Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3437
“You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.” John 15:14.
IT is very easy to understand how Jesus Christ is our Friend. Did ever anyone deserve the name so well? Who can prove his friendship as Jesus proved it by laying down His life for those He calls His friends? But it is a mark of wonderful condescension on His part that He should call us His friends and it confers upon us the highest conceivable honor that such a Lord as He is, so infinitely superior to us, should condescend to enter into terms of friendship with us. My Friend, O Jesus, You are, for You have redeemed my soul from death and Hell—but that I should be Your friend—nothing but Your loving, condescending tenderness could ever have conceived of this! If you do put such a title as this upon me, teach me how I may act in conformity with it. Beloved, there is a mutual friendship between Christ and the Believer. There cannot be friendship if it is all on one side. There is bounty, there is kindness and there may be some gratitude in return, but friendship is a reciprocal thing. In its fullest sense, it is between two, and the one heart must be as the other heart, or else there is no friendship. Now every Believer is a friend to Jesus, and Jesus is a Friend to him. They are friends because they have a mutual love for each other. The Believer does not love His Lord as much as Jesus loves him, for his heart is little compared with Jesus’ heart. But when the Believer is in a right state, he loves Jesus with all his heart, soul and strength. He feels that there is none in the world that can have a place in his affections at all comparable with his Lord and Master. He can say—
“My Jesus I love You: I know You are mine, For You, all the follies of sin I resign.”
And if Jesus loves us, we also love Him. Friendship has in it a mutual delight. Two friends value each other. Now the delight of Jesus is with the sons of men. In those whom He has redeemed with His blood, He sees the satisfaction for the travail of His soul. He says of His Church that her name is Hephzibah—“My delight is in her”—and on the other hand, the Believer’s delight is in Christ. “He is all my salvation and all my desire,” says the Believer. “He is the chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.” None can be compared with Him. It is sweet to think of the saint looking on the Savior and the Savior looking on the saint—and the two, together, blending their love in mutual delight in each other. This love and this delight lead to mutual converse. Persons can hardly maintain friendship if they only see each other now and then. If there is no communion by letter or in any other way, I should think friendship could scarcely be maintained. But oh, Jesus reveals Himself to His people and His people tell out their hearts to Jesus! Do not suppose that because He is not here, for He is risen, that therefore we have no conversation with Him. Our prayers speak into His ears, our tears fall into His heart. When we are wounded, His wounds bleed afresh. He is the Head, and we the members and, however great the body, if you wound the body, the head feels it at once, so close is the communion. Yes, and we do converse with Him in meditation, in adoration, alone in our chambers. Though we have not seen Him with these eyes, which are, after all, poor things, we have seen Him with our soul’s eyes, which are brighter eyes by far! And as we have beheld Him, our soul has melted for joy in the glance of His beauty.
Now to make friendship, there will be not only mutual love, delight, and conversation, but friends must have harmony of thought. I will not say identity, for man and man must always be two, and Christ and His people, though one in some respects, are two existences. But though two notes, though different, may be in perfect harmony, so is it with the heart of Christ and the heart of His renewed child. What Jesus loves, we love. what Jesus hates, we hate. What Jesus seeks,we seek—what Jesus shuns, we shun. This is true friendship when there is but one heart in two bodies, and when one heart in the two produces with undivided strength one objective. Now Christ’s objective is His Father’s Glory. If you are Christ’s friends, that objective is yours, too. His objective is to seek and save the lost—if you love Him, you also seek to save the lost in your way. He loves truth, holiness, righteousness. He delights in that which puts an end to misery, to evil, to cruelty, to wrong-doing. Do you delight in the same? If so, unity of design, harmony of thought will very greatly make up the friendship between you and Jesus. Oh, and we are going to the same great end! Where He is, there our hearts are drawn. We are living here for the same purpose that brought Him here—and when our work is done, the same reward that gladdened Him, shall also gladden us—we also shall enter into the joy of our Lord! Some of you do not know much about this—I am talking strange things to some of you. Jesus—yes, you read of Him. Jesus—you hear of Him. It is proper to receive His name, but oh, you have never spoken with Him! You have never known Him to be real nor conceived of Him as such! I pray that you may be made spiritual, may be born-again. Until you are, you cannot be a friend of Christ. But when you are, and may it come now, this very hour, may you discover that He is a great Friend, and then, out of love to Him, may you become a friend of His!
Now we are not left in the dark as friends of Jesus as to the best way of showing our friendship. Two persons may be great friends and one may wish to serve the other, and say, “I hardly know what I can do to please my friend. I wish I knew his needs. I wish I knew his desires—I would strive to gratify them.” Now you have, tonight, given to you as lovers of Jesus—you have the guide as to how you can prove yourselves His friends. “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.” We have, then, in the text, the guide for friendship, and I will say this about it—it contains seven things. The first is—