Friends with Jesus: Cliché or reality?

If I ask you to think of a friend, who quickly comes to mind?  Someone you’ve known since before you can remember?  Your spouse or significant other?  Your old roommate from college?  The person you hang out with at or after school?

Maybe you’d like to say that Jesus is your friend.  (“It’s what a pastor who blogs wants to hear, right?”)  But you wonder whether that sounds disrespectful. (“Calling the Son of God a friend is not a reverent way to speak of Him.”)  Or maybe it sounds trite or like a cliché.  (“Only saps without any real friends say that!”)

Over the past couple of years, it’s become obvious to me that thinking of Jesus as my Friend (as well as Saviour, Lord, and so on) is not only encouraging, but also deeply biblical.  It’s not silly; it’s not sacrilegious.  It states what is real and true as the Holy Spirit works in God’s people.

Helped along the way by pastor and blogger Andrew W. Holt, I’ve written on this subject numerous times (here, here, and here, for example).  Finally last week I preached on it, using John 15:9-17 as the foundation and launching point, where Jesus says:

I no longer call you servants,
—–because servants do not know
—–their master’s business.
Instead, I have called you friends,
—–for everything that I learned from my Father
—–I have made known to you.

I affirmed what a Friend we have in Jesus.  And the truth of this transforms our friendships with others.

Please click here to read the message I preached in its entirety.

You can get your own “Friend with God” hoodie here.
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