Jesus gave his life in love for others and always spoke and acted boldly-‘mark of friendship’

FRIENDS

Jesus gave his life in love for others and always spoke and acted boldly-‘mark of friendship’

Scenario:

Joe is my best friend,” says a seven-year-old about the eight-year-old girl who lives two doors down from him.”

“I do not know how Joe would define friendship.”

The expression of friendship can be defined or evidenced when they walk to school or return together or when they take a special trip to the library or play with one another at weekends. Their friendship is apparent when they fall into each other’s arms almost every time they see one another.

This friendship is much more than a sweet diversion or something about which the adults in their lives can be sentimental about.

The formation of friendship bond is among the first acts of socialization that a child makes outside the nuclear family.

We choose our friends in ways that we do not and cannot choose our families.

The ability and inclination to establish friendship bonds are therefore, key to the formation of a social network later in life.

Friendship moves a person from being a private individual to a member of a social group based on something beyond kinship.

The popular television show “Friends” characterizes this social reality.

Despite the absurdities of its plots and the economic ease with which its protagonists live in New York City, the show has created a world in which community is defined and built by the bonds of friendship, not family.
Friendship, then, is not simply about affection but also about social roles and responsibilities.

Friendship is not defined exclusively by what the individual “feels” for another (although affection is definitely a part of friendship).

Friendship is at least as much about the social responsibilities that accompany friendship as it is about how people choose their friends.

Acts of friendship must transcend the volatility of emotions.

We need to learn about social expectations and obligations through friendship and also learn how to put our feelings for one another (affection) into practice.

This combination of affection, social choice, obligation, and practice has made friendship a perennially intriguing topic as well as an important category of theological reflection, especially among theologians who are drawn to the patterns of reciprocity found in friendship.

God as a friend and the Christian community as a community of friends are important themes that emerge.

Friendship as a social and theological virtue has been given considerable attention in the New Testament as well because it is a virtue that the New Testament shares with the culture the early Christian.

Friendship was an especially popular topic in ancient Greece and Rome, as philosophers and storytellers attempted to define the social and moral virtues and the characteristics of a good society.

Even though there is a consistency of the word across centuries used to discuss friendship, there is no consistency of emphasis or definition.

Friendship is a socially embedded phenomenon, and as the social fabric of a culture shifts, so does the understanding of the role and place of friendship in society.

To be a good friend was by definition also to be a good citizen.

Friendship remained a social virtue and moral value but was enacted in a different arena. Take the example of the Houses of Common in the UK, where MPs on the same side-address each other as “My honourable Friend”. In this context, they express their reliance on the virtues of honesty of one another in their deliberations.

Frankness of speech, by common report and belief, is the language of friendship especially and on the other hand, the lack of frankness is unfriendly.

Early Christian understandings of friendship took shape in this diverse social context with its intentional reflection on friendship.

It has been said that friends had all things in common. This can be true in many circumstances

In the Book of Acts, it portrays the early Christian community as living- out this value (Acts 2:44-47). This provides a starting point for a discussion of friendship and community as in Acts.17, about the reception of Paul, Silas and Timothy by the Christian Community in Thessalonica, Berea and Athens.

FRIENDSHIP IN JOHN
The Gospel of John is a pivotal text for the discussion of friendship in the New Testament. The vocabulary of friendship is found at key moments in the narrative of the book.

Friendship is one of the ways in which the revelation of God in Jesus is extended beyond the work of Jesus to the work of the disciples.

One of the pivotal texts in Jesus’ words of instruction and farewell to his disciples is John 15:12-17, in which Jesus calls the disciples “friends” and enjoins them to acts of friendship.

The word “friend” in John carried many associations for John’s first readers. Modern readers cannot completely recapture those associations, but they can at least recognize that John did not create the theme of friendship.

Awareness of cultural embeddedness helps modern readers see that friendship is not a universal term for all times and cultures.

“Laying down one’s life for a friend.” Jesus’ words in John 15:13 seem unprecedented for a modern friend. Jesus’ saying has precedent as a model for the ultimate friend.

The point is not that more people laid down their lives for their friends in the first century than are inclined to do so today. Rather, the possibility of doing so belonged to the ancient rhetoric of friendship.

FRIENDSHIP, LOVE, AND DEATH
The offer of Jesus’ life, receives the most attention in studies of friendship. It is widely recognized among scholars that the notion of laying down one’s life for one’s friends represents a classical theme of friendship.

In fact, the opposite is more likely the case-the connection with a well-known convention enhances John’s presentation of Jesus.

For the first readers of John’s gospel, the link with friendship theme helped lay the groundwork for what John was teaching about Jesus’ death.

Classical and popular philosophy held up the noble death as the ultimate act of friendship, Jesus’ teaching in John fits a recognizable pattern.

Jesus’ words in John 15:13, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

In the teachings about laying down one’s life for a friend, the gospel’s first readers would have recognized that Jesus is evoking a world in which the greatest moral good prevails.

What distinguishes John 15:13 from other teachings on friendship and death is that Jesus does not merely talk about laying down his life for his friends, his life is an incarnation of this teaching. Jesus did lay down his life for his friends.

This makes all the difference in appropriating friendship as a theological category. The pattern of Jesus’ own life and death moves the teaching of John 15:13 from the realm of abstraction to an embodied promise and gift.

John 10:11-“I am the good shepherd,”… The good shepherd “lays down his life for the sheep” – he puts at risk his own life.  This parable could be taken as an illustration of the classical distinction between the true and the false friend-the false friend will not be around in a time of crisis, but the true friend will be.

In John 16:25-33 at the end of the Farewell discourse and immediately preceding the Farewell Prayer (John 17) contains Jesus’ last words of instruction to his disciples. He has conquered the world.

Jesus contrasts his present speaking to his disciples, which has been “in figures of speech” with his teaching (“the hour is coming”), in which he “will tell you plainly of the Father” (v. 25).

The contrast between figurative and direct speech tends to shape the interpretation of these verses, but again one wonders if friendship conventions suggest another context in which to read Jesus’ words here, Jesus links the effects of the teaching “you will ask in my name” with the Father’s love of the disciples and the disciples’ love of Jesus.
Love and friendship are the goal of Jesus’ “plain speaking.” Rather than simply initiating fresh comprehension on the disciples’ part, Jesus leads them to trust the relationship of love and friendship that they have with God and Jesus and thus to speak to God on their own without the mediation of Jesus’ speech on their behalf (v. 26).

 Jesus points the disciples to a different way of being with God and one another.

This is why Jesus disputes the disciples’ claim to comprehend his plain speaking and hence to believe.

The combination of plain speaking and love is also found in Jesus’ words to the disciples about friendship in 15:15.

Jesus gives the following rationale for calling the disciples friends: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known everything that I have heard from the Father.” The disciples are Jesus’ friends because he has spoken to them openly; he has made known to them everything that he has heard from the Father.

“Jesus enables his disciples to participate in the intimacy and trust of the Father, by means of which they acquire that Openness’ which is the privilege of a free man and a friend”. In this verse, friendship, love and open speech, come together in Jesus’ relationship with his disciples.

They are his friends because he speaks plainly and openly to them and tells them everything about God (15:15; 16:25) and because he loves them and gives his life for them (13:1; 15:12-13). They will remain his friends if they keep his commandment and love one another as he has loved them (15:14, 17).

Researched and written by Chief Sam Duru

Igbo Christian Fellowship International, UK

March 2015