Jesus' Love is a Friendship That Was

Good morning. I want to begin by telling you the story of me as a little boy who had two very impressionable younger brothers as well, who used to get up to all sorts of harmless, mischievous pranks. In the heat of the moment, these pranks were often fun. But the problem came later when mum found out. It's remarkable how quickly the fun then stopped. From time to time during the reprimanding, I would have the nerve to attempt a cheeky argument explaining myself.

I was explaining the actions of me and my brothers, trying to perhaps sweet talk my way out of the conversation. But then instantly, very quickly, I'd be pulled back into line with mum nipping us in the bud and saying something along the lines of, you can't talk to me like that. I am not your friend. You can't talk to me like that. I am not your friend. I wonder if that might just be a South African thing or just a mum and dad sort of thing.

But I was obviously pushing the boundaries, testing mum just to see how far I could sway her. And those words, however, still to this day ring in my ears: I am not your friend. I'm your mum. Now I came to believe eventually that mum was right, that she did have authority over me, that I had to respect the office of mum. I wasn't on the same level as her. I was her son and she was my mum.

Now when it came eventually to my understanding or my view of God as Father, an interesting correlation happened, I believe, in my view of His authority over me. Now you may disagree with me on this one and you are entitled to do so. But perhaps as you've grown older, you could say even today that I do view my parents as my friends. But I didn't when I was younger. But there is still for me in my mind this image of God, of Him as Father, and that I'm not His playmate. I am not His little friend.

This morning, we're going to open to a passage that makes me uncomfortable, an image we find that sits uneasily with me because of my upbringing. And that is the image of Jesus as my friend. Jesus as my friend. This morning, we're going to read from a passage of Jesus' last words to His disciples the night before He went to the cross.

And He makes this claim that His disciples are considered by Him to be His friends. Let's turn to John 15 and we're going to read from verses 12 to 17. John 15, verses 12 to 17. And it's useful to have your Bibles open because we will be breaking down one text, one key passage here, verse 13.

But let's start from verse 12. This, Jesus says, is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone laid down His life for His friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. 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, that it should last. 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. Our text this morning is verse 13.

Jesus saying, greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down His life for His friends. Like I said, it's an outrageous statement for me. It makes me uneasy. If Jesus was God who came down in flesh and bone, then He is God and I am a lowly man and yet I am called into this intimate relationship with Him of friendship. And yet, this holy, perfect God calls His disciples friends.

The Bible makes a claim that all who believe in Him, all who follow Him, are His disciples. And I think it's not a hard thing for us to then assume that Christians, those who profess Jesus Christ as Lord, are His disciples and by extension also His friends. This morning, I want to ask you the question, do you think of yourself as a friend of Christ? If you think of yourself and your identity, if you perhaps share your faith with people at the workplace or at school or university, will you say first off that I'm a friend of Jesus? And if you think of Jesus...

Of is that He was a friend of sinners. Jesus was a friend of the tax collectors, of the prostitutes, of the sinners. The people who were considered the scum of society, the dysfunctional people, the social misfits of the time. These people all became Jesus' disciples eventually. And He called them His friends.

And so this morning, I just want to spend a few minutes thinking through this one verse, verse 13, and pointing out all the ways of Jesus' friendship, what His friendship really means, what it looks like. Whether you consider yourself as one of Jesus' friends this morning or not quite yet, let me show you what Jesus' loving friendship really entailed. The first thing we see in verse 13 is that Jesus' loving friendship was voluntary. The statement Jesus makes in verse 13 is that He will lay down His life for His friends. Jesus says in verse 12, just to indicate that He's talking about His love, not just a philosophical statement that, you know, out there, greater love is no one than this, that they might sacrifice their life.

Jesus is talking about His love. He says, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. And this is how that love will look: greater love has no one than this, that they lay down their life for their friends. The first thing is that Jesus indicates this is a voluntary thing.

Jesus' friendship with us, His love for us, is a voluntary act. It doesn't say He dies for His friends. It doesn't say His life is taken for His friends. It says that He lays it down. He offers it up.

You see, no man murdered Jesus. Despite what we may say or hear or some preachers may even preach, no man took the life of Jesus. God the Father did not even force the Son to make that sacrifice. In the Trinity, God the Son said, I will go for them. Some cynics of Christianity say that if the death of Jesus was really in our place, then what happened on the cross was some astronomical divine child abuse.

But here we see Jesus declaring this mission to be His own. I lay it down. So the first thing is that it was voluntary, this loving friendship. The second thing is that it was vicarious. Now you'll notice these all have V's for easy memory.

Vicarious is a hard, sort of older English word, meaning on behalf of. Something performed or suffered by a person for the benefit of another. Jesus tells us in this verse that His life was being offered up for His friends. In other words, His death was not for Himself. His death was not a punishment for His wrongdoing.

It was on behalf of someone else. The apostle Peter, after the resurrection, would say to a crowd of thousands upon thousands that it wasn't even at the hands of cruel men by which Jesus seemingly had died. Peter says it was by the will of God. That God subjected Him to this punishment. Jesus' death wasn't for Himself.

Jesus' death was on behalf of His friends. It was for the people whom He called His friends that He died. Now the fundamental message of Christianity isn't simply that God exists. You are not a Christian if you say God exists. There are many religions that say God exists.

The message of Christianity is that God became human and punished Himself in our place to reunite us with Him. God died the death that we somehow should have died. You see, every living person will one day have to give an account for sin, for their sin. God's justice will demand it. By our actions and thoughts, we betray God.

We show ourselves to be rebels, and every one of us, whether we know Him or not this morning—if we were honest, we would know that this is true. But Christianity offers the only thing that could be considered true forgiveness. True forgiveness. And that is that this forgiveness contains a substitute.

You see, people ask, why does Jesus have to die? Why does He have to go to the cross? Why can't God simply forgive? Has anyone heard that question? Why can't God simply just forgive?

Wipe the slate clean. Let us start over. But complete forgiveness can never be forgiveness by simply saying, I forgive you. Say for example, you have a party and you invite lots of guests and they're having a great time. And one of the guests is having a fantastic time and decides to do some extreme dancing. You know, the dancing that doesn't look like they're moving their body rhythmically to anything, it just looks like they're having a fit.

Right? They're having fun, but their arms are flailing, their legs are kicking. And in this dance move, they knock over something very valuable. They knock over your plasma TV and it shatters on the ground. No more footy for me to watch.

And it's in pieces on the floor. And they say with a very contrite heart, I am so sorry. I am so sorry for what I've done. For you to forgive in that instance, two things happen. Two things happen.

The first thing in forgiving that person is that you either choose to forego the rights of having them replace that TV for you for the equal value, or you go and pay yourself for that TV to be repaired or replaced. You absorb, in other words, the loss of that value. That is what forgiveness means if you were to say to the person, don't worry about it. It's okay. I either won't need to watch TV anymore.

I just don't need that. Or I will take it down to the handyman to get repaired or replaced. True forgiveness is not that shallow, courteous statement of it's okay, it's alright, and then meanwhile, you're like, why did I invite that guy? It's not that. That is not true forgiveness.

True forgiveness is absorbing that loss, restoring them to that position as if they had never done anything in the first place. Forgiveness means you actually forego the justice of balancing the scales, getting them to repair or replace what has been lost.

In Jesus' loving sacrifice, God forgives by absorbing the cost of our rebellion. Our rebellion against His law, our rebellion against His love, He absorbs it and He pays for it Himself. That is forgiveness. And so Jesus' friendship was a securing of forgiveness on our behalf vicariously. He died and He was punished for us.

Thirdly, this friendship was violent. When Jesus uses the words, He lays down His life, that sounds sanitary on the surface level, doesn't it? To have laid down life means that however He forfeited that life. It means His death. Although Jesus here doesn't nearly convey the points and the depths of suffering that He will go into the next day, the next few hours, Jesus says that this life, this friendship, is not fair weather.

This isn't a love that is great during the good times when you're being nice to one another and everything is feeling fantastic, but then all of a sudden, this love grows cold when hard times come along. Jesus knows that this love, this friendship, is costly. This laying down of His life for His friends would be violent and it looked like this. He would be betrayed by Judas and the disciples. He would be beaten by temple guards.

He would be flogged. He would be mocked by soldiers and sarcastically crowned with thorns. He would be stripped naked. He would be hung up on a cross to suffocate and die, and He would be rejected by the very people He came to save. That is what He meant by laying down His life.

But not even these physical things is really what was violent about that day. It was what happened spiritually that broke Jesus. You see, on that day, God the Father turned His back against God the Son. Christ experienced in that moment the reality of hell. And that is why it truly was violent.

On the cross, Jesus absorbs the full force of God's punishment for sin. A newspaper article, and I think I've shared this before, so you may remember this story. A newspaper article I read in the Australian many years ago, 2006, I have it down as 08/02/2006. I read this story of an instructor and five other people who died when their plane hit a power pole soon after takeoff in Missouri in the US.

Investigators believe that the plane had suffered catastrophic engine failure as it tried to take off. The article says that a 21-year-old Australian tourist named Kimberly was seriously injured in the crash but survived. When reporters interviewed Kimberly's father, Bill, he told of the incredible actions of a 22-year-old skydiving instructor named Robert Cook in the final moments of the accident. It was utterly amazing, Bill said. When Robert realised the plane was actually going to crash, he grabbed Kimberly and calmly talked to her and told her that the plane was going to crash.

He told her what to expect and what to do, and he kept her calm and focused her attention on him as he was saying, rather than what was happening around her. Bill said Kim was going to do a tandem jump with Robert, so that she had a harness for the tandem jump on as well as Robert. And as they were taking off, Robert had clipped on his harness to hers. And as the plane was going down, she remembers that he put his arms around her and he pulled her close. And as he pulled her close, her head rested on his shoulders to stop it from bouncing around.

He said to her, the plane will hit the ground, but make sure that you will be on top of me as we hit the ground. Bill said the plane actually hit—they believe a power pole or a power line—and it went into a vertical situation. And she became a little bit disoriented, but she felt Robert actually twist his body around Kim so that she was on top when the plane hits the ground. Robert Cook took the full impact of the crash on himself. Kimberly suffered compressed vertebrae, several muscle tears around the spine, a broken pelvis and a collarbone, many cuts and abrasions, concussion and severe bruising, but survived.

Robert Cook died on impact. On the cross, Jesus Christ took the full impact of the judgement of God on our behalf. But then lastly, Jesus' loving friendship was victorious. Friends, it was victorious. There are those who look at the life and the death of Jesus and say, what a tragedy.

There were people in Jesus' time, the teachers of the law, the disciples on the outer skirts, who looked at Jesus' death and they thought, what a tragic end to a good man's life. But the news this morning is that the death of Jesus was not tragic. It is the happiest, the most marvellous, the most freeing and liberating thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity, friends. The message of Jesus is a message of victory despite the apparent tragedy.

At the cross, Jesus wins through losing. Jesus triumphs through defeat. Jesus shows power and strength in weakness. Jesus turns everything on its head, and the incredible realisation is that it all worked out exactly the way that God intended. Everything.

Because of the cross, neither justice nor mercy loses out. Both are fulfilled at once. Jesus' death was necessary if God was to have our crimes fully paid for, fully absolved, fully forgiven, and at the same time, God would love us. Why did Jesus have to die? Why was it all necessary?

The answer is from the Bible. It was necessary for us. It was necessary for you. I remember a preacher when I was very young at school. He came into a very non-Christian school and he started by saying the reason Jesus came is sitting here in this place this morning.

The reason Jesus died is for the people sitting here. I don't know if you've ever been to an Anzac memorial. I remember going to one where this verse, John 15:13, was engraved, etched into a plaque. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down His life for His friends. And in a sense, that is beautiful.

That's a beautiful thought to think of those who have gone before that would sacrifice themselves for the freedom that we have. It is a noble thing, this love of sacrifice. But this morning, these words and these verses talk about salvation, a liberation that is eternally more significant. Jesus' sacrifice is the greatest sacrifice of all. Quite literally, greater love has no one than this. Not even the Anzacs.

My dear friends, are you still uncomfortable with thinking of yourself as the friend of Jesus? You don't have to be. He invites you. He invites you. He asks you to come this morning to accept the title of friend, whosoever might come and claim this good news as their own.

They will be recipients of this incredible gift. So friends, let me encourage you, come. Come. Come and accept this gift. Do it urgently today.

Lay aside the discomfort. Lay aside the guilt. Lay aside the thinking that you are not worth it because of Jesus' love. That is why He came. Not because of your worth, because of His love.

Take up this costly forgiveness. Take up the new life that He gives you as He washes away that guilt. Come, take up a new life as He lays down His for you. Let's pray. Lord, we do take up this life.

If there are some of us here who know that we have strayed very far, there are some of us here who willingly have forgotten these words, this truth. If we see ourselves in the portraits of those people who mocked You, who spit in Your face, as we see ourselves betray You, Lord Jesus, may we also know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no love greater than the love of Jesus. No forgiveness that is as complete, that is as effective, that is as absolute as the love and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ on that cross for us. Oh God, will You forgive us? And then Lord, we ask that You will give us the opportunity to take up this life.

We ask forgiveness for these things that we have committed against You. We take up the new life that You offer us, Lord, and we will consider ourselves Your friends, Your disciples, Your followers. We will live our lives in accordance with Your will. We will love You above all else.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.