What A Friend We Have In Jesus!

Reading from the Book of John 15:9-17

 ⁹ “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. ¹¹ I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. ¹² My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵ 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. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.

Some things in Scripture are harder to understand and believe than others. Christ, the Sovereign Creator of all things, the offended Judge who declared the penalty for sin to be death, the One who willingly died to pay that penalty and redeem us from bondage to sin, now calls us His friends. Certainly we would like to consider Him our friend; but are we really His friends?

 

Actually, Christ said, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you". We are His friends by conscious choice on His part, even though He knows more about our inward nature than we will admit to ourselves. He has demonstrated His friendship by the greatest act of love imaginable, when He voluntarily died to save us from our sins. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends". Furthermore, for His friends He promises, "Whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you".

 

His love for us surpasses human love. "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love that your joy might be full". He has "ordained" us as friends so that we "should go and bring forth fruit, and that our fruit should remain". What joy!

 

There should be a response on our part to His friendship. Almost as a self-evident fact, He states, "Ye are my friends, if you do whatsoever I command you", among other things, "that ye love one another".

What a friend we have in Jesus!