The last two weeks, we’ve been talking about friendship. We started by establishing that God wants us to have great friends and that to have a friend we need to be a friend. Then, last week, we talked about how important love is in friendship and we identified some of the important ways we can love others to build friendships with them.
This week, we’ll talk about the most important friendship of all, which is our friendship with Jesus. This may sound odd since we typically think of friends as people we physically spend time with, text, or call on the phone. Those things would be great to do with Jesus but, at least until He returns to Earth, we can’t. So, then, how should we think about being friends with Jesus? We are fortunate that Jesus answered this question for us in John 15:15 which says:
I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
Jesus said this to his disciples as part of a long set of instructions outlined in the four chapters from John 13 – 17. This took place in the short period between His triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday) and His crucifixion a few days later. These words were among His last in-person instructions to the disciples, who He had been training for over three years.
Being able to hang out with Jesus in-person for three straight years must have been an incredible adventure for these young men, all of whom were likely teenagers when they started following him. While there wasn’t a written test to graduate, Jesus was essentially recognizing all of them as graduates of the “Jesus academy”.
Specifically, He said to them “everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you”. And this fact is the basis on which He said they were qualified to be His friends. Note that He didn’t say they were friends because they knew everything He shared but simply because He had shared it with them. In other words, we can’t earn His friendship. It is a gift freely offered, like the salvation He offers.
Once again, we see an example of Jesus doing everything He can to build a friendship with us. And we see that gift of a friendship with Jesus is ours to take if we want it. Let’s go through a few questions to discuss what we can do now that we know this gift is being offered to us.
Questions:
- As we think back over the past three lessons on friendship, what are some of the main criteria for calling someone a true friend?
- As Christians, we think about Jesus as our Lord and Savior, but have you ever really thought about Him as a friend? Share any thoughts you have about that.
- Just because Jesus offers His friendship, does that mean we’re friends with Him? Why or why not?
- What does it mean to you to know that you can count on Jesus as a true friend?
- What are some things we can do to enhance our friendship with Jesus and become true friends?
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