Not Strictly Reciprocal

Jesus calls us his friends (John 15:15). That’s the focus of Sunday’s sermon. I want to answer the question: How do you become a friend of Jesus?

But there is a little detail that I won’t have time to expound tomorrow. It’s the asymmetry of our relationship with Jesus we need to keep in mind.

D.A. Carson makes a helpful comment:

This ‘friendship’ [with Jesus] is not strictly reciprocal: these friends of Jesus cannot turn around and say that Jesus will be their friend if he does what they say. Although Abraham and Moses are called friends of God, God is never called their friend; although Jesus can refer to Lazarus as his friend, Jesus is not called the friend of Lazarus.

Neither God nor Jesus is ever referred to in Scripture as the ‘friend’ of anyone. Of course, this does not mean that either God or Jesus is an ‘unfriend’: if one measures friendship strictly on the basis of who loves most, guilty sinners can find no better and truer friend than in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Son whom he has sent. But mutual, reciprocal friendship of the modern variety is not in view, and cannot be without demeaning God.

We don’t want to be overly scrupulous here, but Carson is right: biblically speaking, we can’t call Jesus our friend in the same way he says we are his friend. I love the old song, “What a friend we have in Jesus...” — indeed! But there’s no equality between us. The wonder is not that Jesus is our friend, but that Jesus — our God and King — calls us his friend.