CHRIST'S FRIENDSHIP: ITS EVIDENCE
Ye Are My Friends, if Ye Do the Things Which I Command You--John
15:14
Our Lord has said what He gave as
proof of His friendship: He gave His life for us. He now tells
us what our part is to be--to do the things which He commands.
He gave His life to secure a place for His love in our hearts
to rule us; the response His love calls us to, and empowers us
for, is that we do what He commands us. As we know the dying love,
we shall joyfully obey its commands. As we obey the commands,
we shall know the love more fully. Christ had already said: "If
ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love." He counts
it needful to repeat the truth again: the one proof of our faith
in His love, the one way to abide in it, the one mark of being
true branches is--to do the things which He commands us. He began
with absolute surrender of His life for us. He can ask nothing
less from us. This alone is a life in His friendship.
This truth, of the imperative necessity
of obedience, doing all that Christ commands us, has not the place
in our Christian teaching and living that Christ meant it to have.
We have given a far higher place to privilege than to duty. We
have not considered implicit obedience as a condition of true
discipleship. The secret thought that it is impossible to do the
things He commands us, and that therefore it cannot be expected
of us, and a subtle and unconscious feeling that sinning is a
necessity have frequently robbed both precepts and promises of
their power. The whole relation to Christ has become clouded and
lowered, the waiting on His teaching, the power to hear and obey
His voice, and through obedience to enjoy His love and friendship,
have been enfeebled by the terrible mistake. Do let us try to
return to the true position, take Christ's words as most literally
true, and make nothing less the law of our life: "Ye are
my friends, if ye do the things that I command you." Surely
our Lord asks nothing less than that we heartily and truthfully
say: "Yea, Lord, what Thou dost command, that will I do."
These commands are to be done as
a proof of friendship. The power to do them rests entirely in
the personal relationship to Jesus. For a friend I could do what
I would not for another. The friendship of Jesus is so heavenly
and wonderful, it comes to us so as the power of a divine love
entering in and taking possession, the unbroken fellowship with
Himself is so essential to it, that it implies and imparts a joy
and a love which make the obedience a delight. The liberty to
claim the friendship of Jesus, the power to enjoy it, the grace
to prove it in all its blessedness--all come as we do the things
He commands us.
Is not the one thing needful for
us that we ask our Lord to reveal Himself to us in the dying love
in which He proved Himself our friend, and then listen as He says
to us: "Ye are My friends." As we see what our Friend
has done for us, and what as unspeakable blessedness it is to
have Him call us friends, the doing His commands will become the
natural fruit of our life in his love. We shall not fear to say:
"Yea, Lord, we are Thy friends, and do what Thou dost command
us."
If ye do. Yes, it is in doing
that we are blessed, that we abide in His love, that we enjoy
His friendship. "If ye do what I command you!" O my
Lord, let Thy holy friendship lead me into the love of all Thy
commands, and let the doing of Thy commands lead me ever deeper
into Thy friendship.
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