Over Spring Break I was at church where the preacher was talking about prayer. He was speaking specifically about Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and said that this prayer in particular was not a casual prayer. That got me thinking about how we talk about in class or sing about in songs how God/Jesus is our friend and that we can talk to him casually like a friend. This made me wonder, where in the Bible does it specifically say that God is our friend? Where does is it say that he is anything but our Lord or Father? Sure he wants the best for us, but so do our parents, and I do not consider my parents to be my “friends”.
So I did a quick search on my Bible app on my phone to see where it explicitly says “friend”. It told me in the New Testament there are 33 references to that word, 12 of these were not applicable to my meaning though. That leaves 21 times and all but seven are in the Gospels. The most interesting of those 7 to me is found in James 2:23 “and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “And Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God.”
Here, James is talking about Abraham being willing to sacrifice his son Isaac. It clearly states that because Abraham was willing to do what God commanded, he was considered a friend of God. After I read that I began to look at the other Gospel references differently. In Luke 5 it says “Seeing their faith, He said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven you.’” To me, this is awesome. It is something you do not notice when you first read over it, but this is the Son of God, the only perfect human being to ever live that is just calling this random man “Friend”.
Then, in John 15, the answer to my original question became completely clear.
12 “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are My friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. 17 This I command you, that you love one another.”
This is absolutely amazing. It goes hand-in-hand with the earlier verse from James. “You are My friends if you do what I command you.” That verse and section makes everything else seem so small and insignificant. God not only cares about us and is a father to us, but he truly wants to be our friend and he truly wants to be close to us and all we have to do is listen to Him and do what He says. That is all that matters. Friendship is a two-way street though, a person cannot be friends with someone and the other person not consider them a friend. That’s not how it works. We have to make that effort, we have to do His will for our relationship to be considered a friendship. But if we do that, then we will have the most pure relationship of our lives.
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