S18P4 – The Characters of God: our friend

John 15:15
I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

In life, we will have many kinds of relationships. Just because we interact with certain people on a frequent or even daily basis, that does not make those persons our friends. What makes a colleague or a classmate or a family member a friend? It is the closeness of the relationship. When it comes to knowing an individual, there are various levels of knowledge. Becoming a friend means transitioning from knowing about a person to knowing the person through relationship. It is the difference between standing on the outside looking in and being invited to enter that person’s life.

Jesus tells us here how we have made the transition from being servants of God to being friends of God. Because the Son has told us the Father’s business, has shared intimate secrets with us in fellowship and relationship, has made known to us all He has learned from the Father, we are now his friends. Conversely, that means that God is our friend. The demons know who God is, but they are not his friends. Simply knowing about the Lord does not mean we are friends. We must have a relationship with him and get to know him to be called his friends. What a wondrous thing that God would take us, those born his enemies, and call us into friendship with him.

Friends are companions who share secrets and trust. They can be transparent with each other, knowing that their friendship is a safe place. For God to call us friends means that He has invited us to enter close relationship with him, and we can trust him with our secrets just as He has shared his secrets with us. Father, thank You for sharing your secrets with us through your Son, for taking us from adversaries to trusted companions, for allowing us to call the infinite God our friend.