I was listening to a preacher the other day who said Jesus loves you and wants to be your friend. I started thinking about that and decided that Jesus was friendly, but not really my friend.
I do have friends. We share our lives with each other. We help each other, weep for each other, laugh with each other, care for each other. Some of my friends are Jewish, some catholic, some protestant and some agnostic. On important events in my life, I invite my friends. I go to dinner with them and occasionally travel with them.we give each other advice, some good and some bad, occasionally we disagree with each other. But we can overlook our differences.
But none of my friends will one day judge my life and decide if I go to Heaven or Hell. My friends would overlook my faults and sneak me into Heaven. Some of my friends would probably sneak me into Hell. But none will judge me for all eternity.
My friends also accept me as I am, while hoping my character flaws get better over time. But they will accept my flaws. Jesus constantly wants to improve me.. He sends trials and tests, He puts me in uncomfortable positions. He asks me to do things I don’t understand nor agree with. All because He doesn’t accept who I am, He wants to perfect me. His attitude seems to be…if you aren’t moving forward you ate moving backward.
Jesus is our Lord. I love the story of the lost sheep. The Shephard leaves the flick to find the missing sheep. Paintings depict the Shephard carrying the sheep on his shoulders back to the flock. I actually had sheep. I would go find the runaways and bring them back. I protected the sheep and took care of them. When they got big, I killed them and ate them. Shephard are not sheeps friend. They are the sheep’s master, sheep are valuable to them, so they take care of them. Jesus told that story to people who understood what a shepherd was, who knew that there was no friendship implied.
Jesus was a friend to the Apostles. Jesus died for them and they died for Jesus.He had a personal bond with them as a man ,that is different than we have with Jesus our God. Let me be more direct… we will never hear Jesus fart or burp, they did. We are not going to tell someone a joke we heard from Jesus, they did. The Apostles had an experience of Jesus that we cannot quite grasp, and don’t need to, but our experience is different. We experience the heavenly Jesus, the majestic Jesus, the salvific Jesus, Jesus the judge, the creator. Nit the Jesus who cooks fish for dinner.
can Jesus become our friend. I imagine in Heaven He becomes our friend. With no judgement on the horizon , we could actually sit around and become friends. We might even find out what flavor of ice cream He likes. But that is something we will find out only if we make it to Heaven. Presuming on Jesus, to be our friend and sneak us into Heaven seems to me to He a bad idea. We need to respect boundaries and remember who we are.
The musings of Peter 