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Caring Community

The theme throughout the history of the church is that of creating a loving, caring community. When we read of the early church in the book of Acts in our Bibles, we read of the emphasis of relationships among believers. Jesus was, of course a perfect example of this as well: He ate, talked, traveled, and ministered with His disciples. He did not simply talk about love for others; Jesus personally modeled it and consistently arranged situations and opportunities for His relationships to deepen in order for more love to be demonstrated. 

Head knowledge about the faith is very important. I feel very strongly that today’s Christian is in desperate need for deep teaching and training in the Word of God. We call ourselves Evangelical mainly because we are people of the Book—the Gospel (the Evangel). Many churches that call themselves “evangelical” are no longer churches filled with people who know their Bibles and can discern truth from error. Very few Christians would be classified as “Bereans.” God commends the Bereans in Acts 17:11, “Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” 

According to the latest church research by the Barna Research Group, less than 10% of all born-again Christians possess a biblical worldview that informs their thinking and behavior. 

We need to make a difference there. Evangelical Christianity needs to return to the Bible! We need to not be afraid of taking people into the deeper things of God! In an attempt to reach the lost, we have watered down the Gospel so that it no longer offends, and it no longer has the power to change lives! 

However, there is more to being a strong Christian than head knowledge. A bunch of unchanged sinners who understand the Bible and Christianity doesn’t really do us any good! We need to be as concerned with who we are as what we know. 

And the best way for us to become the faith community that Christ intends is to live in intimate relationship with Jesus Christ and with other Christians. We need to both meditate on the faith in our private lives, and live out our faith in our community lives.
What we want is more than simply being a “friendly church.” Certainly, when a new person comes to our church, we want them to feel we are friendly. But that is not enough—what we really need to have is not mere friendliness but true concern, compassion and caring for others. I submit to you that very few churches have focused on these deeper aspects of community.

What I am taking about is friendship—true friendship. 

Take your Bibles, and turn to John 15:12. Let’s re-read that passage. It’s worth it!
12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17This is my command: Love each other.

In this passage, we find four tests or proofs, or signs of the friendship. Two signs or proofs are on his side and two signs or proofs of the friendship are on our side. 

1. The First Proof of Friendship: What I Do for You (15:12-13)

First, two proofs of the friendship come from his side: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” That’s the first proof of the friendship. Jesus says this on Thursday night when the disciples cannot really understand what he’s talking about because they’re still feeling the victory of Palm Sunday, when great crowds came out to see Jesus.

They don’t know a conspiracy is brewing. They don’t know that within hours Jesus will be arrested. They have to wait until later to understand what Jesus means. But at this point, he still makes the promise to them: He says, “I’m your friend.”

Here’s an ancient proof: the proof is what I do for you. Sometimes we put it crudely, but we use that ancient proof all the time. We test a friend by what he does for us. That’s how you know a friend.

Suppose you were driving your car on a rainy night, or an extremely hot night. Suppose you’re on a deserted road, your car breaks down, it’s pouring rain or it’s 110 degrees, and you had not hung up on that salesperson that had just called you offering a membership to an automotive club.

It’s one o’clock in the morning, and you’re trying to think who would come out with their car to help. Notice how quickly your brain will compute your friendships by this ancient standard.

You go right through your mental Address Book. You think of all the acquaintances you know, and if you’re fortunate, there are one or two friends you might have who would take their shirt off their backs for you.

When you get on the phone and say, “My car is broken down. Would you mind coming out?”

“Hey, no sweat. Glad to come. Be right there.” That’s a friend. Right?

Your brain calculates your friendships on the basis of the same ancient standard that Jesus gives. You know a friend by what he or she does for you. Notice how our Lord makes himself an event and makes his proof of friendship an event that happens, like someone actually showing up at one o’clock in the morning. That’s friendship, not a Hallmark card.

Jesus says, “That’s what friendship is, and that’s how you know I’m your friend.” Do you know that about Jesus Christ? Did you know that he lays his life down for you? That’s the proof of his friendship.

2. The Second Proof of Friendship: I Confide in You (15:15)

The second proof of his friendship is an expansion of the first, but it’s not put in as heroic terms as the first. The first is put heroically: I’m your friend, and I prove it by laying my life down for you. In the second proof, He says, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from My Father I have made known to you.”

A friend is someone who takes you into his or her confidence, talks things over with you. That’s another ancient proof of friendship. We calculate our friendships that way also. I’ll give you a sweaty-palmed student illustration.

Suppose you’re a college student. You know there’s a midterm at one o’clock on Monday afternoon, but you fritter away the whole weekend. You go to a ball game, you go to the park, you go swimming, and you play video games. You did other things, and now it’s Monday morning. You wake up in a cold sweat, take a shower and head over to Starbucks to study.

I’m going to make this illustration complicated. You’re sitting at a table there, sipping on a quadruple latte to try to jolt your brain into overdrive. In walks a friend of yours. Here’s a moment of truth where your brain with lightning speed will calculate the friendship. You see that person and you think if he sees you, he’ll talk all about his trip to Europe, and he’ll tell you about his family problems. That will take the morning, and you’ll flunk the exam.

What do you do? You calculate the friendship. He’s a nice guy, but I can’t talk to him today. And you hide behind your textbook, watching out of the corner of your eye to see if he’s ordering his coffee to go or not. You don’t want to snub him because that would be a social faux pas. So, you just don’t see him. You are fortunately hidden behind a huge college textbook, and you’re studying.

All right, now let me make the plot romantic. Suppose you’re at Starbucks, and here is the guy or the girl you’ve been trying to get a chance to talk to. Suddenly you see him or her. You say to yourself, “Oh, man, I could take this exam any old time. If I flunk it, I’ll take it next year. I mean, this is the rest of my life.” So you talk all morning over lattes and muffins. You calculated your priorities with lightning speed.

Suppose now that you saw a really good friend. With a really good friend, you could say, “Feel free to sit with me, but please don’t open your mouth all morning. You can sit next to me and pray, because I have a midterm, but don’t say one word.”

Now, that’s a friend. You took him or her into your confidence, and that’s what Jesus was talking about. He’s saying, “You’re my friends, and the proof of it is I take you into my confidence. I chose you. I see you there, and I want to sit with you and I want to let you in on the secrets of God.” That’s the ancient proof of friendship. Our Lord gives that proof to us.

Have you ever thought that God wants you here because he wants to do something with you? He chose you to be with him, and he wants to know what you think.

Here our Lord teaches it. In verse 15, He says, “You’re not slaves. A slave doesn’t even know what the master’s doing. But I told you everything my Father’s doing. I’ve taken you into my confidence. You’re my friends, and there’s the proof of friendship.”

3. The Third Proof of Friendship: Love as Jesus Loved (15:12-14, 17)

There are also two proofs of friendship from our side. The first one took me off balance when I first read it. It doesn’t seem like friendship. Look again at verses 12-14:

“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command.”

Let’s be clear what Jesus is saying here. I’ve actually heard messages on this passage where it is taught that Jesus was saying that in order to be his friend you have to obey all his commandments. But we all know that this is impossible! Does that mean no one can be his friend?

When if we look closely at this text, we’ll realize that this is not an passage on obedience. Jesus is not teaching obedience here. He’s teaching friendship here, and he has only one command here. Don’t misunderstand me. Our Lord does want you to obey his commandments, but here he’s not talking about obedience. He’s not making that the test of friendship here.

Look closely at the context. “This is my command: Love one another. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.” He has one command in mind in this passage, that we love one another as he loves us.

In case any one misunderstands him, he repeats it again, as would a good Hebrew poem. He repeats the line at the end of the passage in verse 17, “Did you miss my commandment? The commandment I have in mind is that you love one another.” That’s how you prove your friendship.

This is a friendship passage, and Jesus here has one command to prove the friendship. When you love as I loved you, then you prove you’re my friend. 

A friend of mine once wrote a college paper on Stan Hewet Hall. I have been there several times. Anybody else ever toured the Hall and gardens? 

Suppose your friend, who is the caretaker, is giving you a tour of the estate. You see the manicured lawns, the beautiful gardens, and the beautiful imported marble. You go through the massive front door, and your eyes bulge as you see the ornate furniture, and imported tapestries on the walls. 

You walk into the grand hallway and see the stairway going to the upper rooms. In the middle of this beautiful hallway is one table holding an alabaster vase imported from Egypt. The light is shining through the vase, and there’s a single daffodil in the vase—understated, you know.

You say to your guide, “I have never seen such a beautiful vase as that alabaster vase.”

Your guide says, “You like that vase? Take it. It’s yours. I’m a good friend of the owners, and they’d want me to give it to you.”

Now, I have to stop and rule out two terrible possibilities or my parable is ruined.
Here’s the first possibility I have to rule out: Suppose your friend has worked in the estate too long and has become a little confused, like somebody at Wells Fargo who begins to think the money is his. That would ruin my parable if he were giving something away he has no right to give.

Let’s rule out another possibility that’s even worse: Suppose your friend is a robber, and he’s using you to sneak out the alabaster vase. That ruins the parable because he’s a robber.

If you can rule out those two possibilities, what has your friend just proved to you when he gives you that vase? 

He’s proved to you that he’s a very good friend of the owner. 

That’s what Jesus is talking about here. Jesus is saying, “I’ll tell you how to prove you’re my friend. Give away the best treasure in the house: my love.”

This is evangelical ethics. We love others because he first loved us. How do you prove you’re forgiven? When you forgive others. 

I believe the vast bulk of our numerical-growth efforts will be in what we might call relational marketing. Instead of seeking to attract visitors to Vanguard Church through impersonal means such as direct mail advertising, radio commercials, TV ads, or highway billboards, it has been proven that growing churches seek numerical growth by having regular attendees invite friends to meet them at church. The most important element for church growth is the personal touch. 

We are not Proctor and Gamble, or Wal-Mart. Impersonal advertising is not the primary way to get people into church. 

If the unchurched want a great event, there are hundreds of organizations that can put on a better show than us! 

If the unchurched want to be in the presence of other people, there are ample opportunities for that, usually in much less threatening environments. 

But the church is UNIQUE in that it is intended to be a loving community—not just a meeting of unrelated people simultaneously seeking their own benefit, but a group of individuals with a common purpose and desire to develop deeper, truer relationships.

4. The Fourth Proof of Friendship: Prayer (15:16)

The final proof of friendship is the proof of prayer. Jesus says, “The Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.” That’s the flip side of “I take you into my confidence.” He says, “If you want to be my friend, take me into your confidence.” Pray! The invitation to prayer is the final proof.

Have you ever thought of your prayer as proof of your friendship with Jesus? Pray. Use my name with the Father. That’s exactly what the text says. You can ask the Father using my name. That’s something a friend can do.

I was reading an article in The New York Times the other day. It said that about 80 percent of boys get their first job through a friend of their father. Think of the tragedy of American life today with so many little boys growing up without a father. Perhaps you can play that role with some young person.

Jesus Christ plays that role with us. “I’m your friend. You can pray in my name to the Father. You can use my name. I’m the one who’s going to give my life for you.” You can use his name. He’s your friend.

Are you the friend of Jesus Christ? Do you know his love for you? If you have few friends, let me tell you, you’ve got one who’s worth all of them.

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