CHRIST'S FRIENDSHIP: ITS EVIDENCE
Ye Are My Friends, if Ye Do the Things Which I Command You--John 15:14
Our Lord has said what He gave as proof of His
friendship: He gave His life for us. He now tells us what our part is to be--to
do the things which He commands. He gave His life to secure a place for His
love in our hearts to rule us; the response His love calls us to, and empowers
us for, is that we do what He commands us. As we know the dying love, we shall
joyfully obey its commands. As we obey the commands, we shall know the love
more fully. Christ had already said: "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall
abide in my love." He counts it needful to repeat the truth again: the one
proof of our faith in His love, the one way to abide in it, the one mark of
being true branches is--to do the things which He commands us. He began with
absolute surrender of His life for us. He can ask nothing less from us. This
alone is a life in His friendship.
This truth, of the imperative necessity of
obedience, doing all that Christ commands us, has not the place in our
Christian teaching and living that Christ meant it to have. We have given a far
higher place to privilege than to duty. We have not considered implicit
obedience as a condition of true discipleship. The secret thought that it is
impossible to do the things He commands us, and that therefore it cannot be
expected of us, and a subtle and unconscious feeling that sinning is a
necessity have frequently robbed both precepts and promises of their power. The
whole relation to Christ has become clouded and lowered, the waiting on His
teaching, the power to hear and obey His voice, and through obedience to enjoy
His love and friendship, have been enfeebled by the terrible mistake. Do let us
try to return to the true position, take Christ's words as most literally true,
and make nothing less the law of our life: "Ye are my friends, if ye do the
things that I command you." Surely our Lord asks nothing less than that we
heartily and truthfully say: "Yea, Lord, what Thou dost command, that will I
do."
These commands are to be done as a proof of
friendship. The power to do them rests entirely in the personal relationship to
Jesus. For a friend I could do what I would not for another. The friendship of
Jesus is so heavenly and wonderful, it comes to us so as the power of a divine
love entering in and taking possession, the unbroken fellowship with Himself is
so essential to it, that it implies and imparts a joy and a love which make the
obedience a delight. The liberty to claim the friendship of Jesus, the power to
enjoy it, the grace to prove it in all its blessedness--all come as we do the
things He commands us.
Is not the one thing needful for us that we ask
our Lord to reveal Himself to us in the dying love in which He proved Himself
our friend, and then listen as He says to us: "Ye are My friends." As we see
what our Friend has done for us, and what as unspeakable blessedness it is to
have Him call us friends, the doing His commands will become the natural fruit
of our life in his love. We shall not fear to say: "Yea, Lord, we are Thy
friends, and do what Thou dost command us."
If ye do. Yes, it is in doing that we are
blessed, that we abide in His love, that we enjoy His friendship. "If ye do
what I command you!" O my Lord, let Thy holy friendship lead me into the love
of all Thy commands, and let the doing of Thy commands lead me ever deeper into
Thy friendship.