Nuestro mejor amigo

The Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. Therefore, go around the world teaching and preaching the gospel to every creature, to the end of the earth. En Contacto, the ministry of biblical teaching of Dr. Charles Stanley. Today on En Contacto, our best friend. Who is your best, best friend? You will say, well, I have more than one. Well, let me ask you, what was the first thing that attracted you to that person, that you had in particular? What was it that finally made you one of his best friends? Maybe you say, his appearance. Perhaps that is not the most appropriate way to find a friend, because the most important thing in a friend is something inside that person, his individuality. But very often, we are attracted to various things, someone's personality, his gifts, or anything else. But who is your best friend or friends? No matter who your best friend is, sometimes there are misunderstandings and disappointments in life. Sometimes, perhaps, feelings of rejection. And all of that is painful, especially if it is someone very dear to you, someone you have been friends with for a long time, or even recently. Going through those misunderstandings, disappointments, feelings of rejection and resentment is very difficult. Well, today I want to introduce you to a friend who will be like no other that you have had. And I can assure you this, he will never misunderstand you,

he will never disappoint you, he will never reject you, nor will he ever leave you alone, no matter what happens. This friend is the best of all, and he is Jesus, the Son of the Living God. I invite you to look at chapter 15 of John, where Jesus Christ speaks of this same subject, of his friendship with us. Right at the beginning of this chapter, Jesus Christ speaks of the relationship we have with him, he speaks of the vine, and of the branches, and of the closeness of that relationship. Then he proceeds to speak of this whole subject, of his friendship with us, and he says from verse 12, This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, that one put his life for his friends. You are my friends, and you do what I command you. I will no longer call you servants, because the servant does not know what his lord does. But I have called you friends, because all the things I heard from my Father, I have given you to know. You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I have put you to go, if you take fruit, and your fruit remain,

so that whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. This is my commandment, that you love one another. Most people do not see Jesus as their friend. We see God in heaven, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. We consider him our Savior, Master, and Lord. We know that he is the Sovereign of the Universe, who governs over all things, and controls all things. Now, how can we see him, visualize him, how can we imagine him as a friend, if he is the Savior of the whole world? If he is the Lord and Master of life, and he is the Sovereign of the Universe, he is the Creator of all, how can I relate to him? He is the Supreme Governing and Sovereign Controller and Creator of all things, how can he be my personal friend? If you are going through difficult circumstances in your life, and do not understand exactly what is happening, and would like things to change, and would like things to improve, and you ask God, why not, it could happen that perhaps you have forgotten that you have a friend, par excellence,

who is willing to be your friend, if you allow it. So I encourage you to listen carefully, because Jesus has expressed his relationship with us as a friend. He said to his disciples, look at this passage, here he said to them, you are my friends, and you do what I command you. I will no longer call you servants, because the servant does not know what his lord does, but I have called you friends, because all the things I heard from my father, Now, what it says here, what it says is one of the evidences of friendship, an evidence of friendship can be found in me, so I want us to see how he expresses his friendship and how he has expressed his friendship with us, and one of those ways of expressing his friendship is in his love denied by us. That was what he did when we were his enemies, without a doubt. He denied his life in love for us to make us his friends. So Jesus Christ is the, is the, listen, he is the friend of every person without exception. He wants to be a friend of each one of us, but if I reject him and deny myself to relate to him, I deny him and exclude him from my life, even if he wants to be my friend, he will not be able to express his friendship fully, he cannot express it in the many ways he wants to manifest it until we are willing to recognize the fact that he is the son of God, that he is the Savior, the Lord, the master, and that he wants to be my intimate, genuine and loving friend, who will be closer than a brother, who can make promises that no one else can make, and who can do things that no one else could do, and who can empower us all to achieve and achieve in life what no one else could help us achieve, achieve and capture. He is that kind of very special friend.

So one of the main ways to express his friendship is in his expiatory death. A second way is this, and it is the fact that he takes the initiative in the relationship. Let's see, please, let's see verse 16. He takes the initiative. He says, You did not choose me, but I chose you, and I have put you to go, and if you take fruit and your fruit remains, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you. He tells us this, we did not choose to become his friends, he chose to become our friend. of his choice. All who have responded so that we can reach him, and have accepted him as our Savior and the forgiveness of our sins, now we will have the ability to see our Lord Jesus Christ as our friend from our perspective. Now we can be his friends, and he has now become our friend and we can have a very close relationship. The relationship is no longer that Jesus is up there, sitting at the right hand of the Father, but now Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father, but he also lives within us. In the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, we have a perennial friend. He chose us, he took the initiative, he did not see anything in us that would make us truly worthy to be our friend. It was not the result of our works, nor the result of good attributes or characteristics of our own. He did it for his unconditional love for us, he decided that he wanted to be our friend, he wanted in fact to be able to empower us to fulfill his purpose and plan for our life, and that is why he decided to be our friend. So what did he do? He came to earth to walk in the midst of humanity, so that you and I could understand that he understands the kind of Savior, the kind of Lord, the kind of master he is, but also the kind of friend he can be. One who could see someone sick and say, friend, I'm going to heal you.

One who could see a group of people who listened to him and say, friends, I want you to listen carefully. One who could relate to the most detestable, the most sinful, the most rejected among all society. And when others saw how he related to them, they said, that man is a friend of sinners and publicans. One who could come to the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, love them and be considered his friend, consider them his friends, and he told them that he loved them. So when we see this passage and when we formulate this question, who took the initiative? It is very evident that he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. Now I will ask you a question. Among your friends, for the most part, among all your friends, whether you have two or three or many friends, who usually takes the initiative? Are you the kind of person who expects someone else to take the initiative? Are you the kind of person who is reserved and a little shy, a little restrained, and is not extroverted, and is aware that he is a little introverted, so he is not the type of person who takes a step forward and says, hello, how are you, and makes a friendship? Who made the most of the introduction, the most of the initiative in your friendships? Well, I can tell you, who took the initiative in your relationship with Christ, and it was Jesus Christ himself. He always takes the initiative, he planned it, he proposed to do it, he determined it, and he did it. The question is, how have you responded to his invitation to be your friend? What has he said all these years of life, when God has expressed to him in so many ways that he loves him, that he cares for him, and that he wants the best for you? How have you responded to that? Have you decided to reject him, exclude him, and block him? Or have you recognized that his invitation was a wonderful gesture of love and closeness with the same God of the universe? Think about it. God, who created everything, says, I want to be your friend. If you allow me, I will be a very loyal, close, and loving friend to you. Another way to express his friendship and love for us was this.

And it is with the revolutionary effect that our life has. When we become children of God, something happens. Listen to this. When you become a child of God, when you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, there is a revolutionary effect. Everything changes. Your spirit changes, your heart, your soul. In other words, your eternal destiny changes. Everything begins to change. Your perspective on things. But you know, when you become a friend of Jesus, when you already are, when we begin to recognize him as our friend, something else is going to happen. The relationship we have through which we see him as Savior, Master, Lord, God, and Sovereign, and Creator, suddenly you know what happens? It is as if he came out of heaven, came to earth, to our level, and we relate to him in a different way. Now, I want you to look at something in this passage, a part that perhaps could be misinterpreted. Look at what he says in verse 15. He says, I will no longer call you servants, because the servant does not know what his Lord does. But I have called you friends, because all the things I heard from my Father I have given you to know. Now what he was saying was, one of the ways, one of the ways in which I have expressed my friendship to you, speaking to the disciples,

one of the ways in which he expresses his feeling of friendship is that he has told us, and he has revealed to us things that we would not know otherwise. And he also told you about how to trust him. He had also told you how the Father loves you. He spoke to you about heaven. He even spoke to you about hell. He spoke to you about close relationships. He also spoke to you about what would happen to you. He spoke to you about how the Pharisees and Sadducees would betray him. He told you that he was going to die and that he would be buried. He explained to you about his resurrection. And he told you how he would ascend to heaven, and that he would be with the Father, and then he would return with his holy angels, and he would conclude one of these days, and he would take it all to an end. He explained all these things to you. You heard what no man had heard. He did not tell you all at the time what he shared with his disciples. He shared with them things that perhaps no one else could know. Someone who is a genuine and close friend of a person will reveal and tell the other person things that they will not tell anyone else. Do you have the kind of friend with whom you can be confidential, and tell him things that you know you would never tell anyone else? Do you have the kind of friendship that knows that you can confide in him a secret and will remain a secret? Jesus told you, not necessarily secrets, but he told you, I have revealed, I have removed the covers,

I have removed the lid of the pot, and you can see inside all the things that my Father told me. I have told you all this because I am your friend, and I want to be a close friend of yours. And the only way to be that kind of friend is to share our hearts, our minds, what we know, what we experience, what we feel, what we have gone through, the things that we have endured. This is exactly what Jesus does, right? Let us now look at verse 14, another verse that I want to read. You are my friends if you do what I command you. Now, that does not mean, the emphasis of that verse is not, I will let you be my friends if you do such a thing. In other words, you don't have to do anything to be his friend. We are not up to anything to be saved. We are saved by the grace of God, his kindness, love, and mercy towards us, without taking into account our merit or whatever. We say that it is the undeserved favor of God. So his friendship towards us is not based on our merit, but on his unconditional love. So when he says, You are my friends if you do what I command you, the emphasis here is, listen, you will be transformed. In other words, this relationship will be wonderful if you do what I command you. And notice what he said, what is my commandment? That you love one another, he said. When you begin to love one another, something will happen. Then your life, your life, listen, your life will be so transformed that after that you will live what I wish for you, that you love one another. So one of the things that happens to all of us, those of us who love the Lord Jesus, is that we can love someone else.

In fact, the more we love the Lord Jesus Christ, listen, the greater our ability to love someone else will be. Because look, the more we love him, the more like him we will become. And the more we are like him, the greater our ability to love others will be, in the same way that he has loved us. Abnegated love. Take the initiative. Open our hearts. Open our souls. Open our minds. Do everything that intimate, genuine, and close friends can do. However, many here will live in loneliness all their lives. They will have many occasional friends. Perhaps some will be close. But until you discover the closeness that comes between Jesus Christ and another person, you will never be able to experience friendship at that level. You will never be able to express friendship to someone else to the same degree that you can when you love the Lord Jesus Christ and recognize the great friend that he is for you. So let me ask you, Who do you love? What friendship do you have to such a degree that you would face, without a doubt, what was necessary to protect your lives? Do you have such a close friend who is so appreciated that you would literally offer your physical life for him? Perhaps you will say, Are you talking about family? Well, yes. Even a relative. Oh, yes. Are you sure?

And what about someone who is not your relative? Someone who is just a friend? You will say, I love this friend. Do you love him so much that you would give your life for him? I think there are people who would. But I think that on many occasions we consider ourselves genuine friends, close to someone, but we have our limits. Let's look at this verse in another way. Here it says, No one has greater love than this, that one gives his life for his friends. Now listen carefully. Offering my life for my friend not only includes the possibility of doing it physically, but what else does it mean to offer my life? That I am willing to leave my goals for him or for her. Am I willing to leave my plans for him or for her? Am I willing to leave my ideas, my desires, my needs? Am I willing to offer my life so that the other person can accomplish their task because I love them? Look, when it comes to becoming a Christian and living to have a very close relationship with Jesus Christ, we must give our life. We must leave our old life. We must leave our old ideas and old perspectives on certain things, and sometimes we must leave old friends. Because sometimes the commandment of the Lord Jesus Christ is very demanding. Because he wants the best for us, we must offer our life and say, Lord, I no longer want to live my life, but to live your life in me and through me. Look, he wants a very close relationship. He wants to be the kind of friend that is not occasional, nor distant, but warm, intimate, and personal, as intimate and personal as only God himself can be. He expresses his love in various ways.

Another way I think he expresses his love to all of us is because he challenges us. Listen, he challenges us to be the best and to achieve it. Now a lot of people listen to sermons, read books, and sing hymns, for example. We sing, Oh Christ, I love you, how mine are you. Oh, what a friend is Christ to us. There is no other faithful friend like Jesus, you know. We sing those hymns, they come to our mind, fill our lips without feeling them. I wonder how many of you consider Jesus your friend. I can sing, Oh Christ, I love you, how mine are you. While I'm thinking about something else all the time because I know the lyrics. Oh, what a friend is Christ to us. He took our pain. We can sing those hymns, read those lyrics without even thinking. I mean, it comes to our mind, to our lips, without any feeling. Jesus Christ wants to be, listen, an effective friend. Someone we love, someone we value, and someone we desire. Because that is Him for us. He is the one who has revealed Himself. He wants us to reach our potential. That's what he means in this passage, listen. He said, You did not choose me, but I chose you, and I have put you, I have put you so that you may go and bear fruit, and your fruit may remain. And you will say to your apostles, You know what? He says that we all must bear fruit. The first quality fruit we bear is the fruit of the Spirit, of love, pleasure, peace, goodness, meekness, kindness, and self-dominance. Those are attributes of that kind of relationship, but also fruit in good works, giving ourselves unconditionally to other people, doing good works, serving God in the different ways He wants to call us. One way He expresses His love for us is by challenging us to be better.

I don't think anyone can be their best version if Christ is not their friend. He will never be able to achieve everything that God has arranged for you until He is your friend. Far from Him, you will never be able to achieve what God wants to achieve in your life. The question is, do you want to be His friend? He is a friend available to everyone, without exception. But is He your friend? From His perspective, He is our friend. But is He my friend from my perspective? Or have you been one of those people who have spent their lives not being very interested in Him being their friend? Do you know when most people seek Christ? When they are down. Do you know when they cry the most? When they are most down. Do you know when their lack of faith, their skepticism, and their atheism collapse without opposition? When they know that they have no choice and they wait for Christians to be right. And they cry out to a God they don't know, to a Jesus whom they have only heard of. And finally, when they recognize Him and are saved, do you know that that friend had always been there, and they had ignored Him? All of us, without exception, will go from life to death. Suppose you die without Christ as your friend. Let me ask you a question. Then what? If you die and Christ is not your friend, then what? You say, I suppose I will disappear.

Oh, that's not true. I suppose I will evaporate. No, you won't. If you die without Christ being your friend, are you aware that you will be eternally separated? Forever and ever from the one who loved you so much throughout your life, who offered his life in sacrifice for you, because he loves you, because he loves you, and he wanted to forge a close relationship with you. If you die without him, it would be better not to have ever been born. To be alive without him is a tragedy. When you can clearly live, understand, and experience life to the fullest, because that is what he wants us to achieve, he is that kind of friend. Now, if you are one of those people who say, how does all this apply in my case? I am not a Christian. Well, first of all, I will say that you need to be one. You need to accept Christ as your personal savior, because you know what? As much as he wants to be your friend, he cannot be all that if you reject him as a friend. And if you are willing to ask him to forgive your sins, and you are willing to accept him as your personal savior, which only means that you believe that his death on the cross paid off all your debt of sin. and accepts him as Savior, that his sins are forgiven, his name written in the Book of the Lamb,

he is the Son of God forever, and Jesus becomes his friend. He is a friend available if you allow him to be. Perhaps you are a believer and have never thought of him as your friend. I want to encourage you to review that list, and then ask yourself, do I really see Jesus Christ this way in my life? Do I really think he loves me so much? Do I think he is so real to do everything I need him to be? He is, and he will be, if he allows it. He will prove to you that he is the best friend of all. Father, how much we thank you for sending the Son of God, your beloved Son, to be our friend and Savior. I ask that the Holy Spirit take these simple truths and let them probe our hearts. Show us how we compare ourselves, the kind of friends we are, but above all, the kind of friend that Christ is to us, and therefore respond with love for him, obedience to him, and service to him. In his name we pray, amen.