CHRIST'S FRIENDSHIP: ITS INTIMACY
No Longer Do I Call You Servants; for the Servant Knoweth Not What His Lord
Doeth: But I Have Called You Friends; for All Things That I Heard From My
Father, I Have Made Known Unto You--John 15:15
The highest proof of true friendship, and one
great source of its blessedness, is the intimacy that holds nothing back, and
admits the friend to share our inmost secrets. It is a blessed thing to be
Christ's servant; His redeemed ones delight to call themselves His slaves.
Christ had often spoken of the disciples as His servants. In His great love our
Lord now says: "No longer do I call you servants"; with the coming of the Holy
Spirit a new era was to be inaugurated. "The servant knoweth not what his Lord
doeth"--he has to obey without being consulted or admitted into the secret of
all his master's plans. "But, I have called you friends, for all things I heard
from my Father I have made known unto you." Christ's friends share with Him in
all the secrets the Father has entrusted to Him.
Let us think what this means. When Christ spoke
of keeping His Father's commandments, He did not mean merely what was written
in Holy Scripture, but those special commandments which were communicated to
Him day by day, and from hour to hour. It was of these He said: "The Father
loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that he doeth, and he will show him
greater things." All that Christ did was God's working. God showed it to
Christ, so that He carried out the Father's will and purpose, not, as man often
does, blindly and unintelligently, but with full understanding and approval. As
one who stood in God's counsel, He knew God's plan.
And this now is the blessedness of being Christ's
friends, that we do not, as servants, do His will without much spiritual
insight into its meaning and aim, but are admitted, as an inner circle, into
some knowledge of God's more secret thoughts. From the Day of Pentecost on, by
the Holy Spirit, Christ was to lead His disciples into the spiritual
apprehension of the mysteries of the kingdom, of which He had hitherto spoken
only by parables.
Friendship delights in fellowship. Friends hold
council. Friends dare trust to each other what they would not for anything have
others know. What is it that gives a Christian access to this holy intimacy
with Jesus? That gives him the spiritual capacity for receiving the
communications Christ has to make of what the Father has shown Him? "Ye are my
friends if ye do what I command you." It is loving obedience that purifies the
soul. That refers not only to the commandments of the Word, but to that blessed
application of the Word to our daily life, which none but our Lord Himself can
give. But as these are waited for in dependence and humility, and faithfully
obeyed, the soul becomes fitted for ever closer fellowship, and the daily life
may become a continual experience: "I have called you friends; for all things I
have heard from my Father, I have made known unto you."
I have called you friends. What an
unspeakable honor! What a heavenly privilege! O Saviour, speak the word with
power into my soul: "I have called you My friend, whom I love, whom I trust, to
whom I make known all that passes between my Father and Me."