We are friends of Jesus

May 6, 2021

14:1 – 15:17 Being in Jesus, just as Jesus is in the Father

Read John 15:13-15

Jesus has reminded the disciples that at the heart of all his commands there is a single and supreme command: “Love each other as I have loved you” (15:12; 13:34-35). There is nothing more important in the Christian life than love, as all the New Testament writers emphasise e.g. “We should love one another” (1 John 3:1), “If I have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor.13:1-3). The standard and model of this love is “as I have loved you”, and – as Jesus had already made clear – the way that he loved us was by laying down his life for us (13; 13:1; Phil.2:6-8).

So “this is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters” (1 John 3:16). Loving one another involves glad and willing service of others, giving ourselves for them just as Jesus gave himself for us. And he did that in order to make us his friends. The words “greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” are so frequently applied as a memorial to victims of warfare that perhaps we forget that originally and primarily they were spoken by Jesus in regard to his own death, for his friends.

We are not just his servants or his disciples, but his friends! (14-15). In the Old Testament, only Abraham is called God’s friend (2 Chronicles 20:7; Isaiah 41:8) but friendship with Jesus is the great privilege of every Christian believer. As his friends, we are likewise called to “live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us” (Eph.5:2). That means joyfully offering the friendship of sincere love to all our Christian brothers and sisters (Heb.13:1; 1 Pet.1:22).