“You are my friends if you do what I command. 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.”
John 15: 14-15
In Jesus’ day, servitude was common place. In fact, many of His parables use the character of a servant to illustrate how we must serve God. In these two verses, however, Jesus is not calling us servants, he’s calling us friends. So what’s the difference? Make no mistake, the change in word choice does not mean that we suddenly don’t have to follow God’s commands (Jesus even says, “you are my friends if you do what I command”.) or that He suddenly wants only a little piece of our hearts. The difference is that as “friends” of God, we “know our master’s business”. Jesus didn’t hold back his mission from his disciples or from the first Christians and he doesn’t hold it back from us now. His goal is to reclaim souls that he loves dearly. As his friends, we are Jesus’ allies in this quest. He shares his mission with us because we are his partners, and we have a part to play.
Imagine if Gandalf, from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, had ordered the other members of the Fellowship to follow him to Mordor without them knowing the plan, or even the reason for their journey. Could they still be considered his friends? Similarly, when we plan something with our friends, we would normally fill them in on the details, so that we can draw on their strengths to make whatever we’re doing a success. Well, Jesus has told us his plan and made us his allies or friends, but how can we succeed?
John 15: 15 goes on to say that “everything Jesus learned from his father, he has made known to us”. Jim is right, Jesus didn’t have superpowers. He didn’t do any of his miraculous works alone. He had to call on His Father. If we are followers of Christ, then we have his Holy Spirit in us and are taught to be dependent on God and call on him for what we need, just as Jesus did. In our daily lives, as we try to live as Christ did and help spread the good news of Jesus, we need to be mindful of the fact that we can’t do it alone. The reason that Jesus makes what he’s learned from his Father known to us, is so we can depend on him, not to decrease our power, but to enhance it.
Think of a guitar. It doesn’t make much noise acoustically, but when plugged into an amplifier, it brings forth a great sound. When we try to live our Christian lives, without God, we can’t make much noise, but when we are connected to Him, as the guitar is to the amplifier, we can make a huge sound for the Kingdom. Or, consider something you’ve tried to do alone, for example, attempting to pray more regularly or reach out to a hurting non-Christian friend.
How does knowing that Jesus refers to you as His friend makes His mission and His love even more personal?
PRAY and thank God for considering you a friend and revealing His plans to you. Ask God to reveal what He is doing in your world (school, community, church, youth group). Ask God to help you “plug-in” to him when you are living the life he intended for you.
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