Pure JesusSample

Jesus - Your Friend and Family

Friends with God

How many truly good friends do you have? Probably no more than you can count on one hand. Good friends, who show genuine love and affection toward you, are hard to find, but once you do, a good friend makes life sweet and difficult times bearable.    

Such is true with God. People have many varying opinions about God. Some think that God is like a magic genie who bestows blessings on those who find Him. Others think about God as a stoic and distant being who stands apart from our everyday lives, while others think God is angry toward them and needs to be appeased. 

This passage seems to negate all of those presumptions in one sweep:

Don’t you remember that our ancestor Abraham was shown to be right with God by his actions when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see, his faith and his actions worked together. His actions made his faith complete. And so it happened just as the Scriptures say: “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” He was even called the friend of God. So you see, we are shown to be right with God by what we do, not by faith alone. (James 2:21-24)

Here, James, the brother of Jesus, demonstrated that God desires to call us a friend when our beliefs and behaviors work together in a mysterious union to make our faith complete. Our justification happens by faith alone. As Paul wrote in his letter to Ephesians, "God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it." (Ephesians 2:8-9 NLT)

Yet, what we do with our lives through how we live, work, act, and relate matters for our relationship with God. Our friendship with God doesn’t exist in some vacuum apart from our lives and behaviors. Rather, how we work out our friendship with God is akin to how we invest and grow with our friendships with others.

Have you ever thought about working out your faith in God like a friendship? If you believe that God is distant or angry, then perhaps this is the first time that faith and friendship have been used in the same sentence for you. Abraham, however, the first man counted righteous for his faith, was considered a friend of God. Jesus was called a friend of sinners in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. God desires to call you a friend and be up close and personal with you. That’s what love does.

Do you simply believe in your friendships, or do you work them out with intentionality and love? Do you simply believe in your friends, or do you call them and find time to meet with them on a regular basis? In Christ, God calls you His friend, and He invites you into an eternal friendship founded on love and forgiveness and worked out with intentional action. 

Friendships go both ways, and as you seek to work out your friendship with God, then so, too, God desires to work out his friendship with you, fulfilling his promises to you and loving you all the way into eternity.