Being Friends With God

God Wants To Be Friends With You!

Jesus tells us: This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master does. But I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. … These things I command you, that you love one another. (John 15:12-17) Jesus commanded the apostles to love one another in the same way as he loved them - as his friends. And his definition of true friendship, is that we must be willing to lay down our life for our friends.

But who was this man Jesus, that we should love him, and be willing to do whatever he commands?

Jesus was the Christ (which means the anointed one) sent from God the Father, to show us how to live by following his example. And significantly he called his followers his friends. Yet, Jesus was not just a person sent by God, to tell us how to live. The Gospel of John unfolds the great mystery of the very nature of God, and what stupendous potential we have in being friends with Jesus.

John starts his account of the life of Christ by telling us: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. (John 1:1-3) This is an obvious allusion to Genesis 1:1, where we are told “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”. So, we are told by John that the creator God of Genesis chapter 1 is “the Word”, and that “Word” was made flesh, and dwelt among us, … (v14) in the form of Jesus. Jesus is God. Jesus is the creator, who made the heaven and the earth. If you are a friend of Jesus, you are a friend of God!

As we come to know our friends, we learn about them, and share their characteristics. We even start to become like them. Later in the book of John, he reveals something so staggering that most people think it simply means being like God. While being similar to God is certainly not something to be lightly dismissed, the truth of what Jesus tells his disciples is far greater than that. For our friendship with God not only leads us to become like him, but ultimately to be “one” with Him, in the same way that the Word and God were one in the beginning!

Being One With God

On the night before he was killed, Jesus prayed for the Apostles, and he also prayed for you and me as those who would believe on him through their teaching: And now I am in the world no longer (he was about to die), but these (the Apostles) are in the world, and I come to You, Holy Father. Keep them in Your name, those whom You have given Me, so that they may be one as We are. … I have given them (the Apostles) your word, and the world has hated them because they (the Apostles) are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. … As You have sent Me into the world, even so I have sent them (the Apostles) into the world. … And I do not pray for these alone, but for those also who shall believe on Me through their word, (that’s us folks!) that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. And I have given them the glory which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one. (John 17:11-22) Three times in this short prayer, we are told very clearly that God wants you and me to be one with him! Just so you get the point, Jesus reiterates something similar about being one with God about twenty times from John chapters 14 to 17: 14:1,7,9,10,11,20,23, 15:1-2,4,5,6,7,23, 16:3,15, 17:3,5,10,23,26. 

If you are a friend with God, he is going to make you become one with Him! And please note, it does not say we are to be at one with God, no, we are to be one with God. To be at one could imply that we are in total agreement with God, which is certainly fantastic. But, to be one with God implies something way beyond mere agreement: a complete union far exceeding anything we, as physical beings, have experienced, or could understand.

Oneness with God is explained by Jesus as being analogous to friendship, sonship, and drinking his blood and eating his flesh, along with many other analogies, which we will explore throughout the next year on this Friends With God blog.

It's not easy to understand what God means by being one with him, for the nature of God always seems to be beyond our comprehension. However, Jesus told us something very simple about being one with God, when he said:…That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John 3:6) Obviously being composed of spirit and being composed of flesh are two different things. Yet, if we are to be sons of God, we must be born of spirit, as God is spirit.

Continuing in the next verse, Jesus tells us what being born of the spirit is like: Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wants to, and you hear its sound, but (you) don’t know where it comes from and where it is going. So is everyone who is born of the spirit.” (John 3:6-8)

Being born of the spirit is only analogous to being born of the flesh. When we have this spiritual ‘body’ it will be unlike anything physical - as we are going to move like the wind! The words “spirit” and “wind” in this section of John are actually the same original Greek word, the translators just changed it to make some sense of what is being said. While doing this is quite logical, it doesn’t help a great deal, for being like the wind is really as meaningless to us as being like spirit!

We see therefore that the nature of God, even when revealed to us by the Son of God, is way beyond our comprehension. Yet being a Spirit Being is the promise God has made to you! And at that time, we will be one with the Father and the Son, and we will also be like the wind!! And, what is even more amazing, we will be God’s friends!

Jesus told us that You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. Many people obey God out of fear of what they think he will do to them if they disobey (e.g. burn in Hell forever), or they obey God to get a great reward (e.g. live in Heaven forever). Yet the actual reason God wants us to obey him is so we can learn how to love him as our friend.

God wants to teach us to work with him, in order to learn to love him, and our fellow human beings. Obedience to God is the open door to a meaningful relationship with him- the same kind of relationship that we have with our trusted and loving friends.

Once you develop this meaningful friendship with God, then God will desire to live with you forever! That is the simple and profound reason God is willing to give you eternal life- because you are his loving friend, whom he doesn’t want to live without!

Yet, you are created by him to be mortal, and he is immortal. Fortunately, he also has the power to give you immortality. He has promised to give you, if you are his friend, the same immortality he has, so you can live with him forever. (1Cor 15:53-54)

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