Thursday, November 19, 2009

No, He is NOT your "boyfriend"

I'm sorry, but the trite, overused phrase "Jesus is my boyfriend" makes me twitch. But don't take a puny armchair theologian's word for it. Let's see what D. A. Carson has to say regarding our "friendship" with God.
Then the passage explicitly harks back to John 5, which we have been thinking through. Jesus says, “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” (15:14–15).
Observe that Jesus makes a distinction between slaves (δοῦλοι; not “servants”) and friends. But the distinction initially surprises us. We are Jesus’ friends if we do what he commands. This sounds rather like a definition of a slave. Certainly such friendship is not reciprocal. I cannot turn around to Jesus and thank him for his friendship and tell him he is my friend, too, if he does everything I command him. Strange to tell, not once is Jesus or God ever described in the Bible as our friend. Abraham is God’s friend; the reverse is never stated.*
Carson, D. A. (2000). The difficult doctrine of the love of God (41). Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books.
*Emphasis mine.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

My friend recently moved away to another country, but he still has feelings for a girl (one of my friends) but the problem is, is that she has a boyfriend.
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