The Hope of the Believer . . .

THE TRANSFORMING FRIENDSHIP 

What is the most effective way to introduce Jesus to some poor Soul who is in need of his love and grace? In Scripture and in theology Jesus is often presented in three dimensions: as prophet, priest and king. Is this the way to introduce Jesus to someone living in our kind of world?

The average person thinks of a prophet as some bearded radical bellowing forth fire and brimstone. He sees a priest as a forlorn soul in a long black robe attending some altar. And if you introduce Jesus as a king, he might well think of the likes of Henry VIII or Louis XVI.

While Jesus is indeed prophet, priest, and king, these are things that one can come to appreciate farther down the road. He must be introduced to those who do not know him in a more relevant way.

Even to present Jesus as the Savior of the world has its problems in our pragmatic world, and we have to face that fact. Many a person has trouble seeing how the death of a lonely Jew 2,000 years ago could make all that much difference in their lives today. It is, after all, rather thick theology, and it really gets muddled when you talk about being 'justified by his blood."

The term "Lord" was a choice description of Jesus to the early Christians, borrowed as it was from the Romans who applied the term to the Caesars. While the Romans worshipped Caesar as Kurios, the Christians insisted that Jesus was their Kurios. The apostle Peter not only proclaimed him as "Lord and Christ" on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, but afterward urged believers to "sanctify Christ in your hearts as Lord" (1 Pet. 3:15). This too can come later when the believer has a deeper understanding of who Jesus Christ really is.

I am persuaded that the best entree in introducing Jesus to the man on the street is the way he was first accepted when he himself was a man on the street - as a friend. He came to be known as one who made himself "a friend of tax collectors and sinners." When Peter drew his sword in the Garden of Gethsemane, it was not to protect the Lord of glory or the preexistent Logos, for he then had no such concepts of Jesus, assuming he ever did. He was protecting his dear friend.

And this is the way Jesus first presented himself, as a friend. "No longer do I call you servants," he said to his disciples in Jn. 15:15, "for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you."

He here refers to an intimate friendship where the most sacred and most secret truths are shared. He put utmost trust in his disciples; he shared his deepest longings and revealed to them things known only from God. Now I call you friends! How remarkable it is that Jesus chose friendship as the basis of his relationship with men!

When he introduced the concept of friendship he pointed to the lengths to which it would go: "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends" (Jn 15:13). In the next verse he goes on to say, "You are My friends if you do whatever I command you."

Our Lord is teaching not only friendship but a transforming friendship. To have Jesus for a friend, and to be a friend to him, is to change one's life.

We tend to imitate those that we admire and we are inclined to become like those with whom we share intimate friendship. It is said that as people live together for a long time they begin to think alike and even to look alike. When folk tell me that in my old age I seem to look better, I remind them that I have been living with Ouida for 45 years!

What a difference it should make to have Jesus for a longtime intimate friend! It should cause us to become more like him. That is the force of what Paul says in 2 Cor. 3:18: "We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord."

This is the answer to the world's most serious malady, Me-ism, and the church is also afflicted with this disease. We are so selfish and spend so much time thinking of ourselves and what we want that we are very unlike the one who invites us to be his friend and to become like him. Paul says that when we look into the person of Jesus Christ it is like looking into a mirror. Instead of seeing the likeness of ourselves we ought to see the likeness of Jesus. If he is our friend and we are his friend, we become more and more like him — "We are being transformed into his image from glory to glory." Isn't that what being a Christian is all about?

There is a story growing out of the Turkish-Armenian war that illustrates the difference Jesus makes in one's life. Turkish soldiers entered a home and murdered the parents and the teenage boys, but the captain spared the 20-year old girl so she could become the object of his lust. After he had repeatedly shattered her womanhood she managed to escape. Later in the war she was serving as a nurse and was assigned to a POW hospital where she attended enemy soldiers. One night when she was making the rounds in a ward that had just received freshly wounded Turkish soldiers, she came upon a man who looked terrifyingly familiar. When she lifted her lantern higher and looked upon his pale face, she knew that it was the man who had murdered her parents and brothers and had ravished her.

The attending physician told her that the man would die if he did not receive special attention. What should she do? She would only need to neglect him and he would die, passive homicide. She was to testify later that she was strongly tempted to let him die, but she chose to do all she could to save his life, and so she nursed him all through the night with special care. The next morning when he was conscious and out of danger, the doctor thought he should meet the nurse that saved his life. His face flushed when he saw her. "I think we have met," he said to her. "Yes, Captain, we have met," she responded.

Unable to handle what had happened, he snarled at her with, "Why didn't you let me die?" She quietly explained, "I have a friend named Jesus Christ who taught me to love my enemies and to do good to those who persecute me." Now calmed by her imposing presence, he said to her, "I've never known a religion like that. Tell me more about your friend."

The tragedy of our time is that even in the church we have multitudes like that Turkish soldier who have never known a religion like that, and it is because they do not know Jesus Christ. They may go to church and they may know about Jesus, but they do not know the transforming friendship that he offers.

And therein is the lost secret: His friendship is offered as a gift. No strings attached. It is unconditional. We do not have to be good enough or right enough or religious enough. His transforming friendship is as free to us as it was to the despised tax collectors and prostitutes of his own time.

We do not have to knock at Jesus' door, seeking his friendship. He knocks on ours. Such symbolism is drawn in Rev. 3:20 where he is pictured as standing at the door of his own church, seeking entrance. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock," it reads. "If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me."

What is especially beautiful about this scene is that Jesus seeks close fellowship with a church that is described as wretched, blind, miserable, poor, and naked. Indeed, they were self-righteous in that they supposed they were rich and had need of nothing. But nonetheless in his mercy Jesus comes knocking, offering transforming friendship.

The latch is on the inside. Jesus is not going to barge in. He does not impose his friendship. It is offered as a gift. In this case it is offered to his own people, his own church, folk who are supposed to know him already but do not. The scene allows us to imagine him knocking at the door of our hearts. We only need to open the door. He offers intimate fellowship, as if sitting side by side with us at table. We can talk with him, confide in him, draw upon his strength, share our joys and sorrows.

Faith is partly imagination. We can imagine Jesus being with us, always, no matter what happens. When we are on the mountain peaks of life, he is there. When disease and old age comes, he is there. When death comes, even if it be violent, he is there. He is a friend that sticks closer than a brother, as a proverb puts it.

It is an appropriate question to ask the modern Christian: Have you invited Jesus into your heart? That is the only real solution to Me-ism, for when Jesus moves in and takes down the sign that read "Empty" and puts up a sign that reads "Occupied," life is going to be lived more for others than for ourselves. From that time on we have a friend living with us who continually transforms us into his own image.

So, this is an effective way to minister to others once we ourselves enjoy the gift of transforming friendship. "I have a friend who can help you" we can say to a troubled soul, and it might well be a workable entree if we ourselves really know that friend. — the Editor