friend of jesus

Luna Lovegood was not Harry’s best friend in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. She wasn’t his second or even third best friend, though they were friends. I don’t think Harry expected that he would be special to her. One day, Harry is in Luna’s home and notices his face staring back at him, but not from a mirror. He realizes he’s seeing a mural. Stepping to see more fully, he sees the faces of a few other friends as well, all of them painted on her bedroom wall, surrounded by a ribbon weaving around them with one word repeated all over: “friends.” It is a heart-warming moment, illuminating just how much Luna cherishes her friends. Isn’t it moving to be cherished and valued by somebody as a dear friend? 

God uses many metaphors to describe His relationship to His people: Creator/creature, Father/children, Bridegroom/bride, King/His people, among many more. I do hear people talking about Jesus as our friend, a term Jesus uses to describe His relationship to His disciples. I often hear encouragements about how Jesus is our friend, how He abides with us, is compassionate towards us, and hears us. What a beautiful reality. Let us also consider the reverse; we are Jesus’s friends. You, disciple of Jesus, have your face carefully hand-painted on His bedroom wall, with a celebratory label, “friend.” 

What do you cherish about your best friends? Is it how accomplished they are in their careers? Is it how many other people they’ve introduced you to? What about how physically attractive, popular, organized, productive, or knowledgeable they are? Are those not the things that stir your heart the most when you think about your best friends? Okay, maybe not. What really lights you up about your dearest friends? Perhaps your mind simply goes to spending time with them, experiencing the world with them, sharing ideas with them, enjoying your friend’s personality, sharing all kinds of things- from values to inside jokes, and learning from each other’s differences. In other words, you just value... them! 

So, why do we expect Jesus to love us according to how much we evangelize, how much we serve in church, how much we serve outside the church, how successful we are at our jobs, how successful we are in our families, how much we’ve studied His Word, or how productive we are in the world? 

Let’s take a moment together, setting aside all of what you “ought” to do, all that you wish you were doing, all the questions of whether you’re doing life right. There’s a place for those questions, but not without an appreciation of the reality that you are not cherished because of what you do (or have the potential to do), but you’re cherished because of what you are. You’re just cherished as Jesus’s friend. He’s already made you clean; He’s not holding you at arm’s length because of your past. He’s not considering a break from friendship because you can’t get it together in the present. He’s not waiting to include you in the mural until He sees what you can accomplish for Him in the future. No, He is a good and faithful friend. He likes experiencing the process of life with you, through ups and downs, because you’re His cherished friend. 

In Proverbs 8, wisdom is personified, and we see wisdom’s delight in creation. Taking permission from John, who described that Jesus is the logos, the Word, and that He is “the truth,” I’d like to take the liberty of inviting us to consider Jesus filling the shoes of wisdom in this personification where it is written, “Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth, before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited worldand delighting in the children of man” (Proverbs 8:25-31). In these verses, we see the heart of God who grins at His creation and says, “It is good.” He delights in it.

Consider the delight you have when you love something and get to share that delight with a friend, who enjoys it with you. When we enjoy flowers, mountains, laughter, pets, children, art, mechanics, stories, music, foods, and other parts of life, we experience something Jesus loves, and our hearts say, “Hey, I like this too!” We enjoy friendship with Him in such simple things as these. Isn’t it fun when you and a friend can teach each other new things or work on a project together? So too do we experience friendship with Jesus when we learn from Him and labor with Him for His Kingdom. Have you ever suffered from some kind of ailment or loss that your friend also experienced? If so, you probably felt a special kind of closeness as this friend shared in your sufferings. So too do we grow closer in friendship with Jesus when we taste of His sufferings. 

I have little in the way of practical takeaways, and perhaps that is the point. As you go about your day, whether mundane or chaotic, you are invited to go about it with Jesus, who cherishes you as His friend. Brush your teeth, eat your lunch, click clack on your computer at work, socialize, and do it all with Him who wants to accompany you as a close friend. Soak in the heart of Jesus for you as He says, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant 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. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another” (John 15:15-17).