01 Feb You are my friend – Feb 14

By Firman Rianto

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc have allow me to socialise with more people than conventional method would. 471 people and counting. Some of us are reaching the thousands. Highest currently on Facebook is 6,223 friends. That can be quite assuring to have such high number of people who is on the same side. Yet, are they all?

Truth be told most of those number are just contacts associated with a social networking website. And many of our “friends” are people we do not know nor do we have a bond of mutual affection. We have all wrestled with the idea of friends nowadays. And most of us have questioned our friendship when the going gets tough.

There is one who calls you a friend and have proven that he is one who have greatest love for you. Jesus said, “no one has greater love than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends”. In this verse God is setting up the stage for what he is about to do for his friends; as when he had spoken these words, he then betrayed, arrested, oppressed, afflicted, and murdered, like a lamb led to the slaughter. And he does all that for his friends who all went astray like sheep turning to their own way. The Lord punished Jesus for the iniquity of his friends.

The privilege of having a stunning level of comfortable personal interaction with the eternal, all-powerful Creator of the universe before the Word became flesh was only granted to Abraham and Moses. But with Jesus’ crucifixion, he extends this privilege to all obedient believers.

“You are my friend. I laid down my life for you.” is what his act of obedient to his Father is saying to you. He asks his friends, to love one another as he did. We are his friend if we do what he commands us. Imagine when we love as he did; isn’t that’s what friends are for?