How can I, a sinful, imperfect man, be a friend to the perfect, all-powerful creator of the universe? In human terms, it would seem to be an impossibility. After all, I can’t actually see God nor can I hear His voice audibly. Beyond the perception problem is the even larger problem of status and ability. God can do everything, knows everything and is absolutely pure and righteous while I can do very little, know very little and am mostly selfish and full of failure.
In my human thinking I have a very hard time understanding why God would want to be friends with me at all. It certainly doesn’t make logical sense for one who is of the stature of God to lower Himself just so that He could enter in to a relationship with me.
Yet, that is exactly what He did. He came as a man named Jesus and lived on this earth for 33 years as one of us. And although He was a man He was still God and He lived a perfect life that was without sin. When the Roman government put Him to death on a cross made of wood, God accepted His shed blood as a sacrifice for the sin and failure of the whole world. Anyone who now believes that Jesus was the Savior of the world and confesses that fact with their mouth will be born again into a new life with a spirit that is made alive.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever would believe on Him would not perish but would have everlasting life. (John 3:16)
The most often quoted verse in the Bible is the explanation for why God would want to be friends with me. The strength and power of God’s love defies all explanation, transcends time and space and will stop at nothing to bring me back to Him.
Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain but He washed it white as snow.
God opened the door to a relationship with Him. He was the only one who could. It wasn’t because I deserved it (I don’t) or for any other reason than He loves me and wants me to get to know Him.
Imagine that, the perfect, all-powerful creator of time and space wants me to know who He is and that He cares for me! Not only that, He asks me to cast all my cares on Him and rest in His grace because He will never leave me or forsake me. He is the best friend that I could ever ask for and the friend that I will never be good enough to deserve.
No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. (John 15:15) NASB
I am a friend of God because I have believed on the name of Jesus Christ and strive to walk day by day with Him. Can you say the same?