Dr. Stanley gives Scriptural references showing that Jesus was a friend to many different kinds of people. Did you know that He can be your best friend, too?
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male announcer: “In Touch”
with Dr. Charles Stanley,
celebrating 45 years
of God’s faithfulness
in sharing the gospel worldwide.
Next on “In Touch,”
“Our Very Best Friend.”
Dr. Charles Stanley: Who
is your very best friend?
Well, you say, “Well, I
have more than one friend.”
Well, let me ask you a question.
What is it about that person
that first attracted you to
them, that ultimately led
them to become one
of your very best friends?
You say, “Well,
it was appearance.”
Well, that’s the probably not
the best way in the world to
find a friend because the most
important thing about a friend
is something on the
inside of that person.
It’s their personhood.
And yet, oftentimes we are
attracted by different things.
Somebody’s personality, their
gifts, or whatever it might be.
But who is your very
best friend or friends?
Well, you know, no matter
who your best friend is,
there are times when there are
misunderstandings and there
are disappointments in life.
And sometimes there may
be feelings of rejection.
And all of those things are
painful, especially when this
is someone that you love
dearly, someone who’s been
a friend a long time or even
a short period of time.
Going through those
misunderstandings and
disappointments and
feelings of rejection
and hard feelings
are very difficult.
Well, today I want to introduce
you to a friend who’s unlike any
other friend you’ll ever have.
And I can assure you of this:
He will never misunderstand you.
He will never disappoint you.
He will never reject you,
nor will you ever find
yourself standing all alone.
And this friend is
the best friend ever,
and that’s Jesus, the
Son of the living God.
And I want you to
turn, if you will, to
the fifteenth chapter of John
where Jesus discusses this very
issue of His friendship with us.
In the very
beginning of this chapter,
Jesus is discussing the–in
relationship that you and I have
with Him, He talks about the
vine and the branch and the
intimacy of that relationship.
Then He comes down to begin
talking about this whole idea of
His friendship with us.
And He says,
beginning in verse twelve,
“This is My commandment,
that you love one another,
just as I have loved you.
Greater love has
no one than this,
that one lay down his
life for his friends.
You are My friends if
you do what I command you.
No longer do I call you slaves,
for the slave does not know what
his master is doing; but I have
called you friends, for all
things that I have heard from My
Father I have made known to you.
You did not choose Me, but
I chose you, and appointed you,
that you would go and bear
fruit, and that your fruit would
remain, so that whatever
you ask of the Father in
My name, He will give it to you.
This I command you, that
you love one another.”
Most people don’t think about
Jesus as being their friend.
We see God in
Heaven, God the Father,
God the Son, God
the Holy Spirit.
We think of Him as our Savior,
our master, our Lord.
We know Him to be the
sovereign of the universe,
ruling over all things
and controlling all things.
Now, how can we see Him and
visualize Him and how can we
picture Him and relate to Him
as a friend if He is the Savior
of the entire world, if He’s
the Lord and master of life,
if He’s the sovereign of
the universe, if He’s
the Creator of it all?
How can I relate to this one
who is the ultimate
ruler and sovereign
controller of all things
and the Creator of all
things as my personal friend?
And yet, I need
Him as my friend.
I desire Him as my friend.
And if you’re going through
those difficult circumstances of
your life and you don’t
understand exactly what’s
happening and you’d
like to change things.
You’d like for
things to get better,
and you’re asking God why not?
It just might be that you
have forgotten that you have the
friend of all friends, who is
willing to befriend you
if you will allow Him.
And so I want to encourage
you to listen carefully because
Jesus has expressed His
relationship to us as a friend.
And He said to His disciples, if
you’ll notice in this passage,
He said to them, “You’re
my friends if you do
what I command you.
No longer do I call
you slaves or servants,
for the slave doesn’t know
what his master is doing,
but I’ve called you friends.
For all things that I have
heard from My Father
I’ve made known to you.”
Now, what He’s saying here is He
says one of the evidences of–or
the evidences of friendship
you’re gonna find in Me.
And so I want us to see how He’s
expressing His friendship and
how He expresses
His friendship to us.
And one of the ways He has
expressed His friendship is in
His sacrificial love for us.
What He did is that when we were
enemies to Him, He laid down
His life in love for us in
order to make us His friends.
So that Jesus Christ
is the–He is the,
listen, He is the possible
friend of every single person.
He desires to be the friend
of every single one of us.
But if I reject Him and refuse a
relationship with Him and deny
Him and shut Him out of my life,
even though He desires to be my
friend, He cannot express
His friendship to the fullest.
He can’t express it in many ways
that He desires to express it
until I’m willing to acknowledge
the fact that He’s the Son of
God, that He’s the Savior
and the Lord and the master,
and that He
desires to be my loving,
genuine, intimate friend who
will stick with me closer than a
brother, who can make promises
that no one else can possibly
make, and who can perform things
no one else could possibly
perform, and who can enable you
and me to become and achieve and
accomplish in life what no one
else can help us accomplish
and achieve or become.
He’s that kind of a
very special friend.
Jesus has demonstrated the
most awesome love by dying
on the cross for your sins.
Something, listen,
no one else could do.
Someone could die in your
behalf to save your life but
never to save your soul.
Someone could instantaneously,
without thought because of their
love for you, give their life.
But it will never
accomplish what His
sacrificial death accomplished.
So one of the first ways that He
expresses His friendship toward
us is in His sacrificial death.
A second way is this, and
that is the fact He takes the
initiative in the relationship.
Look back again, if
you will, in the–look,
if you will, in
this sixteenth verse.
He takes the initiative.
He says, “You didn’t choose Me,
but I chose you, and appointed
you that you should
go and bear fruit,
that your fruit would remain,
so that whatever you ask
of My Father in My name
He’ll give it to you.”
Now, what is He saying?
Simply this.
He’s saying we didn’t
choose to become His friends,
He chose to become our friend.
And as a result of His choosing,
those of us who have responded
to His reaching out to us and
have accepted Him as our Savior
and the forgiveness of our sins,
now we are now capable of making
the Lord Jesus Christ our
friend from our perspective.
We can now become His friend
and He can become our friend.
And now we can have an
intimate relationship.
No longer the relationship
that Jesus up there–is up there
somewhere seated at
the Father’s right hand.
But now, Jesus who is seated at
the Father’s right hand is also
living on the inside of us,
in the presence and
the power of the Holy Spirit.
We have an indwelling friend.
He chose us.
He took the initiative.
He didn’t see anything
in us that was worthy,
really, of becoming our friend.
It wasn’t the
result of our works.
It wasn’t a result of
good attributes
and characteristics in us.
He–because of His
unconditional love for us,
decided He wanted
to be our friend.
He wanted to be able to enable
us to fulfill His purpose and
His plan for our life.
And so He chose to
become our friend.
So, what did He do?
He came to earth, for example,
to walk among men so that you
and I would be able to
understand that He understands
the kind of Savior He is,
the kind of Lord He is,
the kind of master, but also the
kind of friend that He can be.
One who could look at
someone who is sick and say,
“Friend, I’m going to heal you.”
Someone who could look out upon
a group of people who were His
hearers and say,
“Friends, I want you
to listen, verily, verily.”
One who could relate
to the most obnoxious,
the most sinful, the most
rejected people in society,
and when others looked
how He related to them,
they would say, “That man
is a friend of sinners
and tax collectors.”
One who could drop in
on the home of Mary,
Martha, and Lazarus, love them
and be considered their friend.
And He considered
them His friend,
He said He loved them.
So when you look at this
passage and you ask yourself the
question: Who
took the initiative?
It’s very evident,
He chose us in Him,
in Christ before the
foundation of the world.
Now, let me ask
you this question.
Among your friendships, for
the most part, among all
of your friends, whether you
have two or three or one or
a whole bunch of friends, who
usually takes the initiative?
Are you the kind of person
who waits for someone else
to take the initiative?
Are you the kind of person who’s
sorta reserved and you hold back
and a little embarrassed
and you’re not outgoing,
and you realize you’re not and
you’re a little bit introverted,
and so you’re not the kind of
person who is gonna step forward
and say, “Hi, how are you?”
and you make a friendship?
Who was the one who did
most of the introduction,
most of the initiative
in your friendships?
Well, I can tell you who
took the initiative in your
relationship to Jesus and
that’s Jesus Christ Himself.
Always takes the initiative.
Planned it, purposed
it, determined to do it,
and has done it.
The question is: How have
you responded to His
invitation to be your friend?
What have you said over all
these years in your life when
He’s been expressing all
different kinds of ways
that He loves you?
He cares for you, He
desires the best for you.
How have you responded to that?
Have you rejected Him,
shunned Him, shut Him out?
Or have you recognized that His
invitation was an invitation of
awesome love and intimacy with
the very God of this universe?
Think about it.
The God who created it all
says, “I want to be your friend.
If you’ll let Me, I
will be a very intimate,
loyal, loving friend to you.”
Another way He expressed His
friendship and His love for us
is this, and that is the
revolutionary effect
that it has upon our life.
When you and I become a child
of God, something happens.
When we–listen to this.
When you become a child of God,
when you trust the Lord Jesus
Christ as your personal
Savior, a revolutionary
effect takes place.
Everything changes.
Your spirit changes,
your heart, your soul.
That is, your
eternal destiny changes.
Everything begins to change.
Your perspective on things.
But you know what, when you
become a friend of Jesus,
He’s already our friend.
When we begin to
recognize Him as our friend,
something else is gonna happen.
This relationship that we have
whereby we see Him as Savior and
master and Lord and God
and sovereign Creator,
all of a sudden, you
know what happens?
It’s like He comes out of the
heavens, down to earth on
our level, and we
begin to relate to Him
in a whole different fashion.
Now, I want you to notice
something in this passage that
could prove to be a little
bit, maybe misunderstood.
Notice what, if you will, what
He says in this fifteenth verse.
He says, “No longer
do I call you slaves.
For the slave does not know
what his master is doing.
But I’ve called you friends for
all things that I’ve heard from
My Father I’ve
made known to you.”
Now, what He’s simply saying
is, “One of the ways, one of the
ways that I have expressed
My friendship to you,”
speaking to His disciples.
One of the ways He’s expressed
His friendship to us is that He
has told us, revealed to
us things we wouldn’t
know any other way.
One who is a genuine, intimate
friend with someone is going to
reveal and tell the other
person things they’re not
gonna tell anybody else.
Do you have the kind of
friend with whom you can be
confidential and tell them
things that you know that they
will never tell anyone else?
Do you have the kind of
friendship that you know,
that you can tell a secret
and it’ll stay a secret.
Jesus told them, not
necessarily secrets,
but He says, “I have revealed,
I have taken the covers off,
I’ve lifted the top off the pot
and you can look in and you can
see all the things
that My Father told Me.
I’ve told you all of these
things, because I’m your friend.
And I want to be
your intimate friend.”
And the only way to be an
intimate friend is to share our
hearts, our minds, what we
know, what we’ve experienced,
what we feel, things
we’ve been through,
things we think
we’re going through.
And this is exactly
what Jesus do–is doing.
Now, notice, if you
will, in verse fourteen,
another verse I
want us to look at.
“You are My friends, if
you do what I command you.”
Now, that does not mean that,
that is, the emphasis of that
verse is not I’ll let you be
My friend if you do so-and-so.
In other words, we don’t have
to live up to something
in order to be His friend.
We don’t live up to
something in order to get saved.
We’re saved by the grace of God,
His goodness and love and
kindness toward us without
regard to our worth or whatever.
We say it’s God’s
unmerited favor,
so that His friendship toward us
is not based on our worthiness,
it’s based on His
unconditional love.
So when He says, “You’re my
friends if you do what I command
you,” what
He’s–the emphasis here is,
that is, you’re
gonna be transformed.
That is, this relationship is
gonna be awesome if you will
do what I command you.
And you notice what He said.
He said, “What’s My commandment?
That you love one another.”
He says, “When you
begin to love one another,
something is going to happen.
Then you’re gonna be,
listen, your life is gonna be so
transformed, you’re going to
be living out what I desire for
you, that you love one another.”
And so, one of the things that
happens to people who fall in
love with the Lord
Jesus Christ is
we’re able to love someone else.
In fact, the more you love the
Lord Jesus Christ, listen, the
more–the greater your capacity
to love someone else.
Because you see,
the more we love Him,
the more like Him
we’re gonna become.
And the more like Him we become,
the more our capacity to love
someone else with–in the
same way He’s loved us,
sacrificial love,
taking the initiative,
sharing our heart,
pouring out our soul,
pouring out our minds,
doing all the things that true,
genuine, intimate
friends are able to do.
And yet, many of you are
gonna live your life
lonely all of your life.
You’re gonna have a
lot of casual friends.
You may have some close friends.
But until you discover the
intimacy that comes between
Jesus Christ and another person,
you will never be able to
experience
friendship to that level.
You’ll never be able to express
friendship to someone else to
the same degree you can when you
fall in love with the Lord Jesus
Christ and recognize the
awesome friend He is to you.
And so, when I think about who
He is and the fact that He says
in this passage, He says,
“This is My commandment,
that you love one another
just as I’ve loved you.”
How has He loved us?
Sacrificially.
The ultimate expression of love
is that He laid down His life.
He says, “Now I want
you to love each other,
I want you to love one
another the same way.”
So let me ask you a question.
Whom do you love?
What friendship do you have to
this degree that you would step
in front of whatever was
necessary to protect their life?
Would you be–do you
have a friend so intimate,
one that you love enough
to literally lay down
your physical life for them?
You say, “Well now, are
you talking about family?”
Well, yes.
What about even family?
“Oh yes.”
Are you sure?
What about someone
who is not your family,
someone who is a friend?
You say, “I love this friend.”
Do you love them enough to
lay down your life for them?
I think there are people who do.
But I think that so
oftentimes we think we’re real,
genuine, close,
intimate friends with someone,
but we do have our limitations.
Now, let’s look at
that verse another way.
He says, “Greater love
has no one than this,
than you lay down your
life for your friends.”
Now, watch this carefully.
Laying down my life for my
friend does not only include the
possibility of laying
it down physically.
But what about laying
down my life in this light?
That I’m willing to give up
my goals for him or for her.
Am I willing to lay down
my plans for him or her?
Am I willing to
lay down my ideas,
my wishes, my wants?
Am I willing to lay down my life
in order for the other person to
have their way
because I love them?
You see, when it comes to
becoming a Christian living a
relationship with Jesus
Christ that’s really intimate,
we have to lay down our life.
We lay down our old life.
We lay down old ideas and
old perspectives on things,
and sometimes we have
to lay down old friends
because sometimes the
command of our Lord Jesus
Christ is so demanding.
Because He wants the best for
us, we have to lay down our life
to say, “Lord, no longer my
life, but I want You now
to live Your life
in me and through me.”
You see, He desires an
intimate relationship.
He wants to be the kind of
friend that’s not casual,
not distant, but warm,
intimate, and personal,
just as intimate and personal
as God Himself can possibly be.
He expresses His
love in different ways.
Another way I think He expresses
His love to us is by the fact
that He challenges us.
He, listen, He challenges
us to become our best
and to achieve our best.
Now, lots of people listen
to sermons and read
books and sing songs.
For example, we sing,
“My Jesus I love Thee,
I know Thou art mine.
What a friend we have in Jesus.
There’s not a friend
like the lowly Jesus.”
And you know what, we sing those
songs, comes to our mind,
right out of our mouth,
and we don’t feel it.
But I wonder how many
of you think about
Jesus being your friend.
I can sing, “My
Jesus I love Thee,
I know Thou art mine,” and I can
be thinking about something else
the whole time
because I know those words.
“What a friend we have
in Jesus, all our sins
and griefs to bear.”
We can sing those
songs, read those words,
not even think,
have–that is, it comes from,
to our mind out of our
mouth, no emotion whatsoever.
Jesus desires to be, listen, an
emotional friend, someone we
love, someone we cherish,
someone we desire.
Because that’s who He is to us.
He is one who has
revealed Himself.
He wants us to
reach our potential.
That’s what He’s
referring to in this passage.
Listen, He said,
“You didn’t choose Me.
I chose you.
And I didn’t just choose you,
but I appointed you that you
would go and bear fruit, and
that your fruit would remain.
You say, “Well now, He’s
talking to His apostles.”
You know what?
He says that every single
one of us is to bear fruit.
And the first quality of fruit
we’re to bear is the fruit of
the Spirit, of love, joy
and peace and goodness and
gentleness and
kindness, self-control.
These are the qualities of
that kind of relationship.
But fruit also in good works,
giving ourselves away to other
people, doing good deeds,
serving Him in whatever fashion
He may choose to call us.
One of the ways that He
expresses His love for us is to
challenge us to become our best.
I don’t believe you can
ever become your best
unless Jesus is your friend.
You’ll never be able to
accomplish all that God has set
for you until He
becomes your friend.
Apart from Him, you’ll never
be able to reach what God
is after in your life.
But the question is: Do
you want to be His friend?
He’s an available friend
to every single one of us.
But is He your friend?
From His
perspective, He’s our friend.
But is He my friend
from my perspective?
Or have you been one of those
persons who’ve just sorta gone
through life and you really
haven’t been interested in
having Him as your friend?
Do you know when most
people call upon Jesus?
When they’re down.
You know when they
cry the hardest?
When they’re down the furthest.
You know when their unbelief
and all of their skepticism and
atheism crumbles
all around them?
When they know that
there is no other way,
and they hope us
Christians are right.
And they cry out to a
God they don’t know,
to a Jesus they’ve
only heard about.
And finally recognize upon being
saved, here was a friend who
had been there all along,
and they had ignored Him.
Every single one of us is
coming to life and death.
Suppose you die without
Jesus as your friend,
let me ask you a question.
Then what?
If you die and Jesus
is not your friend, then what?
You say, “Well, I guess
I’ll just disappear.”
Oh no, you won’t.
“I guess I’ll just evaporate.”
No you won’t.
If you die without Jesus
Christ being your friend,
do you realize that you
will be eternally separated,
forever and ever separated from
the one who loved you so much
all your life that He laid down
His life sacrificially for you
because He loves you, because He
loved you, and because He wanted
to build an intimate
relationship with you.
To die without Him, it would be
better if you’d never been born.
To live your life
without Him is a tragedy.
When you can live your life and
understand and experience life
at its very, very best
because that’s what He
has in store for us.
He’s that kind of a friend.
Now, suppose you’re one of
those persons and you say,
“How does all this relate to me?
I’m not even a Christian.”
Well, let me say, first of
all, you certainly need to be.
You need to trust the Lord Jesus
Christ as your personal Savior
because you know what?
As much as He wants
to be your friend,
He can’t be all that to you if
you reject Him as your friend.
And if you’re willing to ask
Him to forgive you of your sins,
and you’re willing to trust
Him as your personal Savior,
which simply means that you
believe that His death at the
cross paid your sin-debt in
full and you accept Him as your
Savior, that your
sins are forgiven,
your name is written in the
Lamb’s Book of Life and forever
you’re a child of God and
Jesus becomes your friend.
He’s your friend, an
available friend if you
will allow Him to be so.
And it may be that you are
a believer and you’ve never
thought about Him
being your friend.
I want to encourage you just
to go through that list and ask
yourself the question:
Do I really see Jesus
this way in my life?
Do I really believe
He loves me this much?
Do I believe He’s real enough
to be to me everything
I need Him to be?
He is and He will be
if you’ll let Him.
He’ll prove to you to
be the best friend ever.
And Father, how grateful we are
that You sent the Son of God,
Your beloved Son, to be our
friend as well as our Savior.
And I pray the Holy Spirit will
take these simple truths and let
them be investigative
of our own heart.
Let us see how we match up,
the kind of friends we are,
but above all, the
kind of friend
the Lord Jesus Christ is to us.
And then respond
accordingly by our love for Him,
our obedience to Him,
and our service for Him.
In His name we pray, amen.
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