BFF

Can I pray for you in any way?

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are My friends if you do what I command. 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.”

John 15:12-15

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

I have a confession to make.

It took me a long time before I knew what the acronym “BFF” meant.

Seriously.

Maybe I’m showing my age or it’s possibly just an indicator of just how much I am out of the mainstream of society but I didn’t know the letter stood for “Best Friend Forever” for a long time.

I know, it’s funny right?

Well, they didn’t have acronyms back in biblical days. If they did, maybe the disciples would have all worn bracelets that said “WWJD” on them, simply meaning “What Would Jesus Do?” Or maybe they could have worn shirts that had “BABS” on it, short for “Believe and Be Saved”.

No, Jesus didn’t use letter abbreviations for anything. Instead, He spoke in full and plain language, like we see in today’s passage and our continue study of the Gospel of John.

Yesterday, we saw where Jesus not only spoke of, but also went onto show His disciples, the greatest love a person could ever show to another, the kind of love that would lead a person to die in order to save someone else. Less than 24 hours after Jesus spoke those words, He would be dead, having laid His life down for all sinners and He would do it out of love for them.  

Now, knowing this, that you would brutally suffer and then be crucified to save all sinners, well it would be enough to make the best man a little bitter. It wouldn’t take much for a person’s humanity to take over and draw them into a place of resentment. After all, the very people they were dying for would get to go on with their lives. The person’s sacrificial loss would be their gain.

But as we know, Jesus wasn’t any ordinary man. Not even close.

And so while He could have adopted an attitude of dislike and jealousy toward those He would die for, He didn’t. Instead, He called them His friends. Once they were just mere servants and He was their Master but now the relationship was changing. They were now Jesus’ BFF’s and would remain that way if they would just do as He commanded.

That’s it.

Just do as Jesus told you to do and you would be considered His friend.

So why the change? Why did Jesus suddenly shift the relationship dynamic between Himself and His followers?

He tells us why, explaining that He had imparted what He had learned from God onto His disciples. A normal servant would not be privy the business dealings of their master but in the case of Jesus, His disciples were with Him all along the way as He carried out His Father’s business. Nothing was hidden from their sight as Jesus sought to prepare them to carry on His work after He departed.

And so that’s the way it was as the Passover meal had concluded that fateful night before Jesus’ trial and execution. Not only did the disciples gain a lot of additional instruction and direction. They also gained their BFF, their best friend forever. And ever since that time, Jesus had been adding to His group of friends.

For us today, we could have no better friend than Jesus.

Is He your BFF?

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
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