Meditations from Zion

John 15:15
“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”

So which is it? Friend or servant?

Jesus is talking to his disciples, summarily on the same night that he just washed their feet. This section of the book of John is part of a very long record of Jesus’s final teachings to the disciples.

He pronounces them friends because he has shared everything he received from the Father. There is only one proviso: obey his commands. And two verses later, he brings it down to the same singular command: Love each other.

Friends love each other. Servants do not… necessarily. A friend of Jesus follows in the way. A friend of Jesus bears the fruit. A friend of Jesus can ask for whatever … because he/she is in the way of Jesus. The foundation is there before the asking. The love is there before the asking. So many folks wonder why they don’t get their prayers answered… well, answered the way they want them answered. My guess, the problem is that the relationship is not a friend relationship, it’s a servant one.

I want to be a friend to Jesus and others. Make it so Lord Jesus.