THE TRANSFORMING FRIENDSHIP

I have called you friends. . . You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. –Jn. 15:15, 14

There may be those who have difficulty relating to Jesus as Savior and Lord or as High Priest and King or as Creator and Judge, for these are weighty theology. At least when they are young in the faith or yet have no faith at all. Even to those of us who think of ourselves as mature Christians a theology about Christ, particularly in reference to such ideas as vicarious suffering and preexistence, may be little more than things we are supposed to believe but which have little relevance to our lives.

Faith might start and grow from a different perspective, that of Jesus as friend. This would enable us to move more easily from the natural to the supernatural, from the human to the divine. Those who cannot yet see Jesus as God might see him as ideal manhood, as a man who becomes their friend.

Even when we have no problem in believing in the supernatural Christ, whether in terms of eternal Logos or glorified Savior, we are to recognize that there is another side to our faith, the Jesus of history, the man of Nazareth, or the Son of Man, to use Jesus' own description of himself, a term all too human for Jesus' followers to apply to him.

When Jesus stood before Pilate wearing a purple robe and a crown of thorns, the Roman governor was moved to say of him, "Behold, the man!," or if he spoke in his native Latin, "Ecce homo!," Behold, a man! We can only guess what Pilate really meant. He may have meant as he looked upon this helpless figure, beaten and mocked as a king, "Look at this man that you consider so dangerous, how could he be a threat to Caesar?" But he may have meant, schooled as he was in the wisdom of Cicero, who wrote in search of ideal manhood, "Here at last is a real man, even among you despicable Jews, a man such as the Romans themselves have idealized." Knowing men as Pilate surely did, he soon realized not only that Jesus was innocent, but that his virtue stood out in bold contrast to the treachery of his persecutors.

In any event, Pilate provides us with one of the most meaningful and profound statements about Christ in the New Testament. While John the Baptist gives us, "Behold, the lamb of God," Pilate gives us, "Behold, the man." That Jesus was a man - all that God could expect in a man -is where our faith can begin. He was and is in fact the man, ideal manhood, so much so that he could only be divine. As we, like Pilate, behold the man, we can agree with the poetic line, Jesus, divinest when Thou art man.

To see in Jesus of Nazareth all the ingredients of ideal humanity perfectly harmonized is not to deny his divinity. It is through his manhood that we see what God is like. When Jesus said to Philip in Jn. 14:9, "He who has seen me has seen the Father," we are informed that it is the person of Jesus that reveals the nature of God. It is not the miracles of Christ that convinces us, however impressive these are, for he himself said, "He who believes in me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do" (Jn. 14:10). If we believe in Christ because of his miracles, we may have to believe in others for the same reason. We believe in Jesus because of who he is and what he is. It is first of all the life he lived on this earth as a person like ourselves that persuades us. It was not "signs" that convinced the earliest believers, his own disciples, but it was what they saw in him. He was their friend, their dearest friend, before he was their risen Lord.

How remarkable it is that of all the blessings Jesus bestowed upon his disciples he included the gift of friendship! You are my friends, he assured them. If for a moment we imagined Jesus calling our name and telling us "_________, you and I are friends," it would surely be over-whelming. Why not go on and fill in your own name and hear Jesus accept you personally as his friend? It is one way to accept his gift of friendship.

It is a good way to start the day. "My special Friend will be with me today," we can say as we begin each day. Since imagination is a gift of God we should use it in practicing friendship with Jesus. We can imagine him at our side as we drive to work. We can talk with him. We can listen to what we suppose he would say about this or that difficulty. Or we can imagine that he might say nothing, but he is nonetheless there as the Friend that understands. Why cannot Jesus be as real to us as Friend as he was to Peter, James, and John?

There is more to this than simple friendship, as great as that is. It can be and will be, if we make it so, a transforming friendship. We are all occasionally with people that we admire. They have traits that we would emulate. We sometimes read about such heroes, and we may wish that we could be like them. Jesus is especially that way. We see his great love and patience, his forgiveness and forbearance, his acceptance of the poor and the rejected, his utter commitment to and reliance upon the heavenly Father, his wisdom and his humility, his simple goodness. His manhood impacts us so overwhelmingly that we see God in him. We want to be like him, and this is a transforming experience. It is especially so when we accept his gift of friendship and allow him to dwell in our hearts and in our presence as Friend.

The transformation is like this: Jesus as the Son of God became the Son of Man so that we the sons of men might become the sons of God. To become like Jesus is what it is all about. This we do by being his friend and accepting him as our Friend. Unlike the heroes we may admire on the screen or in books, who at their best are always less than perfect, Jesus is not only perfectly exemplary but he supplies the power to transform us into the likeness of himself. The great dynamic is love - "the love of Christ constrains us."

This is why Jesus makes us his friends rather than slaves. "No longer do I call you slaves, for a slave does not know what his master is doing." Slavery stands for bondage, legalism, oppression, while friendship means liberty, openness, fellowship. As Jesus spoke to his disciples of friendship he said an amazing thing: "All things that I heard from my Father I have made known to you." Friends are comfortable with each other; they have nothing to hide. Jesus shared with his friends the intimacies of heaven and by way of parables he unfolded to them the mysteries of the kingdom. He made them his friends, not slaves.

Jesus laid down one condition for the gift of friendship: "You are my friends if you do whatever I command you." He is the one person in history who could properly say, Follow me. When Matthew the tax collector heard that invitation, he left his office and embarked upon an entirely new career. We are not to suppose that Jesus issued that invitation as a complete stranger. Jesus had already in some way impacted Levi's life. He may have listened at the edge of the crowd as Jesus taught in his home town of Capernaum. Perhaps Jesus knew that Matthew had said in his heart, "I would like to be like him, but it is too late in life and I am engrossed in all these things." When Jesus confronted him and issued the call, Follow me, the old revenue man who knew all too well how to say no, found him irresistible. He found a Friend that changed his life.

One of the famous sermons of yesteryear, by Horace Bushnell, was called "The Impulsive Power of a New Affection." That explains why Levi left his toll booth and why Peter left his nets. "The kingdom of God is not talk," Paul assured his readers in 1 Cor. 4:20, "but power." It wasn't so much what Jesus said that provided the impulsive power to change men's lives, but the radiance of his life and the joy of his spirit. There was no way to explain him. One could only accept him or reject him. They could see that the kingdom of God was in their midst when he was with them.

The likes of Matthew Levi and Simon Peter launched out - the impulsive power of a new affection - and left everything behind. It was an adventure of friendship. First they found a Friend and at last they found a Savior.

We must believe that he can be as much our Friend as he was theirs. We do not have to be good, for they weren't. It is not a matter of how hard we try, for in their case it was not a point of effort. It is a matter of accepting the gift, God's gift of friendship.

Hush, I pray you!
What if this friend happens to be — God?
(Robert Browning)

—the Editor