Who Is God’s Friend?

I am a friend of God
I am a friend of God
I am a friend of God
He calls me friend

This wonderful song, sung in many churches usually gets the crowd singing a little louder than normal especially when these chorus lyrics come up.  Anyone who believes in God and goes to church is going to think they are a friend of God.  The sheer fact they are in church and believe is evidence of that isn’t it?  But what does God say in the Bible about who his friends and who his enemies are?  It may surprise you that God had some very pointed instruction to us about true friends and true enemies.  Many singing this song are likely not God’s friend as we will see.  We can’t just call God our friend, indeed He must call us His friend.

John 15:13-15 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.  You are My friends IF you DO whatever I command you.  No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.

In the above passage, Jesus defined clearly and unambiguously what we must DO to be His friend.  Yes we must actually do something to be saved and act upon his gift of grace.  I didn’t say this, Jesus, Paul, the Apostles and all the Prophets said it throughout the bible.    what we must do, is to obey His commandments.  This means we listen to that still voice inside of us, that comes from His Holy Spirit and follow Him.  If we reject His commandments, we rebel against God and go the ways of the world and become an enemy of God.  As Jesus said:

Matthew 12:30 Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters

Now someone may come back to me and tell me you don’t need to be God’s friend to get to heaven.  The bible doesn’t say expressly and good luck trying to prove that thesis.  Jesus goes on to tell us that if we are His friend, He has made known all things from the Father to us.  This means we have His Spirit in us and we are being taught and guided by that Spirit.  John tells us in 1 John 2, that if we have His spirit we will not keep sinning meaning we will be obeying His commandments.  Isn’t that the same thing Jesus says here?  Indeed it is, so being a friend of God is a required indicator of ones salvation.

I believe God told us many different ways how to have eternal life with Him and being his friend was another way of saying that.  Those ways include Knowing Him, Being His Friend, Obeying His Commandments, Doing the Will of His Father, Calling on the Name of the Lord and of course Believing.  None of this contradicts the other, they all interrelate.  If you truly believe, you will obey.  If you truly call on the name of the Lord in the present tense, you will walk the narrow road always.  If you obey, you do the will of the Father and of course you believe.  If you know him, you follow Him and by direct inference you will obey, call, believe, etc, etc.  It really is not that complicated but we can’t cherry pick a few verses and call that the gospel.

Looking again at this verse from John’s gospel above:  We can see that laying down ones life for a friend is the greatest love we can show according to Jesus.  That is what Jesus did for us on the cross.  But do you understand that Jesus asks us also to lay down our life for Him? Now that is true friendship and love in action, reciprocal laying down of ones life.  In fact this is a consistent teaching throughout all the New Testament.   Consider these passages:

Matthew 16:25 Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.  In these two similar passages I showed here , Jesus makes it clear we need to lay down our life to Him.  We must surrender it (be willing to lose it) to find eternal life.  His definition for Friendship is a two way street, He gave his life for us, and asks our life be given to Him.  Salvation is not easy in terms of worldly logic.

Luke 9:23 “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.  Jesus doesn’t force us to do anything.  We have free will.  We must indeed choose life by choosing to obey Him.  Denying ourselves is a requirement (a MUST do) and we are told to do this daily.  Salvation is a not a one time event.  Showing true love for someone is putting their needs above your needs.  That is what Jesus demands that we do to be called His friend. We need to do God’s will, not our will.  He needs to be LORD of our life, not ourselves.  Denying ourselves means to forsake our sins and suffer in our flesh as the consequence of our self denial.  If we seek after the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life; we are not following Jesus and deceive ourselves.  We must suffer as Christ suffered for us.  That is the reciprocal laying down of our lives for each other.

Jesus told the Pharisees that loving God with ALL your heart, and ALL your mind and ALL your soul was the foremost commandment along with “loving your neighbor as yourself”. On these two commands hang all the law and the teachings of the prophets.  This is how we walk in love.  If God does not have our whole heart, we cannot walk in love and we are not laying down our life for each other much less for our Lord.  That is what true friends do for each other, they serve one another, they give it all up.  Very few Christians are doing this, even remotely close and instead are following doctrines of men, worshipping in vain with their lips instead.

 Romans 6:5-8 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection,  knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin.  Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.  Have you crucified your flesh?  Have you suffered to give up worldly lusts and sin?  Have you laid down your life for God?  If we haven’t, I have  doubts about ones place with God.  If you are still practicing sin, you are a slave to sin and Jesus is not your Lord because we are told we are a slave to the one we obey.  If He is not our Lord He is certainly not our friend.  I say this not out of judgment my brothers but out of love as I myself have only recently come to the true light and seen the truth in the word of God.

1 Peter 4:1-2 For as much then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.  I have used this verse and these passages from Peter a lot as they speak to our call to perfection and holiness.  He Peter tells us to arm ourselves like Christ and suffer in our flesh.   Have you?  He says if we do, we will be done with sin and the lusts of the flesh.  My friends I write to you admitting I am not there yet but I am earnestly working on it and things are a changing.  So the criticism that I am not practicing what I am preaching is warranted.  The words I write here are in my heart and my mind as I get to make choices daily.  God is faithful and He is working to complete my sanctification and that is His plan for all of us.

There are literally scores more passages that speak to our need to DIE to self, crucify our flesh, lose our life to gain our life, surrender fully, and all of this scripture ties back to what Jesus said about who is HIS FRIEND.  I am sorry to say this, but Jesus has a lot fewer friends than people who think they are friends with Jesus.  Why is that?  The Prophet Amos tells us:  Amos 3:3 Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?

So we must be agreed with Jesus.  Jesus said if we are His friend we WILL obey his commandments.  Are you obeying them?  If you are not, do not be deceived you are not a friend of Jesus.  There is indeed a cost of following Him and coming into agreement with Him.  Being crucified, denying ourselves, losing our worldly lives all come with real costs.  Jesus told us to make sure we knew these costs and were willing to pay them otherwise we could not follow him.  I blogged about this some time ago in DO NOT LOOK  BACK.  Jesus told us in Luke 9:62 “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back (into the world), is fit for the kingdom of God.” Laying down our life is not easy.  It takes real love, a sacrificial love from a pure heart to give up your life to God.  Salvation is not easy but God has given us all that we need to accomplish it.   His grace is indeed sufficient for thee He told Paul and it applies to us as well.   Grace is the power to defeat Sin and obey His commandments.

Other Biblical Friendships

Let’s look at another examples of a biblical friendship.

1 Samuel 18:2 Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.   Jonathan and David were likely the two best friends that every walked the earth.  They were in covenant together.  If you recall the story of David and Jonathan, much later David heard about one of Jonathan’s sons that was still alive and he was advised to kill him as the kid would be a threat to his kingdom.  David almost broke the covenant he made with Jonathan, but he remembered his dear deceased friend and the covenant he had made with him to take care of his family.  So against all worldly wisdom and tradition, he spared the life of Jonathan’s son, even bringing him home to the King’s palace to live as royalty.

2 Samuel 21:7 But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of the oath of the LORD which was between them, between David and Saul’s son Jonathan

We are in covenant with Jesus if we are his Sheep.  Jesus said “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” Jesus has kept his part of the covenant by dying for us on the cross and being raised in glory.  Our part as consistently taught in scripture is to obey his commandments or said another way to do the will of the Father in heaven who told us “this is my beloved son, Listen to Him.

Abraham was first called a friend of God in Genesis and James also referenced this in James 2.  But  Abraham obeyed God, he first believed God and on faith moved his family as God told him.  Abraham went against all worldly expectations and packed up and moved without a plan, only a trust in God.  We are God’s friends by our acts of obedience to His word and we become God’s enemies by our disobedience, rebellion and sin against His word.  We are not sealed as a friend by a simple belief in the existence of God, we must do step two which is to obey God.  That is the message taught throughout scripture and that Jesus speaks to when he describes who are his friends.

Who are the enemies of God?

James 4:4-5 Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Below, the Apostle John adds more color about loving the things in the world.  As James said, if we are friends with the world we are an enemy of God.  John says it differently but the point is the same and totally consistent with the words of Jesus.

1 John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. ¹⁶ For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. ¹⁷ And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.  We can’t have it both ways.  Where is the preaching about living in the world?  Instead of preaching this, the church has changed to be like the world.  I think God had the opposite action in mind, that the church would distance itself from the world.

Matthew 6:23 If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness.  Many many Christians are living in the world, loving the things of the world.  They are not friends of God, they are enemies of God even though they profess Jesus is Lord.  My own heart continues to be convicted of things I still do at times.   I rarely go to movies anymore because they are all so evil.  But sometimes I give in and go, it is a social thing I rationalize but I leave feeling convicted or want to leave halfway thru the movie.   I like to have a little wine at times or a beer and I do not think that is inherently evil as God made all things for our pleasure.  But the social activities of the world put us into situations that entice us to cross a line from having a few to getting drunk.  My best defense is to avoid such situations.   The ways of the world are not the ways of God.  We need to come out of her else we are an enemy of God and we deceive ourselves. I am becoming convinced more and more that I/we will need to reject totally these situations and bring upon us the persecution and ridicule from worldly friends that will most assuredly follow our rejection of their way and the world’s way of life.

Here is a troubling verse by Jesus but a truth we must get deep in our spirit.

John 15:18-19 “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

If we are loving it up with people in the world, you cannot be a friend of God and in fact we are an enemy of God.  We are hurting the kingdom by calling ourselves Christians yet living and acting like the pagans and the heathen.  We call Him a liar by living in the world and claiming to be His.  Jesus makes it clear, the world will hate us if we are truly walking with Him.  Now I am not suggesting we go out a look for people to hate us or give them reasons to hate us, but if we preach the truth and walk uprightly, we will be judged by the world and they will reject us and persecute us.  That is part of the cost of discipleship we were told to count before we decided to follow Jesus.  Furthermore, Jesus made it really clear that we are blessed when men hate us for His sake.

Luke 6:22-23 Blessed are you when men hate you, And when they exclude you, revile you, and cast out your name as evil For the Son of Man’s sake.  Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven,

If we are doing the same things the non believers how can we say we are friends of God?  If we do these things, we are hypocrites but I believe worse, we are deceived about our salvation and our standing with God.  Jesus said we WILL OBEY his commandments if we love Him.  Do we love Him or do we love the world?  Are we a friend of God or are we a friend of the world?

Time is getting short, we are indeed in the end times.  The apostasy is there, the world calamity is coming, the love of many is growing cold, and it is going to get much worse.  Examine yourself, test yourself with the scriptures to see that we are truly His.  Most are not as Jesus told us in Matthew 7:21-25. I don’t care what you are doing in your life right now.  Your most important thing right now is to get right with God.  If you are living in Sin, repent and turn from it, seek his forgiveness and cleansing.  Trust in Him and his spirit to guide you towards doing His will.

I am a friend of God.  I want to be with the friends of God.  More than ever, I want Him to call me His friend.  It is not enough for just me to say He is my friend.  Remember the last line of the chorus lyrics, HE CALLS ME FRIEND.  There is no middle ground, you are either God’s friend or you are God’s enemy.  We need to choose wisely and understand the consequences of our choice.  The Judge is standing at the door!

I recently did a video based on this original post from early 2009

May God Bless You Richly!!!

1 John 3:2-3 But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.  All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.