The Kind of Friend We Have

This week at my church Messiah's House, we celebrated Resurrection Week, and Jake Hamilton and his band came to play music, lead worship, and, in Jake's case, to prophesy.  On Tuesday night as we entered the church we each were handed or took for ourselves green half-sheets of paper.  Each had a scriptural name of God written on it, with an exemplary Bible verse written beneath.  Names were diverse, and included things like "Father", "High Priest", "Rose of Sharon", and so on.  On Tuesday Jake prophesied over individual people based on the name of God that they drew.  The intent of this exercise was to inspire us to encounter the characteristics of God represented by and in His various names.

I received the name "Friend", and on its face I thought I understood the name.  Jesus said to his disciples (and says to us), "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." (John 15:15)  The implication is that we are intimates with Jesus, not outsiders.  We are invited into the private space of the master, and we participate in what he is doing.

The verse associated with the name "Friend" on my card was Matthew 11:19, which reads:

"The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds." (ESV)

For context, Jesus is speaking to the crowds just after some disciples of John the Baptist have come to ask him, on John's behalf while he is in prison, whether Jesus is in fact the Messiah.  Jesus says yes and more or less rebukes John for being offended that Jesus is not in the same boat as him, i.e. imprisoned for his preaching.  Then Jesus speaks to the crowds about John: how he is a great prophet, and how he was not accepted.  He says, "For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, 'He has a demon.'"  and the next verse is my verse, Matthew 11:19.  Jesus seems to be saying in these two verses, "Well, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't."  He is not saying that, but he kind of is.  Jesus knew that, for the religious, for the hard-hearted, for the unteachable, it didn't matter what he or any other prophet did, they simply would not be accepted.

What this meant for the nature of God as "Friend" I was unsure, so I got into the concordance.  I looked at some of the important words in verse 19; wisdom, justified, and deeds particularly interested me.  But of course since "Friend" was my name, I looked up that word as well.  The Greek word used in this verse, and also incidentally in John 15:15, is philos (fie-lohs), which means just what we would expect: friend, associate, familiar companion.  And then there is this additional definition:

One of the bridegroom's friends who on his behalf asked the hand of the bride and rendered him various services in closing the marriage and celebrating the nuptials

I think my jaw may have literally dropped at this definition.  Without too much effort one can read into this the spiritual significance of being a friend of God.  We are called to be the intimates of God; so intimate, in fact, that we are sent to the bride to ask for her hand on God's behalf, and arrange the marriage event in all its solemnity and celebration.  This is both a calling and a privilege for believers, that we will be the friends who usher in the marriage of the bridegroom to his bride with such deep involvement.  Our position is divine.  We are the ones He trusts to go after His bride on His behalf.

But we will never know this until we know Him.  To consider what kind of friendship is required for such a favor to be asked, you have to consider what an important task this would be.  If you were the bridegroom, you wouldn't ask just anyone to go and ask for your (future) bride's hand in marriage on your behalf.  You wouldn't trust just anyone to organize the wedding and the celebration.  You would only entrust this most important of tasks to your most intimate friend, the one who knows your heart and in whose hands you know you can entrust it.  And this is what God is looking for; this is what Jesus says that we are.  This is exactly what I want to be, a friend of God, because I've had no greater friend than Him.