John 15:9-17,

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 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. 16 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. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

Christianity is unlike every other religion in a lot of different ways, but one of the biggest differences is that Christianity is not really a religion at all, but it’s a relationship.

Maybe you’ve heard that before — ‘Christianity’ is more than a religion, it’s a relationship. 

I first heard that phrase years ago during some training about how to share the gospel. In my context at the time, pretty much everybody claimed to be Christians, and that actually made spiritual conversations harder … and really short — because if you started the conversation by asking, “Are you a Christian?”, most people would say Yes. But they were saying Yes to a religion.

They were saying that they theoretically believed a few things, tried to behave a certain way, and checked the “Christian box.”

But ‘Christianity,’ according to the Bible, is much more than all that! 

At the very center is one’s relationship with God — it’s a relationship created by God, broken by our sin, and then restored by Jesus for those who believe.

So a better way to start a spiritual conversation was to ask someone what they thought of Jesus himself — What do you think of Jesus Christ?

What if I asked you that this morning? What would you say?

There are a few good and true things that might come to mind — Jesus is Lord; He’s King; He’s the Savior of the world; He’s the Treasure of my heart — all these are true (and they’re all relational).

But maybe one of the most biblical answers that doesn’t come to mind right away is that Jesus calls us his friend.

What do you think of Jesus Christ? He calls me his friend. 

Don’t you want to be a friend of Jesus?

The goal of this sermon is to tell you how. Looking at this passage in John 15, we’re gonna answer the question: How do you become a friend of Jesus?

There are three ways. First is this …

1. He calls you his friend. (verse 15)

This is the first thing we need to see, and it’s the most foundational. What we need to understand is that being a friend of Jesus is not a self-declared title. We don’t get to ‘up and decide’ that we’re friends of Jesus anymore than we get to decide that we are friends of LeBron James (the second greatest basketball player of all time). 

Now you can try to do that, but I don’t think you’ll get very far … if you flew to Los Angeles, drove to LeBron’s neighborhood, and walked up to his gate. You hit the buzzer and say, “Hey, it’s [me], I’m a friend of LeBron.” 

No chance you’re getting in. Because the person you say you’re a friend of has to claim you as their friend. 

That’s what makes verse 15 so amazing. Look at verse 15. Jesus 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. 

And Jesus just tells us this — we didn’t even ask for it — Jesus just tells his disciples, and he tells us, I have called you friends. 

And by itself, we might not be impressed by this … because we all have our own ideas of friendship, informed by our own experiences. So I’m glad that Jesus doesn’t leave the meaning of friend up to us, but he fills it out. He puts it in color. 

More to the Meaning

He tells us that a friend is different than a servant. And this is where we need to pause for a minute. Jesus says he doesn’t call us servants anymore, although we are still his servants. 

In fact, being a “servant of Jesus” is the most common self-designation of the New Testament writers. The apostle Paul says this about himself five times, and also James, Peter, John, and Jude. They all refer to themselves as servants of Jesus — and they were … we are. 

So here in verse 15, Jesus is not eliminating the reality of our servanthood, but he is deepening the relationship from his point of view.

We are servants and friends — and so how do we hold these together? 

This was a big question for me … because I talk to Jesus everyday and felt like I needed to sort this out. So consider it like this:

When we describe who we are, we rightly say we are servants of Jesus, but when Jesus describes who we are, he says friends. 

That’s the way it should be: We say to Jesus, “I’m your servant.” Jesus says to us, “You’re my friend.” 

And the reason why Jesus says that is in verse 15. It’s because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing. A servant has no right to know. A servant just does what he’s told.

But a friend gets let in on what’s going on. And that’s one way to think about the whole Farewell Discourse in these chapters. That’s what Jesus has been up to on this longest Thursday night ever. He is making known to the disciples all that the Father has made known to him. 

And he’s doing this because he wants to, not because the disciples deserve it. This is verse 16:

“You did not choose me, but I chose you.” 

Jesus, on his own initiative, chose to reveal himself to the disciples.

Like Abraham and Moses

In theological terms, this is special revelation: Jesus has revealed God to his chosen disciples. 

And this is fascinating: because what Jesus does here fits with the ‘friend-of-God concept’ in the Old Testament. In the whole Bible, before John 15, there have only been two people who were called friends of God: Abraham and Moses. 

In Isaiah 41:8, God says of Abraham:

But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham, my friend; you whom I took from the ends of the earth, and called from its farthest seas … I have chosen you ...

He hears in that special choosing.

And back in Exodus 33:11, we read about how God would speak to Moses at the Tent of Meeting, and verse 11 says, 

Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.

We hear in that revelation.

So if we were putting together a theology for friendship with God from the Old Testament, we’d say that Abraham and Moses were called friends of God because they had this special access to God: God chose them and revealed himself to them. And in John 15, Jesus says we’re his friend on the same basis — because he specially revealed himself to us. 

And that’s where we are in this new location of redemptive history. This is where Jesus has brought us. 

To be a Christian means that, like Abraham and Moses, Jesus has brought us on inside. He has let us in on the mind of God! We can know God’s thoughts! Because Jesus tells us. And that’s why he calls us friends.

That’s the first and most foundational way you become a friend of Jesus. He calls you his friend.

How else do you become a friend of Jesus?

2. You abide in his love. (Verse 9)

This is clear in verse 9. Jesus says in verse 9: 

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.”

Now Jesus has already told us to abide in verse 4. In verse 4 it’s, “Abide in me.” Here in verse 9 it’s “Abide in my love.” Those are not two different things — Jesus is just saying the same thing two different ways. To abide in him is to abide in his love. And for the first time in this Gospel, he tells us something about his love that is truly astounding.

It starts with that the Father loves him — and Jesus has been saying this the whole time: 

John 3:35 — “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.”

John 5:20 — “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing.”

John 10:17 — “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life…”

One of the clearest messages in this Gospel is that God the Father loves God the Son. It’s an eternal, powerful, perfect love beyond human comprehension. We can only marvel … before the foundations of the world, in all of eternity past, in the pure joy of the Holy Trinity, the Father has loved Jesus! We know that. 

And we also know that Jesus loves us. That’s the glorious truth that emerges so clearly in the Farewell Discourse. For last several weeks, we’ve been hearing from Jesus how much he cares for us. 

In fact, at the beginning of this long Thursday night, back in Chapter 13, verse 1, John introduces this section by telling us that Jesus, “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Jesus loves us — we know that.

So these two things: We know the Father loves Jesus. And we know that Jesus loves us. 

We know this before verse 9, but in verse 9 this is new: Jesus tells us that he loves us as the Father has loved him. 

The two things come together. 

We learn that Jesus’s love for us is patterned after, and flows from, the Father’s love for him. That eternal, powerful, perfect love the Father has for Jesus is how Jesus loves you and me. 

And look, let’s be honest. We don’t really know what that means. We can’t comprehend this. It’s too much. We can’t fully understand this love, but we must abide in it. Jesus says so. Remain in this love. Stay put in this love.

Daily Assurance of His Love

If you do — if you just stay put in the love of Jesus — you will never go wrong. 

Jesus tells us this, but our own experience often points in same direction.

Over the years, I’ve learned that I get my wobbliest when I lose sight of Jesus’s love for me. I’m convinced that the most critical need in my daily experience as a Christian is to be assured of the love of Jesus. 

I think this is an aspect of how the Spirit ministers the realness of Jesus to us, and I learned this from the apostle Paul … 

Because in Ephesians Chapter 4, Paul prays for the church — for us — that, according to the riches of God’s glory, that God would strengthen us with the Spirit’s power to comprehend the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. That’s what Paul says. Paul prays that we comprehend more and more the incomprehensible love of Jesus. That is God’s power in our lives.

And in my own life, it works out like this … the more I am assured of Jesus’s love for me and how much I don’t deserve it, then the more I am humbled and filled with joy, and then the more I am poured out in love for others, and then the more I magnify the glory of God. 

That’s my testimony. Any kind of meaningful fruit in my life has come from abiding in the love of Jesus. I know I’m no good for you apart from that. I’m no good for my wife, for my children apart from that. 

We are all no good for anybody apart from the love of Jesus. Stay put in that love. 

How to Stay Put

But how exactly? How do I stay put in the love of Jesus? 

Well, Jesus tells us in verse 10:

“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.”

That’s simple enough. And we’ve already seen some of this back in Chapter 14: that our obedience to Jesus demonstrates our love for Jesus — We learn here that our obedience to Jesus is what it means to abide in him.

In other words, abiding in the love of Jesus means we do what Jesus says. 

And this is not fine print we’re supposed to ignore. It’s right there, right beside the abiding. If we keep his commandments (if we do what he says), we will abide in his love.  

These two always come together: salvation and discipleship. 

And we need to make sure to get this right in how we give Jesus to others. Sometimes, I think in an effort to make Jesus seem more appealing to people, Christians can emphasize his love but downplay his moral demands … as if his moral demands are not part of his love. 

We gotta understand that Jesus telling us how to live is part of his love for us. He saves us to lead us, not to leave us to ourselves. 

This is why true faith in Jesus always includes repentance from sin. 

Faith and repentance are two sides of the same coin. Every time we turn to Jesus, we are turning from something else. And that is always good news. It’s always the best thing you can do. 

And if you’re concerned that obedience to Jesus is a burden, just look what he says in verse 11. He says, 

“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

The real question is: Do we want the joy of Jesus, or are we gonna keep chasing the lesser joys of this world?

If we want the joy of Jesus, abide in his love, which means doing what he says, which means … he calls us friends. 

See how this comes together? 

Verse 10: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.”

Verse 14: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.”

Abiding in the love of Jesus (and doing what Jesus says) are one thing — and that’s how you become a friend of Jesus.

Now, the third way you become a friend of Jesus …

3. You love his other friends. 

A couple of weeks ago we talked about what’s in view when Jesus mentions his commandments. It’s not just the quotations of Jesus in the Gospels, but the commandments of Jesus are really the entire biblical testimony. 

It’s the whole hog of God’s moral will revealed in Scripture which is summarized in love — love for God and love for neighbor. The Bible teaches us to show kindness and goodwill to all people (Matthew 22:37–40; Romans 13:9). This is called neighbor-love. 

It’s all background and baseline to what Jesus says here, and it’s important to keep in mind because it helps us understand that the love Jesus is talking about in verse 12 goes a level deeper.

And this is one you gotta see. So everybody find verse 12 for a minute and help me out. Chapter 15, verse 12, Jesus says:

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” 

Our Supernatural Love

So Jesus has narrowed the object of love and the kind of love it is. 

The object of love is not all people everywhere — he’s not talking about neighbor-love. He’s talking about one another.

As we’ve seen back in Chapter 13, this is love for fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. 

And as for the kind of love we have, Jesus says, is the love he has for us. Which, remember, is the love that the Father has for him.

This is dense, but track with what Jesus is saying: Jesus loves us as the Father has loved him. Jesus tells us to love one another as he has loved us! 

Which means: the love of Jesus for Christians becomes the love of Jesus between Christians. 

This is next level. The love we share as brothers and sisters in Christ is love that finds its source in the Holy Trinity. 

It is supernatural love. It literally is not of this world. 

And that’s why divisions in local churches, among Christians, should grieve us. So often it’s because we’ve adopted the world’s way of thinking.

Framework for Division

To help here, let’s step back for a minute and I want to give you a framework for how to think about division overall. Think about it in three tiers: there’s disagreement, then dispute, then division.

Disagreement is simply when we think differently about something (happens all the time). Dispute is when the thing we disagree about merits formal mediation (we need to deliberately talk it out). Division is when you cannot find either agreement or acceptance, and so parties must separate.

Got those three categories? Y’all wanna know why our world is so polarized? 

It’s because in our world, every disagreement is automatically a division. Our world just flattens the whole thing. Because why not? 

Life is more comfortable that way. 

Where there is no bond of love between people, you don’t put up with discomfort — that’s the world’s way of thinking. And so often — not all the time — but often, when there are divisions in the church, it’s because we have adopted the world’s mindset. 

We think our disagreements have more power than the love of the Trinity that we share. 

We Are a Church

This is why the polarization of local churches should grieve us. And it’s why we don’t do it here.

Over the years, we’ve had people divide from our church because we’re not woke and because we’re not MAGA. Which is true. We are neither. 

Because we’re a church. … a church.

And that means, yes, we stand firm with moral clarity: Abortion is murder. Every human is created in God’s image and has wonderful dignity. Marriage is between a man and woman. There are only two sexes, male and female, and they’re different. If one’s highest allegiance is to anything other than Jesus it’s idolatry.

None of that’s political. They’re just facts according to the Word of God, and we believe them like we believe in oxygen.

That’s part of what it means to be a true church — and it means that we are friends of Jesus. 

The love we share is Jesus’s love for us, which is sacrificial, verse 13 — it’s love sacrificial enough to endure disagreement. To bear with one another, forgiving one another as the Lord has forgiven us (see Colossians 3:13).

To be a friend of Jesus, it means you love his other friends.

Don’t you wanna be a friend of Jesus? 

First, he’s gotta call you his friend.

Second, you abide in his love (do what he says).

Third, you love his other friends.

And all these things are true of us only by the power of the Holy Spirit. And that’s what brings us to the Table this morning — because where else do friends go?

The Table

What we do here when we eat the bread and drink the cup is often called communion. It’s because we are together sharing in our common union to Jesus. 

We are, at the same time, remembering the death of Jesus for us, and that it’s his death that brings us together and keeps us. 

We are brothers and sisters together of Christ. He calls us friends.

And if that’s you, if you’ve trusted in Christ, we invite you to eat and drink with us. 

His body is the true bread. His blood is the true drink. Let us serve you.