God’s Friends

Don: In the parable of the vineyard workers we have been discussing, the vineyard owner (God) addressed one of the early workers, who were disgruntled to receive the same pay as the late workers, as “Friend”:

But he answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? (Matthew 20:13)

Who are God’s friends? Why does God need friends? Do God’s friends share any common—identifying—characteristics?

Scripture has many references to God’s friends. Here are some:

But not finding any way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down through the tiles with his stretcher, into the middle of the crowd, in front of Jesus. Seeing their faith, He said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven you.” (Luke 5:19-20)

…and he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without wedding clothes?’ And the man was speechless. (Matthew 22:12)

While He was still speaking, behold, Judas, one of the twelve, came up accompanied by a large crowd with swords and clubs, who came from the chief priests and elders of the people. Now he who was betraying Him gave them a sign, saying, “Whomever I kiss, He is the one; seize Him.” Immediately Judas went to Jesus and said, “Hail, Rabbi!” and kissed Him. And Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you have come for.” Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and seized Him. (Matthew 26:47-50)

“But you, Israel, My servant,
Jacob whom I have chosen,
Descendant of Abraham My friend,…” (Isaiah 41) [But remember, Abraham was also prone to deception, as for example when he pretended his beautiful wife Sarah was his sister so the Egyptian pharaoh would not kill him to get her.]

“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon!’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” (Matthew 11:18-19)

“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things 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 would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another.” (John 15:12-17) [It seems that to be a friend of God, one has to know what God—“the master”—is doing.]

This He said, and after that He said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, so that I may awaken him out of sleep.” (John 11:11)

Friendship was important even as far back as the Garden of Eden, where scripture mentions at least three types of friendship: That between God and Wo/Man, that among Wo/Men, and that between Wo/Man and the animals (implied by the intimacy of naming them):

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”  Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. [Friendship between Man and animals, implied by the intimacy of naming them, is a second type of friendship.] (Genesis 2:18-20)

All these friendships start to break down as Adam and Eve start arguing, as Wo/Man begin to sever the relationship with God by hiding from him, and as the Wo/Man’s relationship with animals—and even among the animals themselves—starts to break down, with the lion and the lamb no longer able to live harmoniously.

In ancient times, friendship was sealed by a covenant that meant one’s resources were available to one’s friends. The covenant was marked by the sharing of a meal. Jesus seeks such a covenant when he comes knocking:

Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. (Revelation 3:20)

The psalmist’s dismay at a friend who broke the covenant emphasizes the significance of the meal:

Even my close friend in whom I trusted,
Who ate my bread,
Has lifted up his heel against me. (Psalm 41:9)

The shock of the Pharisees in seeing Jesus eat a meal with sinners and tax collectors further emphasizes its significance:

As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax booth, and He said to him, “Follow Me!” And he got up and followed Him.

And it happened that He was reclining at the table in his house, and many tax collectors and sinners were dining with Jesus and His disciples; for there were many of them, and they were following Him. When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that He was eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they said to His disciples, “Why is He eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mark 2:15:16)

These passages partly answer the question “Who are the friends of God?” but who else count as his friends? What are their characteristics? And does God need their friendship?

Donald: The people closest to us are family. We describe ourselves as members of the “family” of God. We don’t choose our family, but we do choose our friends. We can’t lose a family member (except through death) but we can lose friends. Perhaps friends have a higher status in that their DNA is not the same.

Rimon: It’s interesting that God did not speak of the relationship between Eve and the serpent, but he would not consider the characteristics of the serpent to be friendly!

David: If one is not God’s friend, is one by definition his enemy?

Charles: There might be another way of looking at it. One can be God’s friend, or a friend of the world. Throughout both Old and New Testament, friendship can span a spectrum from simple association to loyalty to affection. The scriptural passages Don quoted are examples of these various degrees of friendship. The objectives of the friendship can be God, or the world. With whom or what do you associate? To whom or what are you loyal? Who or what holds your affection? Jesus was saying that if your answer is “The world”, it is not the answer he wants. But if your answer is “God”, or “Jesus”, or “God through Jesus,” then you are closer to God’s ultimate level of friendship: Fellowship between creature and Creator.

Loyalty and affection to the extent of being willing to lay down one’s life in the cause of friendship, involves a major act of will—as did our separation from God at the Fall. Even Abraham, despite the flaws Don mentioned, became a friend of God through faith and obedience, which is parallel to Jesus’ pronouncements on the subject of friendship.

Robin: I find it remarkable that Jesus referred to Judas as “friend” just after Judas had betrayed him. It suggests to me that Jesus wanted to impress upon Judas—and perhaps upon the other disciples—that he loved Judas as much as he loved anyone; that we are loved as friends by God until we choose to be his enemy. Jesus called the servant who complained about his pay as “friend” despite the complaint.

Don: Similarly with the man without a wedding garment at the wedding feast.

Robin: The message is that Jesus will accept anyone but we can choose not to accept him. We can choose to be the enemy of God.

Donald: In church, we describe ourselves as a church “family” and we address each other as “brother” and “sister”. But that does not mean that we are always in alignment in our thinking and our values. So why does Jesus use the word “friend” and not “brother” or “sister”?

Charles: There are many problems with scriptural translations. Greek could have different implications from English about terms such as “friend”. So it is important to consider the various possible meanings. I wonder if we are not inserting our own definitions into terminology from a different time, place, and language.

Even so, whatever the definition or degree of “friend” (companion, neighbor, acquaintance, cousin, brother, etc.) and “friendship” (love, affection, etc.) we have a tendency to overlay the definition with our own personal interpretation.

David: I share that concern, which is only sharpened by the understanding that God’s ways (e.g., of dealing with friends) are not our ways and his thoughts (e.g., about friendship) are not our thoughts. We always want to reduce God to our level and in one sense God did just that in sending Jesus to us, but I think we should consider that friendship at the human level between Jesus and other men and women might not be the same as friendship between God and Man at the divine level.

Does God need friends? He evidently did not until he created Man. Scripture may claim that friendship as we think of it is important to God, and as human beings we can readily understand that it would have been important to Jesus the human being. But I can’t know whether friendship is meaningful in a divine sense.

Robin: We may not be able to say that God needs friends, but we may wonder why he didn’t stop work after creating the beautiful trees and flowers and birds and mountains. Why would he go on to create beings able to have a relationship with him if he did not want to have a relationship?

Chris: Familial relationship is not a matter of choice. Your mother is your mother, period. Friendship, on the contrary, is a matter of conscious choice. Yet there are also inexplicably deep friendships where some extraordinary bond, some connection, seems to exist. It seems that God wants something from us in regard to friendship, and I think it is love—the kind that exists in those extraordinarily deep and true friendships in which forgiveness and grace are givens. God is a friend because his love, mercy, and grace are givens.

Rimon: When Jesus dined with sinners perhaps he was telling us we should not discriminate in our friendships.

Michael: It shows that sinners are closer to God than righteous people. The reason is because it is much easier to communicate with people who perceive themselves as sinners because they are more humble. It’s hard to be friends with people who think they are as righteous as God; it’s much easier to be friends with sinners. Perhaps that’s why Jesus was drawn to them!

Don: Scripture does contrast between a strong friendship and a familial relationship in this passage:

He who finds a wife finds a good thing
And obtains favor from the Lord.
The poor man utters supplications,
But the rich man answers roughly.
A man of too many friends comes to ruin,
But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. (Proverbs 18:22-24)

Charles: The whole story of salvation tells us just how much God wants us to be his friend. He made us in his image and walked with us in the Garden, according to Genesis. Sin, willfulness, pride, disobedience fractured that relationship—that fellowship, that friendship. Presumably in the new heaven and earth this social structure will be restored, but first the sin must be wiped out, and only God can do that. I think it’s beyond question that God wants a deep, abiding friendship of loyalty, love, and intimacy with his creatures, with Man. So much so, that he provided a means of reconciliation through Jesus on the cross, where in the very moment Jesus demonstrated the hope of re-establishing that relationship.

Donald: God wants us as his friend. As friendships develop, we reach out to people. If they don’t reciprocate, we realize that perhaps it is not meant to be. But God always wants us to be his friend. It’s our response that is important. It’s fundamental in what we know from scripture that God stands at the door and knocks and it’s our choice whether to open it or not.

Michael: I know for sure that the mortal Jesus needed friends. Choosing them was the first thing he did before starting his ministry. I think the divine Jesus—God—needs friends too, else why create us?

Robin: A need implies a necessity; a want does not—it implies a choice. Your parents are necessary; your friends are your choice.

Chris: I don’t see it in terms of need or want. To me, it’s a matter of who and what God is. In his character, and in his behavior of love and grace toward to his creatures, he is a friend. It is part of what defines him, it’s not a matter of choice or necessity—it’s a matter of who and what he is. He cannot help being a friend to everybody, because that is his true nature. It always was and always will be.

Rimon: It seems to me that if God did not feel a need to fill a void he would not have created us, and he saw that it was good to have us. But as Michael pointed out, it’s perhaps not as good to have the righteous person as a friend as it is to have a sinner as a friend!

Donald: What about the homeless, the friendless—those who are overlooked (at least by people)? We know we should help and befriend them, but how do they fit in to our discussion?

Don: I was struck by the fact that the passages I quoted at the beginning represent a broad cross section of people who are sick, who are sinners, who are in some way disconnected from or are on the fringes of society; as well as those who are willfully disobedient and even those who betray God and seek to put themselves outside God’s circle of friendship. It’s humbling to those of us who value our relationship with God to think that we have difficulty being friends with people on the margins, but God does not.

David: To us, to say “friend” implies “enemy” and “non-friend”. Each term is meaningless without the comparative other. But to God, there is no “other”. With God, all is friendship, all is love, everyone is a friend. Divine friendship is a singular, all-inclusive concept; it is not a comparative, discriminatory, exclusive one. It is a unity, a friendship so close that its constituents cannot be told apart; and that is what God wants. Our human concept of “friend” doesn’t come close to this, so personally I dislike the use of it.

Ghada: When I think of “friend” I think of someone who has good intentions towards me, as opposed to a non-friend who is indifferent towards me (and vice versa). When I think of God’s being a friend to us—as opposed to our being a friend to him—it seems he is saying: “I am here for you.”

Charles: In scripture, God is the triune Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The relationship among them is the fellowship we are talking about. I think God’s intent was to have this same kind of relationship with Man. Jesus prayed…

“… that they [believers in him] may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.” (John 17:21)

Scripture points unquestionably and inexorably to God’s intent to be in fellowship and friendship with Man. This intent was thwarted through Man’s willful separation, in contradistinction to Christ’s non-separation despite the temptation and his subsequent cleansing of the sin that fractured the relationship, to provide once again the opportunity for Man to have oneness, fellowship, with God. I read Genesis as representing the new heaven and earth and the regeneration of the relationship between God and Man. It’s the sin in the heart of Man that gets in the way. The journey for everyone is to merge—to unite—our will with God’s will. It’s a tough journey.

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