Ye are my friends if ye practise whatever I command you.
On the night before the cross, Jesus has just named the greatest love a person can show: laying down your life for your friends. Now He says who those friends are, and He adds an "if" — is friendship with Christ given, or proved?
Obedience is not a second step after love here. One writer also marks out what the verse is not about:
The Lord at once binds love up with obedience, without which it is only self-pleasing, with nothing of Him in it or before the soul. "You are my friends if you do what I command you." He is not speaking of reconciling enemies, but of why He calls us His friends. Obedience is the character and the condition. He treats us as friends according to His perfect love, for He lets us into His secrets instead of merely pressing our duty. In principle this is the cherished privilege of the Church — to know His mind, and to read the tangled web of human life by it. But in practice we must be constant in obedience, or the privilege is a bare title and not a living reality.
Everything hangs on that little word. One writer reads it through the ordinary experience of close friendship:
We all know how the sweetest and most tender relationships and feelings are the easiest to disturb and break. "You are my friends, IF you do what I command you." The life, with its relationships and intimacies, is ours, but we can well understand the meaning of the IF. None of us cares to tell everyone his secrets; we keep them for our intimate friends. But someone may show by his ways that he undervalues his friend's confidence. This may grieve that friend, and, in the very nature of things, the intimacy stops. Distance takes the place of nearness.
What does Christ trust a friend with? One writer answers from ordinary life:
He is treating them with perfect confidence. He treats the true disciple with the confidence of being His friend. Otherwise He would be betraying His Father's confidence in telling His secrets. If I go to a person on a matter of business, I simply tell him my business and have done with him. But if I go to a friend, I can tell him everything on my mind, even what does not concern him at all. I do this because I have full confidence in his love and his interest in what concerns me.
This trust is not a private comfort. It gives the friend a job to do in a hostile world:
One more thing goes with this in verse 14: "You are my friends if you do what I command you." How unspeakable the privilege! To be treated not as servants who receive their orders and nothing more, but as the trusted friends of Christ! He tells them His mind — all that He has heard from the Father. So they keep it in a world that has seen and hated both Him and the Father, and it shapes them as witnesses for Him.
One man long before showed what such friendship looks like. God let Abraham, the ancestor of Israel, know His plans in advance:
How beautiful it is to see an example of true friendship in Abraham. The Lord said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice," and so on. Abraham was trustworthy. It is as we do what our Lord has commanded that we continue in His love, and, like Abraham, we become trustworthy.
One writer presses the verse as a personal test, and names what it costs:
But can He trust us? Are we really His friends? "If you do what I command you." This is the proof. Not doing what we think, but what He commands. And He has said, "If anyone serves me, he must follow me." There is no such thing as knowing the Master's mind apart from the intimacy of communion. This involves separation from this world and its ways, and nothing but His love can draw us to Himself. As He draws us in this way, our hearts will close against every other voice. In the quiet of His presence we shall learn His secrets and receive His commands.
- Trust given. Christ laid down His life for His friends. Now He asks the other half of the question: can He trust us?
- Trust conditioned. The "if" sets the terms of nearness. Obedience is the character and the condition of friendship.
- Trust confided. A servant gets orders; a friend gets the Master's mind, everything Christ heard from the Father.
- Trust modelled. God told Abraham His plan because Abraham was trustworthy. Obedience makes us trustworthy too.
- Trust spent. Friends do not keep His mind to themselves. They carry it as witnesses in a world that hated Him.
I call you no longer bondmen, for the bondman does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things which I have heard of my Father I have made known to you.
On the last night before the cross, the Lord gives His disciples a new name: not servants, but friends. The change turns on knowledge — a servant stays outside his master's plans, but a friend hears all the Son heard from the Father.
The title is new, and it sits inside a series of names the Lord gives His own. One writer traces the sequence.
The disciples of the Lord Jesus were greatly favoured in being called His friends. Earlier He had spoken of them as His sheep, and in resurrection He would call them His brothers. But now He says, "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." Great as the privilege of being servants of the Lord was, this place of friendship was higher, for it brought them into nearness and intimacy with the Son of God, where He made known to them the most wonderful secrets it is possible for men to know.
Being called friends does not cancel service. Writers note that the same men later gladly call themselves servants of Jesus Christ.
The Lord treats His own not only as servants, whom He gives directions. He treats them as friends, whom He tells His secrets. He can say, "All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." The disciples were indeed servants of Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:1; Jude 1; Rom. 1:1). But they were more than servants, they were friends, and, if "the privilege of being servants is great, that of being friends is greater."
The same writer traces what a servant misses and what a friend receives.
The servant, as such, "does not know what his master is doing." He only knows the task given to him, and he gets only the direction he needs to carry it out. The servant whom his master treats as a friend knows more. His master tells him the secret purpose behind the work. And there is more. A friend is someone we tell our own affairs to, knowing they will interest him deeply, though they do not touch him directly.
That pattern had appeared once before, with Abraham, whom Scripture calls the friend of God.
When Abraham was on the mountain with the Lord, the Lord said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?" He was the friend of God, and God took him into His confidence. And the Lord Jesus says the same thing of us... So the whole mind of God — all that He is for man — has been told out in Christ, and by the Spirit now given.
What makes this friendship unlike any other is who is speaking.
Their right to all this high privilege rests on this — the Son is their prophet. The Son Himself has spoken to them, and He is "the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature." He says, "All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." Israel never stood in such privilege as this. God spoke to Israel in many measures and in many ways through His prophets. But their prophets were not the Son. They did not come from the bosom of the Father.
The wonder is not only what is told, but that He should tell it at all.
Obedience was the order, but He recognised them as friends. Then He makes known His mind. He tells them all that He had heard from His Father. What friendship! What friend is there to whom we could tell everything?... How the secret of the Father's love must be in Him, and on us too, that we should be the confidants of all that the Father makes known to Him!
The verse just before this one attaches a condition to the name.
The Lord at once ties love to obedience. Without obedience, love is only self-pleasing, with no thought of Him before the soul. "You are my friends if you do what I command you." He is not speaking of reconciling enemies, but of why He calls us His friends. Obedience is the character and condition.
The same writer warns that we can keep the title and lose the reality.
He treats us as friends according to His perfect love, for He lets us into His secrets, instead of merely pressing our duty... It ought to be the treasured privilege of the Church to know His mind this way, and in principle it is. By His mind we read the tangled web of human life, and even the world's changing fortunes. But in practice we must be in earnest and constant in obedience, or the privilege stays a bare title instead of a living reality.
What He tells His friends, He trusts them to keep.
How unspeakable the privilege! He treats us not as servants who receive their orders, and that is all, but as the trusted friends of Christ. He tells us His mind — all that He has heard from the Father. So we keep it in a world that has seen and hated both Him and the Father, and it shapes us as witnesses for Him.
- Servants — a servant gets his task and no more. He does not know what his master is doing.
- Friends — a friend learns the purpose behind the work. He even hears affairs that do not touch him directly. God dealt so with Abraham, and Christ deals so with His own.
- Secrets — this friendship carries everything the Son heard from the Father. No prophet before Him came from the Father's bosom, so Israel never stood in this privilege.
- Condition — obedience is the character and condition of the place. Without it the title stays a bare title.
- Witness — His friends keep what He tells them, and live it out in a world that hated both Him and the Father.