By Julia Qiuye Zhao

You are my friends if you do what I command you. 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 to you everything that I have heard from my Father. —John 15:14-15

When I first encountered the idea of Jesus as friend, I was not all that impressed.

Friendship seemed to be too ordinary, too common, to describe what we have with Jesus. After all, we call lots of people friends, of all degrees of intimacy. In the era of social media, we can be Facebook friends for years with people with whom we hardly, if ever, have contact. I longed to claim Jesus as my Lord, my Savior, and the One who loves me beyond measure, and friendship just didn’t seem to fit the bill. 

John 15:14-15, often quoted as the Scriptural framework for Jesus being our Friend, also seemed confusing to me. Jesus says: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” If I were to tell a friend: “You are my friend if you do whatever I tell you to do,” would that seem like a very good friendship? I didn’t think so! I accepted it because it was in Scripture, however I never interacted much with the idea of Jesus as Friend. 

That is, until I worked on this text in preparation for a sermon. I had just preached, the week before, on Jesus being the true Vine, and we being the branches. Delving into the seemingly harsh words that branches which do not bear fruit will be cut off while branches which do bear fruit will be pruned, I invited the congregation on my journey to conclude that the key is to dwell in Christ, to be connected to him. Jesus’ command is not that we should go and bear fruit. Rather, his command is that we should abide in him. Bearing fruit will follow as the natural result of abiding in the Vine. 

I realized that being friends with Jesus follows the same principle. Jesus tells his disciples that if they obey his commandments, they will abide in his love, just as he obeys his Father and abides in his love. This is not so much a condition as the reality of what it means to abide in Christ. Obedience to Christ does not mean obedience to a list of rules but is rather to be aligned with his will, to yield to the leading of the Spirit such that we respond to his voice, responding to his challenge and encouragement as well as his call to repent. This is the definition of what it means to be intimate enough with him to abide in his love, to be his friend. 

Perhaps friendship is the perfect way to talk about this kind of intimacy. I think about the migration journey that my family undertook when we moved to Canada, and the migration journeys of many other Asian American families as well as other immigrants and refugees. Whereas extended family networks that we have known for generations might have formed the bulk of community in our countries of origin, in our new country, we relied on friends. Friendships formed — often quickly — through church, school, work or other contexts, became not only bulwarks against loneliness and isolation but also people we relied on for practical help and survival.

Unlike family and other connections into which we were born, these relationships were chosen and voluntary. And yet, in the context of relocating to a new country, a new culture and a new community, such connections reflect the Chinese saying that can be translated as “a neighbor close by is better than a family far away.”  These connections, formed through choice and necessity, provide the context for agape and community, based not necessarily on blood ties or cultural or ethnic similarities but on genuine connection and intimacy, and also on generosity and grace. In the course of migration, friendships are ultimately in the hands of God, who brings people across our paths with whom we connect and who come into our lives, often, just when we need them. This quality of friendship, in its best sense, does indeed approximate the description often appropriated for Jesus: “There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”

Rev. Dr. Julia Qiuye Zhao was born in China, grew up in Toronto and completed a PhD at the University of Notre Dame before following God’s call into ministry. She completed a MDiv at Princeton Theological Seminary and a certificate in spiritual direction with Oasis Ministries for Spiritual Development in May of 2023. She is ordained as a minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and serves as the Associate Pastor in Residence at First Presbyterian Church in Valparaiso, Indiana. She also serves as a spiritual director in the Asian American community.