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Friendship God
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Reliées par le texte biblique ou par des thèmes communs.
I don't know if you've ever tasted something new and thought, "I'm never going to go back." Maybe a homegrown tomato, or a Reese's peanut butter cream egg (though it's not Easter yet!). I remember the first time I ate salty popcorn — I thought, I'll never go back to sweet now.
Or maybe there's something in your life you can't imagine living without, but which didn't even exist until recently. There was no internet until I was about 16. I didn't get a mobile phone until I was 21. Can anyone remember life before ChatGPT?
Sometimes we discover what we didn't know we were missing. So we might be asking this morning: is there more to life than this? I want to suggest that the Bible's answer is yes. There is a life we are born with, and then there is life to the full, offered to us by God. Friendship with God is the difference between life and life.
Jesus says, "I have come that you may have fullness of life."
Psalm 16 says, "In your presence... there is fullness of joy."
We've been considering this together over the last few weeks — how God is a friendship God, one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a community of love overflowing with love to us. We've seen how to be friends with the Father is to be loved forever, and how friendship with the Son means he shares all that he is with us. Today we're thinking about friendship with the Holy Spirit.
The big idea this morning is this: a friend of the Spirit receives life to the full.
"But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, 'Abba, Father.' So you are no longer a slave, but God's child. And since you are his child, God has made you also an heir." (Galatians)
The ancient Nicene Creed says the Holy Spirit is Lord, fully God with the Father and the Son — the Lord and giver of life. And he means life, not just life as we know it. He comes to catch us up into God's eternal love.
Think of a trumpet. In a sense, it has life — but it needs breath to really live. There is more to life than this. There's more to us than this too. To be a friend of the Spirit is to receive this life to the full.
Jesus gives the Holy Spirit a name: the Paraclete — literally, a friend who draws alongside us. Sometimes translated helper, counselor, or advocate. The Holy Spirit is God's empowering presence, saying: "Whatever you need, I am here for you." Isn't that what real friends say? God's power might not turn us into Power Rangers or X-Men, but his powerful presence is exactly what weary wanderers like you and I really need — everlasting comfort, counsel, and help, and with it, life to the full.
Our text says: "God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts." Our story goes all the way back to creation — we lost the friendship with God that we had in the beginning. Instead of being born with life to the full as friends with God, we are born spiritually stillborn.
But God the Son stepped into his creation to restore what was lost. Jesus has done everything to reconcile us to God forever, and we now share his place in the family of God, receiving a new identity as children of God. The Holy Spirit empowers us to live out of this identity — he's even called "the Spirit of his Son," the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit joins us to the Son and breathes us into life. Whatever it takes for us to be introduced to Jesus, the Spirit works to make it happen.
The Holy Spirit is a person in his own right — fully God, untamed, like the wind blowing wherever he wishes. But he's always in partnership with the Father and the Son, and what he wishes is to bring Jesus to us and us to Jesus.
A friend of mine once said, "John, there is someone I would love you to meet. I know you both well, and I know you're going to really get on with each other." He arranged everything for us to meet, and he was so happy to see it happen — and we were so happy to meet. That is true friendship. That is the Spirit's work, giving us a new identity in Jesus.
The Spirit is the one "who calls out, Abba, Father." At home in our hearts, joined with the Son, led into the Father's love, the Spirit empowers us to call to God as Father. Abba is simply the word for "father" in Jesus's own tongue, Aramaic — a secure, affectionate way to speak of your dad. We get to relate to the Father in just the same way Jesus does.
Our eldest daughter is away at university, but that hasn't decreased how often she calls her dad — because she knows who she can call when she has a need. Well, friends, our friend the Spirit teaches us to become dependent on the Maker of the whole universe as our Father — far greater than even having your dad at the end of WhatsApp.
Do you see how close our friendship with God is? He doesn't just lob tokens of blessing from a cloud somewhere. God pours his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. He makes his home in us. There is no closer friendship for us to enjoy.
Which means there's a challenge here too — to honor the Holy Spirit rightly. Imagine two friends who only really visit because they want to see my dog, not me. There's a sense in which we can treat the Holy Spirit like that — as a sort of magic power to tame and manipulate, so we can get what we want. But God never treats us that way. He wants us for us, so that we can enjoy the love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is what we're made for.
As the Spirit's friends, we're "no longer a slave, but God's child." The contrast is between life outside God's love (slavery) and life inside God's love (freedom). Without friendship with God, we are spiritually dead, enslaved — we need to be redeemed "from under the law."
The law is the standard of goodness and holiness God gave his people. Jesus summarises it as love — love God, love neighbour. We are made from love, so we are made for love. But the law isn't showing us we can obey it perfectly — it's showing us we can't. We resolve to love others, but the love runs out. We often press the self-destruct button just when things are going well.
God sent his Son Jesus into the world, born under the law. As the perfect human, where we fail, he stands tall. He's the one person who doesn't find the law slavery — and yet he becomes a slave so we can be set free. He takes the crushing weight of the law off our shoulders and onto his own. On the cross we are redeemed: he dies in our place, taking the punishment we deserve. He steps out of the family so that we can be brought in.
Now, with the Holy Spirit truly living in us, we are set free — free from the consequences of sin (paid for by Jesus on the cross), and free to grow in love. There's a tantalising possibility: with the Holy Spirit in our lives, we can begin to change from the inside out. The Bible speaks of the Spirit bearing fruit in us, and the banner over it all is love. He gives us gifts so we can love and serve others; he unites the family so we can join in a mission of love.
Where I grew up there was a place called Water Splash World — a cramped set of pools and slides. In peak summer it got so overcrowded you'd queue for ages, freezing cold, and it became a bit dog-eat-dog — everyone fighting to protect their little concrete corner.
The irony was that right next to this cramped little man-made pool was the sea — a vast, eternal ocean with room enough for everyone.
Encountering God's love is like a move from Water Splash World to the sea. In the everlasting love of God, our self-protection turns into love. We're turned from being curved in on ourselves to being curved out towards God and others. There's no fear of anything running out, or anyone losing out. All we want is for others to find what we've found, and join us in the sea.
"Since you are his child, God has also made you an heir." As part of God's family, we're entitled to receive our share of the inheritance to come. The Bible paints a beautiful picture of this future hope:
"God's dwelling place is now among the people... he himself will be with them and be their God, and he will wipe every tear from their eyes. There'll be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
As God makes his home in us by his Spirit, he makes us an heir. He prepares a new home for us with him in glory. As the Spirit's friends, we now have God's powerful presence — all that we need for him to fulfil his promise to keep us, care for us, hold us, and deliver us to that glory.
A friend of the Spirit receives life to the full — power to live out of a new identity, with a new intimacy, for a new influence of love, all the way to a new inheritance. This might sound like the Force from Star Wars, but the Spirit is a person who shares the same heart as the Father and the Son.
At the very heart of the Christian faith is this offer: to become friends with the friendship of God. We exist because of the overflow of his love, and to be reconciled with him is to discover that ocean of love again. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have worked together, and are working together, as the perfect team, to offer us the hand of friendship and lead us all the way home.
All we need to do is say yes to Jesus. If we simply say yes, he will share all that he is with us — we become a child of God, the Father will lavish his love upon us, and the Spirit will make his home in us. He is a friend, the very best kind of friend, who says, "Whatever you need, I am here for you."
Saying yes to Jesus simply means:
That doesn't mean life will immediately become easy — but it does mean it will become hopeful, beautifully hopeful, because the Holy Spirit brings all the consolation and strength that Jesus himself would bring, not just standing next to us, but living in us.
Would you say yes to Jesus? Once we become friends with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we will never know a moment of our lives where we are truly alone, forgotten, or without his help or strength.
Maybe for some of us this morning, this is an old truth we simply need to be reminded of today. You might feel like the Holy Spirit has left you somehow, like you're empty. But whatever we feel, his presence is real. His gifts are endless, for they are the gifts of the Son. His love cannot run out, for it is the love of the Father. And he has no limits, for he is fully God with the Father and the Son, and all the power and all the glory belong to him.
To be a friend of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is to be God's beloved friend.
