Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1552
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, August 8, 1880
“You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.” John 15:14.
OUR Lord Jesus Christ is beyond all comparison the best of friends—a friend in need, a friend indeed. “Friend!” said Socrates, “there is no friend!” But Socrates did not know our Lord Jesus, or he would have added, “except the Savior.” In the heart of our Lord Jesus there burns such friendship towards us that all other forms of it are as dim candles to the sun. “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.” An ordinary man has gone as far as he can when he has died for his friend and yet he would have died anyway, so that in dying for his friend he does but pay, somewhat beforehand, a debt which must inevitably be discharged a little further on. With Christ there was no necessity to die at all and this, therefore, places His love and His friendship by itself.
He died who needed not to die and died in agony when He might have lived in Glory—never did man give such proof of friendship as this! Let the friendship of our Lord to us stand as the model of our friendship to Him. It cannot be so in all respects because our situations and conditions are different. His must always be the love of the greater to the less, the love of the Benefactor to one in need, the love of the Redeemer to those who are bought with a price but, setting those points aside, the whole tone and spirit of our Lord’s friendship are such that the more closely we can imitate it the better. Such friendship as His should be reflected in a friendship most hearty and self-sacrificing on our part.
Our Lord does not, I think, in this text speak to us about His being our friend, but about our being His friends. He is “the friend of sinners,” but sinners are not His friends till their hearts are changed. “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you”—we are not His friends till then. His love to us is entirely of Himself, but friendship needs something from us. Friendship cannot be all on one side—one-sided friendship is more fitly called mercy, grace, or benevolence—friendship in its full sense is mutual. You may do all you will for a man and be perfectly benevolent and yet he may make you no return—friendship can only exist where there is a response.
Therefore we have not before us the question as to whether Christ loves us or not, as to whether Christ has pity on us or not, for in another part of Scripture we read of “His great love wherewith He loved us even when we were dead in trespasses and sins.” He befriended us when we were enemies, but that is not our subject just now—the question is about our being friends to Him and such we must be made if, indeed, there is to be any intimacy of mutual friendship. Friendship cannot be, as I have said before, all on one side. It is like a pair of scales—there must be something to balance on the other side—there must be a return of kindly feeling from the person loved.
Jesus tells us here that if we are to be His friends, we must do whatever He commands us and that out of love to Him. Beloved, it is the highest honor in the world to be called the friend of Christ. There is surely no title that excels in dignity that which was worn by Abraham, who was called, “The friend of God.” Lord Brooke was so delighted with the friendship of Sir Philip Sydney that he ordered to be engraved upon his tomb nothing but this—“Here lies the friend of Sir Philip Sydney.” There is beauty in such a feeling, but yet it is a small matter compared with being able to say, “Here lives a friend of Christ!”
O wondrous condescension that He should call me, “Friend”! If I am, indeed, a true Believer, not only is He my friend, without which I could have no hope here or hereafter, but He has, in the abounding of His Grace, been pleased to regard me as His friend and write me down in the honored list of intimates who are permitted to speak familiarly with Him—as those do between whom there are no secrets, for their hearts are revealed to Him while He hides nothing from them, but says, “If it were not so I would have told you.”
Beloved, in what a light this sets obedience to Christ’s commandments! I cannot help, at this early moment in the sermon, noting how the doctrine of our text transfigures obedience and makes it the joy and glory of life! How precious
it is, for it is a better seal to friendship than the possession of the largest gifts and influence. Christ does not say, “You are My friends if you rise to a position of respectability among men, or honor in the Church.” No, however poor you may be and those to whom He spoke these words were very poor, He says, “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.” Obedience is better than wealth and better than rank! Jesus values His friends, not by what they have, or what they wear, but by what they do.