Friends are an important and wonderful part of life. Earlier days, there is a saying “Choose your book you read and the friend you make”, as both influence your way of life. Of course, this was said long before social media came into existence, where you can “friend” just about everything and everyone you want!

        But by far, the most important friend that you can have is the Lord Jesus. A number of hymns celebrate this wonderful truth:

“What a friend we have in Jesus!”

“Jesus! What a friend for sinners, Jesus lover of my soul!”

“I’ve found a friend, O, such a friend! He loved me ere I knew Him.”

“I’ve found a friend who is all to me, His love is ever true.”

“There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus, no not one, no not one!”

        We need to be careful about being too chummy in calling Jesus our friend. In the Bible, God and the Lord Jesus call certain ones their friends, but no human ever refers to God or Jesus as their friend. It’s not a mutual, reciprocal friendship. The Bible refers to both Abraham (2 Chron. 20:7; Isa. 41:8; James 2:23) and Moses (Exod. 33:11) as friends of God. Jesus here calls the disciples His friends in our Bible portion John 15:12-17. But He is still their Lord and Teacher (John 13:13, 14). Although at the last supper, the apostle John laid his head on Jesus, years later when John saw Jesus in His glory, he fell at His feet as a dead man (Rev. 1:17). So as we consider whether or not we are friends of Jesus, we need to maintain John’s reverence. The question I’d like you to think about and ask yourself is, “Would Jesus call me His friend?” Our text reveals four characteristics of those whom Jesus calls His friends:

        Friends of Jesus love one another, obey His commandments, understand His truths, and are chosen to bear fruit that remains.

        Before we look at these characteristics, you need to know that Jesus is not automatically your friend or everyone’s friend. You especially need to know this if you’re inclined to think that you’re His friend because you’re a good person. The Bible teaches that by nature we’re all God’s enemies because He is holy and we all have sinned (see Rom. 8:7; James 4:4; 1 Pet. 5:5). The bad news is that you can’t have a worse enemy than God, because He always wins! But the good news is that God sent Jesus to reconcile rebellious sinners to Himself (2 Cor. 5:18-19). The self-righteous, religious crowd scoffed that Jesus was a friend of sinners (Luke 5:29-32; 7:34; 15:1-2). But He gladly accepted that label, explaining that He didn’t come to call the righteous (in the context, He means “self-righteous”), but sinners to repentance (Luke 5:32). So the first step to being called the friend of Jesus is to come to Him as a helpless sinner, asking Him to save you. Once you’ve done that, then you can consider these characteristics of Jesus’ friends and seek to grow in them.

        1. Friends of Jesus love one another just as He loved us (John 15:12-13, 17).

        John 15:12-13, 17: “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends…. This I command you, that you love one another.”

      If these commands sound vaguely familiar, it’s because Jesus already said (John 13:34-35), “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Why would Jesus repeat this command on the same night? He repeated it because He was the master teacher and He knew that repetition is the key to learning, especially learning something that isn’t easy. It takes more than one hammer blow to sink a nail. It takes more than saying it once for us to learn to love one another! During the last supper, the disciples got into an argument about which of them was the greatest (Luke 22:24). Many of our conflicts stem from the same self-centred motives. As James 4:1-2 says, “What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel.” The Lord knew our propensity towards selfishness, so during His final hours with the disciples He hammered on this command to love one another. He wanted them to remember this one thing, because love is not optional for those who follow Jesus (1 Cor. 13). Note three things:

        2 . Jesus’ love for us is the supreme standard for our love for one another.

         Just as He stated when He gave His new commandment (John 13:34), so here Jesus repeats, “… just as I have loved you.” Jesus’ love for us is most vividly seen at the cross, where He offered Himself as the sacrifice for our sins (Gal. 2:20; Eph. 5:2). We can define Jesus’ love as “a self-sacrificing, caring commitment that shows itself in seeking the highest good of the one loved.” The highest good for all people is that they would have their sins forgiven and receive eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. And, once a person has come to know Christ, his highest good is that he be conformed to the image of Christ. Those goals should be our aim in all of our relationships. Because love is primarily a commitment and not a feeling, it can be commanded. The Bible does command certain feelings, for example, “Rejoice always” (1 Thess. 5:16). Or, “Be anxious for nothing” (Phil. 4:6). And love should not be devoid of feelings. It is a caring commitment; people should feel our genuine feelings of love for them. But even when we don’t feel especially loving, we need to obey God by sacrificing ourselves for the sake of others. I’m sure that the cross didn’t feel good at the moment, but Jesus endured it because He was focused on the future joy of having us with Him in heaven for all eternity (Heb. 12:2).

         In verse 13, Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” Some have said, “To lay down your life for your enemies is greater than doing it for your friends.” Paul points out (Rom. 5:8-10) that this is in fact what Jesus did: He died for us while we were still His enemies. And in another context, Jesus commanded that we love our enemies (Matt. 5:44). But in this context, Jesus is speaking about love among friends. He will demonstrate His love for the disciples the next day on the cross. That’s the high standard for our love for one another. Of course, we can never die as a substitute to save others from their sins, as Jesus did. But He sets the standard for our love as laying down our lives for one another. Every once in a while, I’ll read a story about someone who literally sacrificed his life to save someone else, maybe on the battlefield or to rescue a drowning person or to save someone inside a burning building. While not giving their lives, I’ve read about people who have donated a kidney for a perfect stranger. And I’ve thought, “Would I do that?”

         You can sit around and speculate about whether you would do such heroic deeds if you were thrust into those situations, but the place we all need to apply this is by confronting our selfishness in small, daily matters. Husbands are commanded to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her (Eph. 5:25). Do you? You say, “Oh, sure, I’d die to save my wife from an intruder that was trying to kill her.” But do you die to yourself so that you can serve her? Do you turn off the TV or leave the computer and help her clean up the kitchen or get the kids into bed? Do you give up your own pursuits because you delight to be with her? It’s in these small, daily ways that we should be practicing sacrificial love for one another.

         3. We can only love one another if we abide in Christ’s love.

         In John 15:9, Jesus said, “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.” Now Jesus applies abiding in His love to our relationships to one another. Abiding in His love is the key to loving our brothers and sisters in Christ. These, of course, are the two great commandments that sum up the law and the prophets (Matt. 22:37-40), that we are to love God and love our neighbour. But the point here is that it is God’s great love for us, as seen in giving His own Son while we were yet His enemies, that motivates us to love others.

         Also, note that in John 15:17, Jesus repeats the command for us to love one another immediately after He has repeated the concept that He saved us so that we would bear fruit. The two are intertwined. When He gave His new commandment (John 13:35), Jesus said that others would know that we are His disciples by our love for one another. Here, He ties our ability to bear fruit with His command that we love one another. As people see the love between Christians, they will be drawn to the source of our love, our Saviour who gave Himself for us on the cross. But sadly, the church has often failed on this matter. I never read it, but years ago Leslie Flynn wrote a book with an intriguing title, Great Church Fights. I’m sure that he had to choose his material selectively, because there have been thousands of “great” church fights! And on a lesser scale, there have been tens of thousands of conflicts among believers over relatively petty matters. It’s always grievous and a black eye for the name of Christ when believers don’t judge their selfishness and work through conflicts out of obedience to Christ’s command to love one another. “But” you say, “you don’t know how difficult that other person is to love!” That leads to the third thing here

         4. The others that we are commanded to love are imperfect sinners, just as we are.

         It is both interesting and instructive that Jesus did not pick a homogeneous, cohesive group for His apostolic band. Most glaringly, He picked Matthew the tax collector and Simon the Zealot! The Zealots were a radical political party whose main objective was getting Roman rule out of the Holy Land. And they viewed tax collectors as despicable traitors who had sold their souls to Rome. They took advantage of their fellow Jews by milking them for excessive taxes that they pocketed. I don’t know whether Jesus picked Matthew first or Simon the Zealot first, but it’s humorous to think of what the one who was already an apostle must have thought when Jesus picked the other one! “What was He thinking?” And then Jesus commanded them to love one another!

         He still does that, you know! He picks people for His church that I never would have picked, and He commands me (and you) to love them. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to like them, but you do have to say no to your selfishness to help them become what the Lord wants them to be. Friends of Jesus love one another, just as He loved us.

         In the next article, we will journey our thoughts about “Friends of Jesus obey His commandments”, “Friends of Jesus understand the truths that He made known to us from the Father (John 15:15) ” and “Friends of Jesus are chosen by Him to bear fruit that remains as they depend upon Him through prayer”.