No longer do I call you servants, but friends; for everything that I have heard from the Father I will declare to you.

John 15:15

How do you do the friend thing? Are you a BFF kind of person, with one or two people who are really close to you? Or do you engage a large group of others who are more like strong acquaintances?

The way we answer the friendship question often depends on a variety of personal characteristics. Men and women, introverts and extroverts, people with different family backgrounds all display different friend patterns. Joanne (my wife) has a group of a half-dozen women with whom she maintains the kind of closeness that involves regular phone calls, texting and email, and the occasional visit. I, on the other hand, have a large number of friends where interaction would seem to indicate that we hardly know each other. And yet whenever we meet it is as if we have been constantly conversing and sharing our lives.

All of this opens some obvious questions: What or who is a friend? And what exactly is friendship? The banality and superficiality of our social-media society confuse the issues and terms here. Are you really “friends” with the 2,000 people who describe themselves as such on your Facebook page? Is someone a friend simply because they work or attend school with us? Do we talk about various individuals as friends simply so that we can feel secure in building a friend hoard? It seems that we have come to a place where words that really should count for much have lost much of their true meaning.

So how do we go about understanding and defining friendship? Interestingly enough, there aren’t many attempts to answer the question outside the realm of children’s literature (e.g. Frog and Toad, Winnie-the Pooh). What exists for adults is primarily for and about women’s relationships, mostly writings in the form of memoirs. Kind of confirms what I thought about the men’s side of things.

One exception is the chapter on friendship in C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves. In Lewis’ view, we find and become friends through certain intensive shared experiences and interests that transcend the context of circumstances. Friendship is born out of the discovery that some vision that we thought was ours alone is also the province of another human person.*

While Lewis is mainly delving into human relationships, I think he begins to open the door to what it means to be friends with God. Because, as incomprehensible as it seems, this is what Scripture calls us.

What does that even mean? Can we put “God” on our FB friends list? Is he my hunting buddy, my coffee shop companion, part of my book club circle? Is there clear biblical content that would help us make sense of our status?

When we look at explicit mentions of being God’s friends, several things stand out. First of all, the relationship is obviously vastly uneven. I remember as a young teen having an older man befriend and help me with a job, with wisdom, and with advice. It was clearly not a meeting of equals, but he made me as close to a peer as he could. The experience was a means of growing up in a way that hanging out with my pals could never have accomplished.

But my encounter with an older mentor was just an analogy, falling far short of the full distance that naturally exists between God and us. All the initiating, all the naming, the calling, the choosing are on his side. In a profound sense, it is the humility of God that makes friendship possible. He decides not only to love us, but to like us, as well.

Being loved, liked, accepted into God’s “circle” is remarkable enough. And yet his friendship leads us into the real heart of intimacy, which is mutual self-disclosure. To make this statement is to describe another mismatch. We have nothing, and are nothing, that is outside the Lord’s knowledge. He, on the other hand, is mystery beyond imagining until he reveals himself to us.

How great it is, then, that the Triune God makes known his nature and character, both in descriptive terms and in works of power, grace, and mercy. And he does not do so just in general ways such as in Exodus 34 (the self-portrait that the Lord draws for Israel). That would be incredible enough, but he goes much further.

Maybe the best way to summarize what the “further” is would be to use Psalms 25:14. The Psalmist declares that the Lord is a friend to those who fear him. The Hebrew word – sod – is a complex one that maintains a range of related meanings such as counsel, secrets, confidence, intimacy, and conversation. It takes God out of his infinite transcendence and brings him into a consoling companionship that can only come from his nature as Trinity. He just doesn’t do the loner schtick.

The idea of divine friendship finds expression in several passages, such as Genesis 18:17, where the Lord asks, “How can I hide from Abraham what I am going to do?” Similarly, Moses “spoke face to face with God, as one speaks with a close companion” (Ex 33:11). And – in the verse that Christians have heard a jillion times – Jesus tells his disciples that he now calls them friends who know the very things that the Father and Son shared together (John 15:15).

We are not talking trivialities here. It’s not like telling someone that you’re going to water the garden now, or leaving for Buffalo in the morning. What God is about involves sharing his life with his children. He uses countless ways to communicate his heart and mind to us. He speaks in prophecy; appears in visions and dreams; displays his power in miracles and acts of deliverance.

Above all, God’s desire to know and be known as a friend comes to us in the form of a (The) Human. Not a thundering voice, a cataclysm of judgment, or a demonstration of overwhelming majesty – but a gift of Self. If I’m allowed to say this, God with us in the image of humanity, but without the pretense, the hubris, the protective shell that arises from our sinful fear of being “found out.”

This is true friendship, with nothing held back. An unconditionally loving Friend who rejoices to see us prosper. An enduring friendship, not put off by our often clumsy and inept attempts at intimacy.

Perhaps friendship with God (or even with others) is a foreign idea, or even a frightening one. We may want to flee such vulnerability; to avoid such honest disclosure; to keep a proper distance from what feels like an invasion of privacy. But he wants to be near, closer and more constant than any other could be. He is walking with us. He speaks, not just to tell us what to do (which is his right as Lord), but to tell us who he is and what he is doing.

Holy Spirit, slow our steps, uncloud our minds, purify our hearts, open our eyes to see and our ears to hear. Draw us to the Bridegroom so that, without fear, we can taste the joy of being his friends.