesus.

Point 3: “You are my friends if you do what I command” (cause vs. effect)

Then verse 14, and this is, I think, just one of the most amazing and most important verses in what Jesus says here. You guys have to understand this. It might not sound like it at first. You guys have to understand what this verse says.

You see verse 14. Jesus says, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” Sounds weird, right? Would any of you guys say that to your friends? “You’re my friends if you do what I command.” That would be a bummer of a friendship, right? And that sort of sounds like the opposite of what Jesus is saying.

But we have to understand: friendship with Jesus is not a friendship like anything else. These are truly asymmetrical. Remember who Jesus is. Remember who you are. Jesus is Lord. Remember who we’ve learned about: Jesus is Lord. Jesus has every right to command us to follow him. And actually Jesus has just said, “Abide in me. Be near me. Rest in me.”

Jesus said earlier, “You call me Lord and so I am.” That’s right. You are my servants. You’re my slaves. I’m your master.

And Jesus says, “You’re my friends if you do what I command.” And yet I said that Jesus’s love makes us his obedient friends.

That might not sound like your first hearing of “you are my friends if you do what I command.” I want you to consider what if means. This is what we do when we read the Bible. We say, what does each word mean? “You are my friends if you do what I command.”

There’s at least two kinds of ifs. We have to figure out which one this is. If we take one of them, it will be heresy. And if we take the other, it’s gospel truth. Let’s think about this.

There’s an if that causes something, and then there’s an if that’s the result of something. Think in your brain if you can come up with two different uses of these ifs. Come up with a sentence where the if is the cause. I’m going to give you an example.

You can enter the theater if you pay the fee, or if you buy a ticket. Do you understand that? If… that might be the kind of thing you could say: “You could be my friend if you do what I say.” That’s not what Jesus is saying here.

You could enter the theater if you pay the ticket. What brought about the ability to enter the theater? Buying the ticket. So in that if, the if is a cause. Buying the ticket lets you in.

But then there’s this other if. Call it the if of effect or the if of result.

(Student interaction about examples.)

I’ll say one, then we can think of some others. If there are footprints in the snow, then someone has been here, right? We’re going to go to camp. It might snow. Snow is in the forecast. Only a 20% chance. It’s a maybe. It might change. Right. So, the weather has been really weird.

But anyway, if you’re outside and you’re like, “Was someone here? There’s footprints.” If there’s footprints in the snow, somebody’s been here.

Did the footprints cause a person to be there? No. The footprints were the result. Do you see that? If there’s footprints here, somebody was here.

If you say, “Is it morning time yet?” If you guys wake up in the middle of the night in the cabin and you say, “Is it morning?” And they said, “Look outside. If you see the sun, if it’s light out, it’s morning. If you see light, it’s morning.”

If you see light, did you cause morning to come? No. Seeing light was the result of morning coming. That’s what’s going on here.

Jesus says, “You are my friends if you do what I command.”

So everybody should say, “I want to be Jesus’s friend.” And on that day when Jesus comes to judge, they’re going to say, “I want to be on your side.” When the sword comes out of his mouth, destroys all his enemies, you’re like, “I want to be on that guy’s team.” Who’s Jesus’s friends? Who did he die for?

“You are my friends if you do what I command.” Do you see the importance of saying, “Is this cause or effect?” Is Jesus saying, “Obey me so you earn my friendship”? No.

Jesus is saying… he already said that up front. “I died for my friends. I made you my friends. I made you mine through my death for you.” Just like the footprints didn’t cause the person, similarly, in relationship to Jesus, your obedience didn’t cause the friendship or relationship.

The friendship is evidenced. Your relationship to Jesus is evidenced by your obedience.

So I just have a question. If you’re saying… you guys should be thinking about this. You could say, “Well, am I saved? Am I saved? Am I Jesus’s? Did Jesus die for me?” Well, look at your life. Do you obey?

Don’t obey in order to be saved. That will not work. That actually disqualifies you from salvation. But if you look at your life and you say, “I’m not who I once was. I actually am loving my neighbor. Not perfectly, but I am obeying Jesus. I want to do this. And I trust Jesus.”

And I’m confessing my sins and saying, “Jesus, cleanse me from this. Make me like you.” And then you’re obeying more and more and more. You can say, “I’m Jesus’s friend. Jesus laid down his life for me.”

Not because I obeyed, but I’m obeying because Jesus died. If you were paying attention this morning, that’s what Smedley called evidences of God’s grace. How do you know that you’ve had God’s grace? You start to evidence it. You start to show it. There’s fruit.

So in John 15:14, being obedient is proof that you are Jesus’s friend, that he has given himself up for you. So you have to be clear: obedience does not, cannot earn salvation, but it’s the result of it.

But friendship with Jesus is recognized by obedience. If you’re like, “I’m Jesus’s friend. I’m saved,” and your life doesn’t match, and you don’t care about sin, you don’t want to follow him, you have no claim to that. Jesus would say, “No. You’re my friends… you’re my friends if you obey.”

Just two chapters before, in John 13:34, Jesus said something just like this: “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. You’re also to love one another. By this all people will know that you’re my disciples if you love one another.”

So, what command would Jesus have most in mind here when he’s saying you’re my friends if you obey? It would be… he just said that. “I command you to love one another.” He said that in verse 12. He said that earlier in 13. His friends are characterized, his disciples are characterized, by obedience, and especially obedience to love.

The Bible is clear: if you live for yourself and you don’t love your neighbor, and if you especially don’t love other Christians, you have no claim to be able to say, “I’m Jesus’s friend.” Obedience does not earn Jesus’s friendship, does not earn relationship with Jesus, but it does expose whether your claim to friendship is real.

Did you hear that? Your obedience exposes whether or not your claim to be Jesus’s is real. But if Jesus is your friend, the point here isn’t to make you say, “Well, shoot, I’m not Jesus’s friend.” It’s actually to give you confidence. It doesn’t say obey perfectly.

But when God changes you, when he changes the fruit, and when he changes your heart to where you say, “I trust you, Lord. God, be my savior. God, make me more like you.” If Jesus is your friend, if you can say, “Jesus, you loved me and you gave yourself for me,” Jesus proved his love and commitment to your good by dying for you. That changes everything.

For some of you, the topic of friendship might be a sad one. You might be aware of the friends you don’t have and the friends that you wish you had. “I wish I had more friends.” Or, “I wish I had friends that didn’t let me down like those friends.” “I wish I had a friend.”

Or maybe you take pride in the friends you have. This friendship of Jesus where he says, “You are my friends,” this is startling, and it changes everything.

Think of what Jesus is saying: “You are my friends.” I chose you. That’s in verse 16. I love you. I lay down my life for you. That puts trials and difficulties like “I don’t have any friends” or “my friends aren’t friends like I wish I had” in a new perspective.

We can put our faith in a trustworthy and good Savior and friend who loved me and gave himself for me. This should buoy you up. This should encourage you and help you endure even really, really, really hard trials. And it should give you the motivation and encouragement and joy to love others even when it’s hard.

Point 4: Friends, not merely slaves; Jesus makes the Father’s purposes known

And then finally, verse 15. We learn that Jesus’s love makes the Father and his purposes known. We won’t have time to go through all of this. This whole section would actually go all the way to 17.

But what I want you to see, we’ll read it, and I want you to see that Jesus is our Lord. But Jesus’s friendship with us makes us more than just servants. We call him more than Lord. We call him friend. And one of the benefits of that is that he tells us what our Father is up to, God’s purposes. So listen to that as I read:

“No longer do I call you slaves.” It might say servants in your version. The word is slaves, doulos. And that goes with Jesus as our Lord. Slaves had a lord, had a master, and a master had slaves. Jesus says, “No longer do I call you slaves, or merely slaves, for the slave doesn’t 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.”

So think of a slave or a servant in one of these houses back in that day. Especially, they didn’t have an intimate relationship with their masters. The slaves wouldn’t generally know what their master was doing. Their master would say, “Go do this thing,” and they didn’t get to say why, right? They didn’t say, “Okay, I’ll go as long as you tell me why I’m doing it.”

They’d say, “Go prepare dinner,” and they just had to go. Or, “Go to this town. Do this thing for me,” and they just had to go, right? It wouldn’t have been wrong for them to say, “Do it because I said so.”

But you see that one of the sweet results of Jesus calling us friends is that he tells us what he’s heard from his Father. He makes the Father, he makes God and his purposes, known to us. And we get to see that in God’s Word.

It would be okay. Jesus would have the right to command us to obey because I said so. And we should say, “Okay, yes, master.” But Jesus does something amazing. He tells us why. He tells us who God is, what he requires, and why. And we see that unfolded all throughout God’s Word.

And that’s why we get to say, when we open up God’s Word, one of those questions that we ask: what does this reveal about God? You might ask, what does this reveal about what God loves, what God wants, what God is seeking to accomplish in the world, and then how does that affect me?

When we obey, thankfully, we don’t just have to obey because God said so, although that should be enough. We get to know who God is. And we get to obey as Jesus’s friend because Jesus tells us who the Father is and what he wants.

This knowledge motivates and informs us and empowers us to obey gladly.

Wrap-up and transition to discussion groups

So what I want us to do is to go to our discussion groups. I want you guys to think. Don’t miss the command here. The main point of this passage is that Jesus says, “Love one another like Jesus loved,” and that Jesus calls us his friends.

And if you are not a Christian, if you do not yet believe, don’t miss this opportunity. Think of this: Lord of the universe says you could be my friend. Just believe in me. Just trust in me. I died for you to call you friend.

Turn. Trust. Believe. Obey.