We can see at once that to be the friend of God will mean peace also. It has brought peace over the troubled lives of all His friends throughout the ages. Every man who enters into the covenant, knows the world to be a spiritual arena, in which the love of God manifests itself. He walks no longer on a sodden earth and under a gray sky; for he knows that, though all men misunderstand him, he is understood, and followed with loving sympathy, in heaven. It was this confidence in God as a real and near friend, which gave to Abraham's life such distinction, and the calm repose which made his character so impressive. Strong in the sense of God's friendship, he lived above the world, prodigal of present possessions, because sure of the future, waiting securely in the hope of the great salvation. He walked with God in sweet unaffected piety, and serene faith, letting his character ripen in the sunshine, and living out his life as unto God not unto men. To know the love of God does not mean the impoverishing of our lives, by robbing them of their other sweet relations. Rather, it means the enriching of these, by revealing their true beauty and purpose. Sometimes we are brought nearer God through our friends, if not through their influence or the joy of their love, then through the discipline which comes from their very limitations and from their loss. But oftener the experience has been that, through our union with the Friend of friends, we are led into richer and fuller intercourse with our fellows. The nearer we get to the centre of the circle, the nearer we get to each other. To be joined together in Christ is the only permanent union, deeper than the tie of blood, higher than the bond of kin, closer than the most sacred earthly relationship. Spiritual kinship is the great nexus to unite men. "Who are My brethren?" asked Jesus, and for answer pointed to His disciples, and added, "Whosoever shall do the will of My Father in heaven the same is My mother and sister and brother."
We ought to make more of our Christian friendships, the communion of the saints, the fellowship of believers. "They that feared God spake often one with another," said the prophet Malachi in one of the darkest hours of the church. What mutual comfort, and renewed hope, they would get from, and give to, each other! Faith can be increased, and love stimulated, and enthusiasm revived by intercourse. The supreme friendship with Christ therefore will not take from us any of our treasured intimacies, unless they are evil. It will increase the number of them, and the true force of them. It will link us on to all who love the same Lord in sincerity and truth. It will open our heart to the world of men that Jesus loved and gave His life to save.
This friendship with the Lord knows no fear of loss; neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come can separate us. It is joy and strength in the present, and it lights up the future with a great hope. We are not much concerned about speculations regarding the future; for we know that we are in the hands of our Lover. All that we care to assert of the future is, that Christ will in an ever fuller degree be the environment of all Christian souls, and the effect of that constant environment will fulfil the aspiration of the apostle, "We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." Communion produces likeness. This even now is the test of our friendship with the Lord. Are we assimilating His mind, His way of looking at things, His judgments, His spirit? Is the Christ-conscience being developed in us? Have we an increasing interest in the things which interest Him, an increasing love of the things that He loves, an increasing desire to serve the purposes He has at heart? "Ye are My friends if ye do whatsoever I command you," is the test by which we can try ourselves.
Fellowship with Him, being much in His company, thinking of Him, seeking to please Him, will produce likeness, and bring us together on more intimate terms. For, as love leads to the desire for fuller fellowship; so fellowship leads to a deeper love. Even if sometimes we almost doubt whether we are really in this blessed covenant of friendship, our policy is to go on loving Him, serving Him, striving to please Him; and we will yet receive the assurance, which will bring peace; He will not disappoint us at the last. It is worth all the care and effort we can give, to have and to keep Him for our friend who will be a lasting possession, whose life enters into the very fibre of our life, and whose love makes us certain of God.
We ought to use our faith in this friendship to bless our lives. To have an earthly friend, whom we trust and reverence, can be to us a source of strength, keeping us from evil, making us ashamed of evil. The dearer the friend and the more spiritual the friendship, the keener will be this feeling, and the more needful does it seem to keep the garments clean. It must reach its height of intensity and of moral effectiveness in the case of friendship with God. There can be no motive on earth so powerful. If we could only have such a friendship, we see at once what an influence it might have over our life. We can appreciate more than the joy, and peace, and comfort of it; we can feel the power of it. To know ourselves ever before a living, loving Presence, having a constant sense of Christ abiding in us, taking Him with us into the marketplace, into our business and our pleasure, to have Him as our familiar friend in joy and sorrow, in gain and loss, in success and failure, must, in accordance with all psychological law, be a source of strength, lifting life to a higher level of thought, and feeling, and action. Supposing it were true and possible, it would naturally be the strongest force in the world, the most effective motive that could be devised: it would affect the whole moral outlook, and make some things easy now deemed impossible, and make some things impossible now to our shame too easy. Supposing this covenant with God were true, and we knew ourselves to have such a Lover of our soul, it would, as a matter of course, give us deeper and more serious views of human life, and yet take away from us the burden and the unrest of life.
Unless history be a lie, and experience a delusion, it is true. The world is vocal with a chorus of witness to the truth of it. From all sorts and conditions of men comes the testimony to its reality—from the old, who look forward to this Friend to make their bed in dying; from the young, who know His aid in the fiery furnace of temptation; from the strong, in the burden of the day and the dust of the battle, who know the rest of His love even in the sore labor; from the weak, who are mastered by His gracious pity, and inspired by His power to suffer and to bear. Christ's work on earth was to make the friendship of God possible to all. It seems too good to be true, too wondrous a condescension on His part, but its reality has been tested, and attested, by generations of believers. This covenant of friendship is open to us, to be ours in life, and in death, and past the gates of death.
The human means of communication is prayer, though we limit it sadly. Prayer is not an act of worship merely, the bending of the knee on set occasions, and offering petitions in need. It is an attitude of soul, opening the life on the Godward side, and keeping free communication with the world of spirit. And so, it is possible to pray always, and to keep our friendship ever green and sweet: and God comes back upon the life, as dew upon the thirsty ground. There is an interchange of feeling, a responsiveness of love, a thrill of mutual friendship.
You must love Him, ere to you
He shall seem worthy of your love.
The great appeal of the Christian faith is to Christian experience. Loving Christ is its own justification, as every loving heart knows. Life evidences itself: the existence of light is its own proof. The power of Christ on the heart needs no other argument than itself. Men only doubt when the life has died out, and the light has waned, and flickered, and spent itself. It is when there is no sign of the spirit in our midst, no token of forces beyond the normal and the usual, that we can deny the spirit. It is when faith is not in evidence that we can dispute faith. It is when love is dead that we can question love. The Christian faith is not a creed, but a life; not a proposition, but a passion. Love is its own witness to the soul that loves: communion is its own attestation to the spirit that lives in the fellowship. The man who lives with Jesus knows Him to be a Lover that cleaves closer than a brother, a Friend that loveth at all times, and a Brother born for adversity.
It does not follow that there is an end of the question, so far as we are concerned, if we say that we at least do not know that friendship, and cannot love Him. Some even say it with a wistful longing, "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him." It is true that love cannot be forced, that it cannot be made to order, that we cannot love because we ought, or even because we want. But we can bring ourselves into the presence of the lovable. We can enter into Friendship through the door of Discipleship; we can learn love through service; and the day will come to us also when the Master's word will be true, "I call you no longer servant, but I call you friend." His love will take possession of us, till all else seems as hatred in comparison. "All lovers blush when ye stand beside Christ," says Samuel Rutherford; "woe unto all love but the love of Christ. Shame forevermore be upon all glory but the glory of Christ; hunger forevermore be upon all heaven but Christ. I cry death, death be upon all manner of life but the life of Christ."