Jesus's Friends

A few out of many definitions or meaning of Friends:

Friend is defined as a person that you are fond of, with whom you talk or spend time.

A friend is the person you have known a long time and trust.

A person who you like and enjoy being with a person who helps or supports someone or something.

Biblical view of friends:

A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

Proverbs 17:17 KJV

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

John 15 :12-13 KJV

Sometimes in life you are introduced to your friend’s close friend and instead of staying friends with your friend you become close friend with your friend’s friend. Here we see a similar trend, it can be easier to be friends with Jesus’ friends than to be friends with Jesus. We can go away on a spiritual retreat and never manage to have fellowship with Christ because we are far too busy having fun and fellowship with our Christian friends instead.

It was often said that the disciples had been with Jesus but what does it mean that the disciples “Had been with Jesus”? It meant that they were always in His presence, they would always listen to him as he preached and also assisted him while he would help people, they always tried to do what he wanted them to do. They had left their homes and their loved ones and became as Jesus did when He left His status and riches in heaven to come to earth and be amongst His people, they experienced both the popularity and the persecution that Jesus did.

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marvelled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus Acts 4:13

Being with Jesus also meant that his disciples had made some very special friends. Even though the “inner circle” was made up of diverse personalities, the men grew close as they spent time together, Jesus was good about that. He wanted them to love one another and to enjoy one another’s company, but He did not want them to enjoy the fellowship more than the relationship with him.

For me, being with Jesus means identifying with Christ and his cause in my culture just as the disciples did in theirs. This includes being in Church and getting to know and appreciate Jesus’ friends, but even more than that it means spending time with Jesus’ personality one- on- one.

Do you find yourself enjoying Jesus’ friends more than Jesus, your true friend? If so give yourself a little test, tally the hours you have spent with friends in the last month as opposed to your friend Jesus. That should say something, it should tell you how much time you have tried to spend with Jesus.

The world will marvel when we have been with Jesus, but not necessarily when we have been with Jesus’ friends. I love to be with

my fellow Christians but when I begin to love that more than being with Christ it’s time to change some of my priorities. Being with Christ and in Christ is one of the best decisions I have ever made.

Growing our Friendship with Jesus

OBEDIENCE — “If you are willing and obedient, you s

hall eat the good of the land.” Isaiah 1:19

ABIDING—Anyone who goes too far and does

not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son.

2 John1:9

LOVE—My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

John 15:12-13

FAITH— “Know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So, we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.”

Galatians 2:16

“Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.”

1st Peter 1:21

“For we live by faith, not by sight.”

2nd Corinthians 5:7

BE BLESSED