Who are your friends?
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:12-13
Listen, loved ones, and let me tell you about my friend, Randy.
He and I were about as opposite as two friends could be. I worked in technology and he built buildings out of brick. I loved to run and he loved to hunt. While the towers fell in 2001, I sat dumbstruck with the rest of the country wondering what would happen next. Randy would learn of it two weeks later because he was up in the Canadian tundra, near the Arctic Circle without cell service, hunting musk ox, and avoiding grizzly bears. Yet, when he and I would sing together, I felt I could sing better because it was us singing. He included me. He encouraged me to play guitar, sing, and lead. For several years, leading our church’s worship team together, we were a team. He would lead the congregation and I would lead the band. It worked well, we both grew close, and God was glorified.
It was through this friend that God changed my life. After a few years of his persistence, I finally took up Randy’s invitation to an annual men's retreat. I had long resisted because it didn’t make sense, given my travel schedule, that I should leave my family for a weekend to learn how to be a better husband, father, and man. Yet, it was through that weekend’s teaching that God profoundly spoke – no, shouted! – into my life. One could say that without Randy’s tenacious friendship, I might not be in ministry today. Although I suspect that God would have found another way, I’m so thankful He chose Randy to make such a difference in my life.
Stricken by cancer, Randy Carey met Jesus face-to-face in November 2010. I still miss him. I still learn from the example he set for me and so many others.
Randy loved me and I loved him. According to the Lord, this is what friends do. Love expressed not only in words but in action. Forgiving one another, enduring one another, standing up for one another – standing up to one another. Saying the tough stuff patiently, kindly. Refusing to let irritation lead to rudeness or worse. In short, when two friends keep their eyes on Jesus, they cannot help but grow closer together, laying their lives down for one another as they recognize Jesus and the example He set.
Oftentimes, we take John 15:13 independently and apply it solely to Christ and His selfless sacrifice on our behalf. But there is more, isn’t there? Reading John 15:12-13 together, we see an expectation of Christ’s followers to love one another as He did by “laying down our lives for one another”. This is not, by the way, a new teaching. Earlier in His ministry, Jesus defines His followers in this way: “if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me!”[1] Is this not the beginning of what is required to “lay our lives down”? How can we be friends with someone without denying ourselves? How can we endure the ups and downs, the joys and disappointments of friendship without “taking up our crosses and following Jesus”?
Yet the common culture has given in to a love that has been twisted into something else – something different than what is discussed here. It is not a selfish love[2] whereby I love for what I get. It is not the selfish love of transaction which calculates a relationship through accounting sheets contrasting assets and liabilities. No, the love of which Jesus speaks is agape love[3], the love of giving. It is a love of investment into the life of another on the ancient path.[4] Agape love is a love of self-denial, even to the point of laying one’s life down for the life (and love) of another.
It’s interesting, don’t you think, that Jesus did not spend much time (if any) discussing government, or banking, or sports, or celebrities, or social media influencers, or any other of the pressing matters of our present world which take so much of our time. He did, however, spend time speaking of a love that changes the world – one friend at a time.
The Greek word used in this passage for friend is philos, “a person to whom one is devoted.” Who would you describe in this way? Who are your true friends? And, in what ways are you demonstrating your friendship – your love – for them? How are you investing into their lives so that, as a marker of that love, others will remember you, long after you have passed, as one who laid down their lives for them?
[2] For more on sel-FISH love, this video by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Twerski is helpful.
[3] 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
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