Why did Jesus say, "I have called you friends" in John 15:15?

The fifth great mark of the Christian company is that they should be distinguished as being treated by the Lord as His friends. He can say: — "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants for the servant knows not what his Lord does: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known to you" (v. 15). It will be noticed that this high privilege of being treated as the friends of the Lord is contingent on our obedience to His commands. He has told us that His command is that we love one another. The company in which love prevails is the company that the Lord will treat as His friends. A friend is one in whom we confide; to whom we can freely unfold our thoughts, our feelings, and the purposes of our hearts. Obviously we only open our hearts to those in whose love we can trust. Believers have the true privilege to be the servants of the Lord. The Apostles Paul, Peter, John and James, as well as Jude, delight to describe themselves as the servants of the Lord Jesus (Rom. 1:1; 2 Peter 1:1; Rev. 1:1; Jude 1). But if the privilege of being servants is great, the privilege of being friends is yet greater. Viewed simply as servants we only need the plain directions of the Lord to carry out our allotted task. Treated as friends we are let into the secrets of the Lord's heart as to the great end of all service. Thus, treating His disciples as friends, the Lord can say, "All things that I have heard of my Father I have made known to you." Thus service can be taken up in the intelligence of the Lord's mind, in fellowship with the glorious end in view — the carrying out of the deep eternal counsels of the Father's heart.

A sixth mark of the Christian company is that they are chosen by the Lord. He can say: — "Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain" (v. 16). How blessed to realise that our eternal links with Christ do not depend upon our choice, but His. Knowing His absolute perfection, and that He is "altogether lovely," we might well have chosen Him. The wonder of grace is, that knowing all our imperfection, and foreseeing all our failures, He should have chosen us. Having chosen us, He will never go back on His choice. He may, indeed, have to deal with us because of our failures, but He never flings away His pearls because of the specks of dirt that may be found upon them. But not only has He chosen us to share with Him His home and Kingdom glories, but, in the meantime He has set us to serve Him and bring forth fruit that may abide, whether that fruit be souls saved by grace, or saints established in all the counsels of the Father's heart. Writing to the Colossian saints, the Apostle Paul can speak of the gospel of the grace of God coming to them and bringing forth fruit in the conversion of sinners. Writing to the saints at Rome, he expresses his desire to see them and impart some spiritual gift to them to the end that they might be established in the truth and that thus he might have "some fruit" among the saints (Col. 1:6; Rom. 1:11-13).

The disciples of the Lord Jesus were greatly favoured in being called His friends. Previously He had spoken of them as His sheep, and in resurrection He would call them His brethren, but now He says, "Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what His Lord doeth; but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." Great as was the privilege of being servants of the Lord, 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 possible for men to know.

(Vv. 14, 15). Fourthly the Christian company is a trusted company enriched with the confidences of Christ and the secret counsels of the Father's heart. The Lord treats His own not merely as servants, to whom directions are given, but as friends to whom secrets are communicated, for the Lord can say, "All things that I have heard of My Father I have made known to you." It is not indeed that the disciples were not 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 servant, as such, "knows not what His Lord does." He only knows the task allotted to him, and is only given the needed direction for its performance. The servant who is treated as a friend knows more; he is told the secret purpose of His Master for which the work is undertaken. And yet more, for a friend is one to whom we speak of our affairs knowing they will be of deepest interest to him though not directly concerning him. Thus it was that God treated Abraham — the man who is called the friend of God — He says "Shall I hide from Abraham the thing that I do?". But again we see that obedience to the Lord's commands secures the place of a friend, as before it retained the enjoyment of love. We shall know little of the counsels of the Father's heart unless we walk in obedience to the Lord's commands. Being in the path of obedience the Lord treats us as friends by the confidences to which He admits us, communicating to us all that He has heard of the Father.

(V. 16). Fifthly the Christian company is a chosen company, as the Lord says, "Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you." The choice was on His side, not ours. Blessed that it is so: had we, in some moment of emotional enthusiasm, chosen the Lord as our Master to go and bring forth fruit, we should, under the stress of circumstances, long since have turned back. The volunteers, that at times crossed the path of the Lord, received but small encouragement, and went but a little way with One who had not where to lay His head, and was ever in reproach with men. But of those He called He could say, "Ye are they which have continued with Me in My temptations" (Luke 6:13: Luke 9:1: Luke 22:28). Here it is surely no question of the sovereign choice to eternal life, but the love that chose and ordained us to bring forth fruit on earth, and that the fruit should abide. Blessedly fulfilled in the Apostles, for the graces of Christ expressed in their lives have made them examples to the flock for all time.

Obedience was the order, but He recognised them as friends. Then He makes known His mind. He tells them all things He had heard of His Father. What friendship! What friend to whom we could tell all things? I am that blessed friend. But the Lord tells all that, indeed known only to Him, and could be known only by Him, He tells it all to them. What friendship! How must the secret of the Father's love be in Him, and on us too; exercised in Him, that we should be the confidants of all that the Father makes known to Him! It was a great and astonishing endearment, and yet Lordship of friendship thus to communicate all His mind. And what was it but all the glory, not merely sent by Him, not in Jewish service to God, though by grace His servants, but as planted in the character of the resurrection friends of Christ?

Greater love none has than to lay down his life for his friends. The love of God in Jesus went infinitely beyond this; but then necessarily it stands alone, and it is meet that it should. We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren, as we are taught elsewhere. But where is the worth of such a theory if we fail in everyday going out of heart to common wants and sufferings of God's children (1 John 3:17-18)? The Lord at once binds love up with obedience, without which it is but self-pleasing, not having Him in it or before the soul. "Ye are My friends if ye do what (ever) I command you." It is not reconciling enemies He speaks of, but why He calls us His friends. Obedience is the character and condition. Nor does He here indicate how He stood as our friend when we were enemies, but He calls us His friends if we practise what He enjoins on His disciples.291

Is this all? Far from it. He treats us as friends according to His perfect love, for He lets us into His secrets, instead of merely pressing our duty. "No longer do I call you bondmen, for the bondman knoweth not what his Lord doeth; but you I have called friends, because all things whatsoever I heard from my Father I made known to you." He who of old was called "the friend of God" enjoyed this intimacy with his Almighty protector in the midst of the doomed races he lived amongst, a separated and circumcised pilgrim; and so it is with His own now that the Lord deals in still more lavish grace; for what did He keep back? In another sense it is our boast to be His bondmen, as one said who was pre-eminently separated to the Gospel of God. But none the less — indeed, very much more truly — do we enter in, and value and act on the free communication of His love if we are habitually obedient, as we may see in Joseph of old or in Daniel later. It ought to be, it is in principle, the cherished privilege of the Church thus to know His mind, and by it to interpret the tangled web of human life or even the world's changing fortunes; but practically we must be exercised and constant in obedience if the privilege is to be a living reality and not a bare title. Christendom has given it up, counting it nothing but presumption, and content to walk by sight, not by faith, in denial of its privilege.

But God is faithful, and there are those who, walking obedient to His word, enter into what He has made known, and find the blessing. Doubtless the responsibility is great no less than the privilege; and therefore do His own need to be cheered with the grace that underlies all. Hence it is that He adds, "Not ye chose Me, but I chose you, and appointed (or set) you that ye should go and bear fruit, and your fruit abide; that whatever ye may ask the Father in My name, He may give you. These things I command, that ye love one another."

Blessing ever comes from the Lord Jesus and the grace that is in Him. Obedience follows, and ought to follow, such unmerited favour, as in obedience there is surely fresh blessing. But the heart needs to turn from our obedience or its blessing to the Blesser, if it would escape fresh dangers and positive evil; the spring of power is never known save in Him, and the grace that sought and found, saves and blesses. Hence it was of the greatest moment, in pressing the Divine government of the saints, that they should ever remember Him and His sovereign will, as the source of all that distinguished them. Not they chose Christ, but He chose them. Nor was it only to know and follow their Master. He appointed, or set, them that they should go and bear fruit, and their fruit should abide. Though Apostles, they were His friends to obey Him all the more. "Ordained" suggests another line of things foreign to the passage and connection. In Acts 1:22 the same word, as is commonly known, is foisted into the Authorised Version, for it has no counterpart implied in the Greek.

Verse 15. As He is about to suffer, He no longer calls His disciples servants, but friends; for a servant's place is not to enter into and understand his master's affairs in such a way as the master may desire to make known to his friends. So the Lord had made known to His disciples all that the Father had given Him as matters of revelation. At the time their understanding of it was no doubt very limited, but His imminent death and resurrection and the coming of the Spirit of God would illuminate these things for them in a most wonderful measure.

The credit for this was in no way due to them, but to Him: He had chosen them, not they Him (v. 16). He had ordained, or appointed them for the purpose of going out in the world to bear fruit. It is He only who ordains His messengers: this is never to be in the hands of any man or group of men. Christ is the source of their authority, and the source by whom they bear fruit, for He is the vine. Fruit from this source will abide. Then He confirms what He had said in verse 7, but adds the value of His own name in reference to their prayers to the Father. The Father honors the name of the Son, and that which accords with the proper honor of that name will receive its answer from the Father.

One thing more is connected with it in verse 14, "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." Oh, how unspeakable the privilege! to be treated not as servants who receive their orders, and that is all, but as the trusted friends of Christ to whom He communicates His mind — all things that He has heard of the Father — so as to be the depositaries of it in a world that has seen and hated both Him and the Father, and be formed by it as witnesses for Him.

374 "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends; ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you." He does not say He is the friend of sinners here; He speaks of their being His friends if they did what He commanded. Still our responsibility. He is treating them with perfect confidence. The true disciple He treats with the confidence of being His friend, otherwise He was betraying the confidence of His Father in telling His secrets. If I go to a person on a matter of business, I merely tell him my business, and have done with him; but if I go to a friend, I can tell him all that is on my own mind, even about what does not concern him at all, having full confidence in his love and his interest in what concerns me. "Henceforth I call you not servants but friends, for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." Whatever I have had in my heart I have told you. What a place He sets us in! How we ought to hate ourselves for the constant way in which self hinders us from this blessed place of enjoyment. But what a comfort to the restored soul it is to find, that when we have learnt totally to distrust ourselves, Christ strengthens us and trusts us. He did so to Peter by those three questions - "Lovest thou me?" When Peter replies, You know, Lord, that I love you, He puts confidence in him, and says, "Feed my sheep; feed my lambs." But until all that is in us is perfectly humbled, He cannot put trust or confidence in us. How could He do it, when we cannot trust ourselves?

At verse 12 another part of the subject begins. He wills (this is His commandment) that they should love one another, as He had loved them. Before, He had spoken of the Father's love for Him, which flowed from heaven into His heart here below. He had loved them in this same way; but He had also been a companion, a servant, in this love. Thus the disciples were to love one another with a love that rose above all the weaknesses of others, and which was at the same time brotherly, and caused the one who felt it to be the servant of his brother. It went so far as to lay down life itself for one's friends. Now, to Jesus, he who obeyed Him was His friend. Observe, He does not say that He would be their friend. He was our friend when He gave His life for sinners: we are His friends when we enjoy His confidence, as He here expresses it — "I have told you all things that I have heard of my Father." Men speak of their affairs, according to the necessity of doing so which may arise, to those who are concerned in them. I impart all my own thoughts to one who is my friend. "Shall I hide from Abraham the thing that I will do?" and Abraham was called the "friend of God." Now it was not things concerning Abraham himself that God then told Abraham (He had done so as God), but things concerning the world — Sodom. God does the same with respect to the assembly, practically with respect to the obedient disciple: such a one should be the depositary of His thoughts. Moreover, He had chosen them for this. It was not they who had chosen Him by the exercise of their own will. He had chosen them and ordained them to go and bring forth fruit, and fruit that should remain; so that, being thus chosen of Christ for the work, they should receive from the Father, who could not fail them in this case, whatsoever they should ask. Here the Lord comes to the source and certainty of grace, in order that the practical responsibility, under which He puts them, should not cloud the divine grace which acted towards them and placed them there.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). This is entirely a different thing to laying down His life for sinners; here it is for His friends; it is the intenseness of His love; I sacrifice Myself for him. He does not say, I am your Friend, but we are His friends, He was the Friend of sinners, when He gave His life for them. We are His friends when we enjoy His confidence. He is showing how we walk in and keep the place of friends, He has treated them as friends. If I have a friend I tell him what is in my mind that is not concerning him at all. I impart all my thoughts to one who is my friend. The obedient one is the depositary of Jesus' thoughts. God told Abraham the things that concerned Sodom. And Abraham was called "The Friend of God" (James 2:23). The Lord always treated His disciples according to the place they were brought into; that is, as possessing it all. He speaks to His disciples as in possession of the things, though they had not realized them in the least. This was their own stupidity. Here the Lord comes to the source and certainty of grace in order that the practical responsibility under which He puts them should not cloud: for they were there. He had put them in the place of "friends," so He says, "If you want to walk in the place that is the way"; "ye are My friends, if ye do whatever I command you." He had chosen them for this.