How Friendship with Jesus Impacts Friendship with Others

In Jesus, we have a friend who knows more about our sins than we know about ourselves. Still, he loves us with a love that refuses to quit, that will never let go. If we understand this and we make our friendship with Jesus the central reality in our life, two things can happen.

1. We will have right expectations

Centering our life around our relationship, and friendship, with Jesus allows us to have the right expectations of our earthly friends. We won’t expect too much from them, because we already have the ultimate and eternal best friend that a human being can have.

2. We can be authentic friends with others

Second, a friendship with Jesus allows us to be real and authentic friends to those in our circle. Because we are secure in our undying friendship with Jesus, we can offer ourselves to others with freedom and service—not in a consumeristic manner that says, “I will give you something in exchange for you giving me something” but in a manner that replicates the way Jesus is a friend to us. Jesus came to serve, rather than to be served. That can be our model.

Jesus came so that when we are at our worst, he is at his best. And that can be our model.

Undying Friendship

I was in high school a long time ago, and during that time, I became a Christian. I still remember how sweet it was when I first chose to have an undying friendship with Jesus during my senior year. That friendship how set me free from the desperate need to find a group of friends who could satisfy something deep in me that only Jesus can fulfill.