NOTE: This is an unedited transcript and, therefore, contains imperfections and is not for publication or quotation in whole or in part by anyone without the express written consent of Pastor Conley. The audio tape of this message delivered April 27, 1997, is available and may be purchased from the Church.

The Friendship That Matters Most

John 15:13-15

Dr. J. Drew Conley, Pastor

Tri-City Baptist Church, Columbia, South Carolina

It has been said that we all have many acquaintances but not many friends in the fullest sense of that term. In a lifetime you might have only a handful of individuals that are the kind of friend that sticks closer than a brother. The kind of friend that loves at all times — when you are up and when you are down. The enemies of Jesus Christ reviled Him, calling Him a friend of sinners. Thankfully they were correct in their criticism of Him. Tragically they were wrong in their estimation of themselves. They were too proud to admit that they were sinners as desperately in need of His friendship as were the taxgatherers or the harlots of the day.

Three times in John 15:13-15 Jesus Christ refers to his friends. It is quite an unusual passage. He uses a term friend that comes from the word for love that refers to family affection. A love that rises naturally because you have a common bond with someone. He says, beginning in verse 13: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." It is an extraordinary thing that a person of the stature of Jesus Christ would call any ordinary human being, or any group of them, friends. You might think that He would not lower Himself that far. What condescension! He is the Son of God, the judge of all the earth, the one according to Hebrews 1:3 who is the brightness of God's glory — the express image of God's person. The one who, according to Paul in

Colossians 2:9 in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. The one who upholds all things by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3).

He calls these men friends.

Sometimes our modern attitude toward Jesus focuses so much on the lowly Jesus that we forget what an astonishing person He was — and is — and the kind of immeasurable impact He had on those who knew Him best. You will remember that Peter had been so awed by this man and by His power that one day he fell to Christ on his knees and said, "Depart from me for I am a sinful man" (Luke 5:8).

Jesus Christ had an aura about Him — a character that was like no other person — and those who knew Him knew He was no ordinary man. He was holy in a sense no other man had ever been. His power and authority was that of God Himself. They had seen Him forgive sins — that in itself is an amazing thing — He certainly was no mere man. On the other hand, they had never seen Him commit any for He was without sin. They had seen Him commune with God as Father in a way no man of His day would ever dare to talk to God. He spoke in John 17, a little later on this very evening, of the glory He had with the Father before the world began and asked the Lord to bless His own crucifixion and glorify Him at that time.

These men had walked with Jesus Christ for some three and a half years. Not only had they seen His extraordinary character, they had seen His extraordinary power. They had seen Him raise the dead. They had seen Him heal all manner of disease. It is said that in some regions of that country, disease of any sort became obsolete because every one that came to Him he healed. They had seen Him muzzle the raging sea with a few brief words, "Peace be still." Is it any wonder they had committed themselves to Him and recognized quite publically that He was indeed the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One of God, the Promised One, and the Son of the Living God? In fact, just a few days before this very night, Peter, James and John had been eyewitnesses of the majesty of Jesus Christ. They heard God the Father speak from heaven and say, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 17:5). And they had seen for just a brief matter of moments the real glory of Jesus Christ shine from Him — the glory He had with the Father before the world began. They knew this person was no ordinary man, and so it is extraordinary that this person should call anyone friend.

Abraham in the Old Testament had the singular distinction of being called The Friend of God. The New Testament makes clear that if you and I want to be restored to fellowship with God — to communion — to friendship with God the Father — we have to go through the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus had revealed the holiness of God in His own life. He had revealed what God was like in His omnipotence, but He also revealed His love for mankind. Perhaps that is what we are seeing here as He instructs His disciples on a whole range of topics critical to their survival once He is gone. They are to understand that God is not only transcendent — above all things and all-powerful and all holy — but He is also a God who is inherently loving, who reaches out to mankind even though there is no reason for Him to do so.

I want us to explore this idea of friendship — this "Friendship That Matters Most" — in this passage as it is laid out for us today. To His friends, Jesus Christ is first of all Redeemer. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (verse 13). He was teaching His followers how to love one another and so He pointed them to His own sacrificial love for them. You will notice the last part of verse 12 says, "Love one another as I have loved you." Use my love as an example — as the index — of how far you should go in your sacrifice for other people. A soldier who dies in his effort to rescue a comrade gives his life for his friend. A father may give his life for his children to save them from a raging fire. Jesus Christ has been telling His disciples quite clearly now for some six months in His ministry that He is about to do the same sort of thing. Only this will be different: He is the perfect and holy God dying for sinful human beings. He is dying not merely for friends; in fact, He is dying for enemies. Romans 5:8 tells us that "God commendeth (demonstrated) His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." And in verse 10, "when we were enemies (of God) we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son."

If God did not make the first move, we would never have any hope. Even these disciples had not chosen Christ (you may think they had — that they were followers of Jesus by their own design), but He had chosen them (John 15:13). It was mere testimony that He was at work in their lives. Jesus Christ had proven Himself a friend because He is the Redeemer — He is about to give His life as a ransom for their sins. The words are related: the idea of paying a price to rescue someone (often to free them from a prison or a kidnapper) — that was the very core of Christ's earthly mission. Often people get confused about what Christ came to do and who He was, but He came, according to His own words here, not only to lose His life for their sake, "but to lay it down" — quite purposefully. It was God's plan, it was His purpose, that is why He came. He came for that very hour when He would give up His life. It wasn't that everything had gone wrong and somehow the powers of the day finally got the better of Him. No, God used even the malignant hatred of men to perform His purpose in giving His Son as a ransom for sin.

His very name prophesied from the beginning what He would be doing. You remember the angel said to His parents, "Thou shalt call His name JESUS: (that means, Jehovah saves, and then the extraordinary explanation) for He shall save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). I suppose if you were to talk to any number of people being saved, or delivered, or rescued, from sin would not be at the top of their list of needs. We hear a lot of talk about "felt needs" and some people would say, "You know, I really would like to be saved from my ill health." They might say, "I would really like to be saved from this financial difficulty. Is there anything you could tell me to give me financial freedom, to let me live a comfortable lifestyle, because I know that will make me happy." We have a much deeper problem than that, and Jesus Christ came to solve that problem. He came "to save His people from their sins." What does that mean? What does it mean to be "saved from our sins"? Why a rescue? And why is it necessary? Consider for a moment with me, if you will, just how entrenched sin is in everyone of us. Sin which is lawlessness — a contradiction of God's perfect law, an unwillingness to submit to it, a running from God — that sin is not merely our actions. People say, "I hope everything turns out all right when I stand before God. I hope I have enough good works in the kitty to outweigh the bad works." We are not talking about bad works, because sin is not merely the actions that I do, it is also the actions that I fail to do; and it is not only actions, it is thoughts; and it is not only my thoughts, but it is the heart from which those thoughts spring. It is the same with my words — every idle word will be judged before God. We might even ask beyond that those thoughts and what I am inside, where does that come from? Sometimes we say, "It is my environment", but then we are forgetting that our very first parents, Adam and Eve, sinned in a perfect environment. Where does that sin come from? Ever since that time sin has been part of our nature. Those of you who have children know you never have to teach your child to do wrong. You are always working on them to do right. They begin lying even before they can talk, trying to deceive to get their way — trying to have things their way, and some of us grow out of it more than others, but we all have that inherent selfish sinful nature. It is as if the harder we try, the more enmeshed we become. We cannot free ourselves from it, for sin reveals what is intrinsic to our nature. Let me ask you a question, If sin is that deeply rooted in me, if sin is so deeply rooted that it is part of my genetic disposition, not merely my environment, just how can I be saved from it? How can I be saved from sin? How can that sin be removed, and all its ill effect be removed from me, without destroying me in the process? It takes a miracle. It will take something extraordinary.

Think as well about just how universal sin's scourge is, not only on humanity, but on all creation itself. Romans 8:22 says, "the whole creation groans and travails in pain" because of the effects of sin. Every tree fallen in the forest, every person moaning in a hospital bed, every bit of cruelty you see, war, decay, disease, the unceasing march towards death, all of these attest to the awful sway that sin has over the world in which we live. Sin has been and continues to be devastating what used to be a perfect and good creation. "God saw everything that He had made, and, behold it was very good" (Genesis 1:31).

I have another question for you. What ransom — what price — could be high enough to outstrip the entire history of human depravity? What could make up for the era that Hitler dominated? or Mussolini? or Stalin? — and that is but a snippet of what has happened. What could make up not only for what we see, but for what rages in each one of our hearts? What could be a sufficient price to clean out the height and depth of sin's malignant fallout? What could be costly enough? If it took the sacrifice of an individual, who could be good enough? God says, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." So whoever it is, would have to be sinless because he could not be dying for himself. He would have to die for someone else for it to be a ransom. On the other hand, God says, "There is none righteous, no not one." In the Scriptures, it is only God who is righteous and perfectly so. Whoever it was that was to pay this ransom by the sacrifice of himself, not only had to be man to be representative of the race, but he had to be God to be perfect so he wasn't dying merely for himself. There is only one person who meets that description in all the course of human history and only one person will ever meet that description, and it is Jesus Christ — God in the flesh.

He says here that He will die for (on behalf of) His friends. He is not dying for Himself because there is no sin in Him. Death is but the product of sin. There is no sin in Him so death has no power over Him, and thus His death is completely voluntary — He lays it down. It is not taken from Him. He reveals that His death on the cross is a completely necessary thing for no one dies for another without a powerful compelling reason for doing so. That does tell us that sin is so serious that only the death of the God-man Christ Jesus could rescue us from it. If sin is not serious after all, then Christ becomes a sort of Don Quixote, battling windmills as if they were real enemies — battling sin that is really just a mistake. Christ further tells us in this verse that sin is so strong that no person can free himself from its tyranny — nobody can, not even these disciples could do it. They were not able to free themselves from sin and the death it brings. He must do it for them — He must die for His friends. If any of us were able to set ourselves free from sin and death, then the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was totally unnecessary and becomes but a tragic farce — a sad ending to a beautiful life. Jesus Christ is the Redeemer, the one who buys them out of the slave market of sin and death, He is the Redeemer to His friends.

That is not all — look at verse 14. He also is to His friends, the Ruler. "Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you." This gives you and me great insight into who Jesus Christ really is. What man who is just a man — even if he were the greatest prophet who ever lived — can demand such submission to his will? What mere man can say, "Do whatsoever I command you, and if you are my friends that is what you will do"? It is really quite self-contradictory to give Jesus Christ honor as a great teacher and the best of men and to stop there. It really doesn't make any sense. For any man who says the kind of things that He said is neither great nor good. He claimed to be able to forgive sins. He said, "Honor the Father as you honor the Son." He claimed to be judge over all the earth — that the Father had committed all judgment to Him. He talked about coming with His holy angels. He said, "Do whatsoever I command you." What mere man talks this way? What good man talks that way? If He was only a man and not God, He was not who He said He was — He was not even a good man, and certainly not a great prophet. Jesus Christ gave His great commission to His disciples as He prepared to ascend into heaven. He committed them to preaching the gospel (the good news) to everybody — to make disciples, or learners, followers of Him in all nations, beginning in Jerusalem and spreading to the uttermost part of the earth.

It is interesting He starts that commission with these words, "All power (all authority) is given unto me in heaven and in earth." He includes in that great commission that we are to "teach all things whatsoever I have commanded you." The good news of salvation is rooted in the personal authority of Jesus Christ — without Him there is no good news, for without Him there is no salvation. He says, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me." Sincerity will not do it. Trying hard will not do it. Going to church will not do it. Whatever you might do to placate or please God will not do it — you have to come through Jesus Christ. Those who are truly friends of Jesus submit themselves to Him. This is the outgrowth of the relationship they have with Him. He says, "Ye are my friends if you are doing what I command you to do." Those that will not bow the knee to Jesus, who will not follow His teaching, reveal simply that they really do not understand who He is. They do not really trust His Word to be utterly reliable. He said, "I am the say, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me." It makes no sense to believe someone to be totally true, and at the same time to reject what he says. It is contradictory to be certain that He knows the way, and yet refuse to follow Him. It makes no sense to accept that your escape from death and hell to eternal life comes only through Jesus Christ, and yet hold back from casting your lot entirely upon Him. There is a day coming when every knee will bow and every tongue will confess in heaven and earth that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. But not all of those folk are saved folk. Those that are His friends are today doing what He commands. They are today bowing the knee, for they understand from 1 Corinthians 6:20 and a host of other passages that they have been bought with a price — they have been redeemed. They have been ransomed and, therefore, they glorify God in their body and their spirit which are God's. Jesus Christ is a Ruler to His friends.

Third, He wants His disciples to understand that to His friends He is the Revealer. "Henceforth I call you not servants (not slaves) for the slave knoweth not what his lord doeth, but I have called you friends, for all things I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you." The apostles favorite description of themselves in relation to Jesus Christ was that of "slave." They wanted everyone to understand that they were at His beck and call — that they were carrying out His orders — that they were doing His will, and that they would do so right even to the death. Execution would not turn them back. The Lord had died for them, and they were perfectly willing to die for Him. Even though there is a sense in which they remained slaves of Jesus, the Lord wants them to know that He has called them friends, not by a slip of the tongue, but very deliberately. Their slavery to Jesus was unlike any slavery that man practices. They were slaves, and yet at the same time they were confidants of the Lord. He reveals Himself to His followers. He makes known to them what He is doing — that is the reason the Bible is as thick as it is. Do you ever wonder why it is so long? It is because God wants us to know everything we need to know about Himself and have a right perspective on life. No human master would so inform mere slaves, but Jesus Christ is the Revealer to His friends. It guarantees us that what the apostles wrote in the New Testament is, in fact, the right perspective on Jesus. We need no "Jesus Seminar" to determine who Jesus is. The Word of God has recorded it for us.

Further, He is explaining His relationship to them.as the vine with a living connection to the branches bringing satisfying productivity — fruitfulness — in their lives. So unlike slaves, they are informed, and unlike slaves, their submission to Christ is satisfying and growing. Jesus Christ has revealed God to man. He has taught and then His apostles (sent ones) continued to teach everything we need to know about life and Godliness. He kept nothing back that the Father wanted revealed about Himself to us. For that reason we have no cause to speculate about truth. There is no reason to seek answers different from what Jesus Christ revealed. He has talked to us as familiar friends, and He has given us the very secret to life itself. That is why John in chapter 1 calls Him the Word, for He is the means by which God conveys divine realities to the human heart. Just as a word takes a thought, insubstantial, and packages that thought and then conveys it to the ear and then to the understanding of the one who hears the word, so Jesus Christ was a conveying of who God is and how we are restored to Him. He conveyed that to mankind. He alone bridges the gap. It has been said that God might have redeemed us by a single word. He might have spoken our salvation into being just as He spoke the worlds — just as He hung the planets in their orbits — but He thought it better to sacrifice His only well beloved Son and to reveal His own person through the person of Jesus Christ that we might know just how much God cares that we receive His salvation. The great tragedy of human history is that Jesus Christ has paid the ransom as Redeemer; He has demonstrated His right to rule; He has revealed Himself in hundreds of ways; and yet there is vast section of mankind who nonetheless refuse Him. They seek other friendships to fill the void in their soul. Sometimes not just with other people, but with things, and they neglect and even refuse to enter into friendship with Jesus Christ.

This week I spent a good portion of those days with my Dad at Greenville Memorial Hospital as he recovered from a mild stroke that he suffered Tuesday afternoon. In the room next door was a lady still young who entered the hospital the same week to recover from a fall. It was discovered that her fall was only a symptom — not a cause. It was a symptom of cancer that had spread throughout her entire body. There was nothing the doctors could do for her but make her as comfortable as possible. All week long she lay there in the next room dying an inevitable death. Every evening as I walked from the parking lot into the hospital for my night shift with Dad, it struck me that this vast edifice of care honeycombed with rooms full of people was a building that could deal only with symptoms of what sin had brought to the universe. It was a silent but eloquent witness to the urgency of preparing to meet our God. As I walked through the corridors, there were people everywhere (some smoking nervously outside in the night air, some gathered around a loved one's bed, some just lying there being tended by an army of doctors and nurses) but all of them in reality were awaiting that inevitable moment when they will pass from this life into the presence of God to answer to Him — at that moment all that will matter is whether you are a friend of Jesus Christ. Whether your name is inscribed in the Lamb's Book of Life because you have personally accepted Him as your Savior and Lord. If you are in any way uncertain or disturbed about what would be the outcome of that fateful moment, you really need to settle that matter once and for all and to do so as soon as possible. Your life rushes toward that moment, and you really do not know how soon it will be — only that it will be. What a horrific tragedy if you have not entered into "The Friendship that Matters Most." Friendship with Jesus Christ. If you know Him, that day will be a gateway to joy — that day will be the beginning of far better things. If you are not a friend of Jesus, that day will be the beginning of the blackest era you have ever known. He is, in the songwriter's words, "The wondrous Deliverer, a sin forgiving Savior, a cleanser of hearts, an unfailing friend and guide. No one has ever trusted unavailing. No one has claimed His love and been denied." The question is, "Are you a friend of Jesus?" The answer to that question is the most important answer you will ever give.

Let us pray: Our Father, we confess that we are all sinners. The moment we are born, we begin to go astray, for it is part of our nature to do so. So Lord we realize it is utterly futile for us to try to save ourselves. It will not happen for it cannot happen because "There is none righteous, no not one" and "the soul that sins it shall die." Lord, we can't possibly be good enough and so we cast ourselves on Jesus Christ who left a holy heaven for this sin-cursed earth, who lived a perfect life, who died in our place, who took our penalty of death that we might through trusting in Him share in His eternal life. Lord, I pray for any here who does not know Him as friend and I pray for any one who even doubts whether he has this kind of relationship with God. I pray, dear Savior, that you would open the mind and heart to the truth of the good news. May we go forth rejoicing this day because one or more have entered into the Kingdom of Heaven by trusting Jesus Christ as Savior. We pray it for His glory. We thank you and we love you Lord. In Jesus' name, Amen.

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