Facebook friends VS true friends

How do you know who your real friends are?

How do know who your real friends are?

Rune Toldam from Copenhagen (the city not the ice-cream shop) is frustrated with Facebook particularly the way it is redefining friendships. He has 774 friends and yet he is not sure if any of them really are his friends. He says “It is so easy to become friends (on Facebook). It’s just one click and then you are in a never ending friendship”.

So to find out who his true friends are Rune sent a friends request in a hand-written letter and sent it by “snail mail” to all his Facebook friends giving them 2 weeks to write back via the same method. If they do this they are a true friend and Rune puts their picture up on his bedroom wall. Rune has even put a kit together which you can download for other people who are frustrated with Facebook (you can check out www.arewefriends.org).

How many Facebook friends do you have? How many of they are true friends? What is true friendship anyway? It must be more than just clicking a button.

What Jesus says about friendship

Jesus said something pretty mind-blowing about friendship in John 15:9-15;

“As the Father has loved me so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands you will remain in my love just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. 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.”

Jesus said that greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (v.13). And this is exactly what Jesus did the very next day after speaking these words. He willingly lovingly and sacrificially gave up his life. And He died in order to make us not just his servants (v.15) but his friends (which I guess makes Jesus’ love even” greater” than “greater love”!).

Then in verse 14 Jesus defines what it means to be His friend which is to do what He commands. So what did Jesus command? Well from John’s Gospel Jesus commands us: