Friends of Jesus
In John 15:15 Jesus says: “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 that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” Here it is in Greek: οὐκέτι λέγω ὑμᾶς δούλους, ὅτι ὁ δοῦλος οὐκ οἶδεν τί ποιεῖ αὐτοῦ ὁ κύριος: ὑμᾶς δὲ εἴρηκα φίλους, ὅτι πάντα ἃ ἤκουσα παρὰ τοῦ πατρός μου ἐγνώρισα ὑμῖν.
There are 2 words in this text I want to discuss—I’ve highlighted them: δούλους {slaves} /&/φίλους {friends}. I don’t expect you to know these words, obviously, but I do want you to see them. Some recent translations render δούλους as “servants” to be less objectionable to our modern ears, but in the first century it meant slave. Φίλους, comes from the base word φίλ-, one of the main Greek words for love (there are 3 others: agape, eros, & storge). You can see how the verb for love, philia is clearly related to the word for “friend” that Jesus uses here. It's a powerful word for a deep friendship marked by affection, and tenderness.
That’s all a bit academic. But now we can think a little deeper about what Jesus is saying to his disciples. They’ve been seen as “slaves”—people who have no real agency in what’s going on in their faith life. It could be suggested this was largely the case for most people in Old Testament Judaism. They were expected to follow the rules that were given to them. They didn’t have to understand those rules, just obey them. This is probably why Paul calls the OT Law a “schoolmaster” (παιδαγωγὸς) in Gal 3:24.
Jesus has been at work moving his followers out of this pedantic faith, and been holding up the “rule of love” instead. He’s been replacing the 613 rules (mitzvot) that Israelites were supposed to follow. He’s boiled them all down to 2: love God with your whole self, & love your neighbor as yourself. And while that’s a whole lot easier to remember, in many ways it’s a great deal harder to actually do…unless you begin to see yourself as a participant—a person with “skin in the game.” He removed the black and white “checklist” faith, and replaced it with a more nuanced, and many shades of gray sort of faith. He expects us to consider our context, the possible implications and outcomes of decisions, and make our choices based on love of God and our fellow man/woman. Jesus gave the 12, and us, agency.
To guide us in this transformation he’s told us that he sees us as close friends…and he wants us to think of him the same way. When we think of our BFF’s—the people nearest and dearest to us—we probably think of people whose foibles we have come to terms with, people who have been at our side at the most difficult times in our lives, and who have been there at our moments of greatest elation. They’re people who we would do anything we can to help when they need it, and people whose successes we want to celebrate. We may have shared things with these people no one else on earth knows. These people may be closer to us than our own literal family. They’re people who we’ve created a type of “understanding" with which transcends explaining. We love them—φιλια.
Jesus has said you are one of these people to him. And he wants you to think of him the same way. This isn’t “transactional”—we do something for him, so he’ll do something for us later on. This isn’t based in fear—we do things for him so he won’t smite us. This is a deep friendship…we do whatever we do for him because we love him and want further his cause purely because of that love. May we be growing in friendship with Jesus!
Pastor Derek
