The Problem of Friendship

Have you been disappointed by your friends? Do you disappoint your friends sometimes? Everyone wants friends. Companies try to sell you soda or beer or toothpaste with happy images of cheerful friends having a good time together. And have you ever seen an advertisement for a resort which did not show friends having the best time of their lives? I hope you have had a great times with friends, but sometimes our friends disappoint us. And last week we saw occasions where friends turned on each other. Brutus will forever be remembered as the friend who murdered Julius Caesar, and Judas is the symbol of betrayal for delivering his friend Jesus to be crucified. Human beings can be cruel! The apostle Paul opened his letter to the church at Rome by showing how deep society can sink into wickedness:

Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.  (Romans 1:2831)

As sin worked its way through mankind, friendship became more difficult and rare. Left to ourselves, we would have become as violent as the earth before the flood, when God destroyed everyone except Noah and his family. Praise God, God did not leave us to ourselves. God intervened and made deep, loving friendships possible among men and women. Paul tells us in this letter to the church in Ephesus how God redeemed friendship

Hostile Nature

Chapter two opens with a reminder of mans condition before Christ came to save us. We once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Ephesians 2:3) Adam and Eve wanted to do what they wanted to do, and they violated Gods command because they wanted to eat the forbidden fruit. Ever since, man has lived in the passions of his flesh, which led to increasing debauchery and violence. We had become enemies of God, and therefore were subject to His anger. Now you may say, Wait a minute! Not everyone is so bad. I know some people who are pretty good. Sure. Not everyone is as bad as they could be, and we each sin in our own ways. But even in the best of us there is a deep tendency toward sin, and that is because we are rotten within. Paul says we were dead in our sins. Now of course our bodies were still up and moving around. So here Paul is not talking about the death of our bodies. He is talking about our spirits. God said to Adam regarding the forbidden tree, in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:17) Adams body did not die that day, but his spirit did. This is another way of saying that Adams friendship with God ceased. God is a living Spirit, and He created man with a living spirit. When Adam fell, his spirit died. That meant the end of his friendship with God. It also meant that Adam was dying from the inside out, and Adam had no ability or desire to become reunited with God.

I know what you are thinking. Many people are seeking for God. Even those in other religions are seeking God, though the quest is fruitless. No. People say they are seeking God. They may even think they are seeking God. But everyone descended from Adam is spiritually dead and cannot find God. They do not even want to find Him. So am I saying that people who claim to be seeking God are liars? No, I do not know the hearts and minds of other people, and many people are sincerely trying to do the right thing as they see it. But here is the point  dead people cannot resurrect themselves. Adams rebellion changed mankind from spiritual life in friendship with God to spiritual death hostile to God. Men and women commit acts of sin for the same reason that cats purr and monkeys climb trees. It is our nature. Man has free will to do whatever he chooses. But Adams rebellion changed human nature so that mankind is spiritually dead and by nature only chooses sinful behaviors. That is why mankind pursues the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind. All people are  by nature children of wrath. This is what all people are like.

This is why religions and laws and education fail to make men good. These are superficial corrections, and they help temporarily to alleviate the worst of sins. But such measures are like taking a strong painkiller when you have cancer. It may indeed solve the pain problem temporarily, but a painkiller will not cure the cancer. Eventually you will die, and the outcome of trying to solve human problems by religions, or laws, or education eventually is death of the society and everyone in it. The only cure for death is life. The heart of this paragraph is verse five where Paul reminds us that God made us alive.

Friend Nature

When we think of what Christ did for us, our focus tends to be on His death as a substitute for our sins  and rightly so, because someone had to die to pay the penalty for our sins. But we tend not to think so much as to what comes next. There can be a tendency to think of salvation as Christs death for our sins and then going to heaven. But that leaves out the rest of life, and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. The most famous verse in the Bible, John 3:16, promises eternal life to those who believe in Jesus. But eternal life is not something we get when our bodies perish and we go to heaven. Eternal life is what we get now when we believe in Jesus, as Paul says in verse five of todays epistle reading. Our old, dead spirits that were hostile toward God have been replaced by new, living spirits who love God. Our new spirits love and trust God. We are alive! Spiritually as well as physically! We are friends with God again!

Furthermore, Paul says we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies. To modern ears this sounds confusing or even nonsensical. How can we be seated with Christ when it is evident that we are seated right here on earth? Remember, Paul is speaking about matters of the spirit. When we were spiritually dead, we either denied the spiritual dimension of reality, or we encountered other dead spirits such as demons. When God makes you spiritually alive, you enter the dimension of His Spirit, the Holy Spirit. True enough, your body is here on earth, but your spirit is rubbing shoulders (so to speak) with Jesus and the angels. This can be hard to recognize when we are immersed in a society which cannot enter the dimension of the Spirit, and so denies its existence. All day, every day, you are told that this world is all there is. Only fools and foolish dreamers believe in myths about another world. But would you ask a dead person for directions to Ipoh, or how to make nasi lemak? Would you expect a corpse to tell you the truth about the world? Of course not! Of course dead spirits can tell us a lot of useful information about this material world which they inhabit, and we are grateful for scientists and engineers who discover technology which makes life easier. But unless they are spiritually alive, people have no contact with the dimension of Gods Spirit, and can tell us nothing reliable about it.

For us who have been made alive with Christ, we have new, living spirits and live now in the dimension of Gods Spirit. That means that we have living contact with God, and that means that we have a whole lot of new friends! It means also that our lives have new significance. Spiritually dead people pursue spiritually dead interests, the passions of our flesh…the desires of the body and the mind. When God resurrects people by giving them a living spirit, He introduces them to the life He prepared for them. Verse 10 says, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Paul opened his letter by telling the Ephesians that God chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world. Before God created the universe, before God created Adam and Eve, God planned to create each of us, to die for us, and to give us new life. That new life will endure forever when this world passes away, but for now, God has prepared things for us to do in this world. The rest of this letter consists of Pauls explanation of what those things are  what God has planned for us to do.

Impossible Friendships

The next paragraph might seem like Paul is changing the subject, but no, Paul addresses the elephant in the room  the insurmountable problem of Jews and Gentiles. When Paul said that God chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world, the Jews would have nodded in agreement. God had chosen them. God called Abraham from a city steeped in idolatry and promised to make a great nation from his descendants. And it happened! Solomon built a magnificent temple where God was worshiped, and made Israel the dominant kingdom on the eastern Mediterranean coast. Israel betrayed God, and the prophets warned of severe consequences. Those same prophets also promised a glorious restoration. So Jewish followers of Jesus would have understood their salvation to be the fulfillment of those prophecies. But God had not chosen the Gentiles  and Paul agreed. He says in verse twelve that the Gentiles were separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. A very politically incorrect comment. You folks who feel like second class citizens, your feelings are working just fine. You are second class citizens. We Jews are the chosen people, and you are not. Wow. Depend on Paul to make the point pointedly.

But the Jews  those people chosen by God  consistently failed to emulate the God they worshiped. True, the Gentiles were not Gods chosen people, but God loved the Gentiles. He always had. In fact, Gods purpose from the beginning was to use the Jews to bless the Gentiles. God told Abraham, in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. But instead of loving the Gentiles  as God did  and blessing the Gentiles  as God expected  the Jews hated the Gentiles. Since they had lost their kingdom, the Jews had been in the humiliating position of having to submit to Gentile rulers and live among Gentiles, but they hated it. The Jews betrayed Jesus when it became clear that He was not going to destroy their Gentile rulers. It is true that the Gentiles were not part of Gods people, but the Jews made it worse by their hatred.

Jesus entered this hostility between Jews and Gentiles and ended it. First, Jesus abolished the law of commandments. The Old Testament law provided the bass for the separation of Jews and Gentiles. Paul explains in his letter to the church in Galatia that the law was never intended to be permanent. There he calls the law a tutor, whose job is to prepare the student for maturity. When the student masters his subject, the tutor is dismissed. Now that Jesus has come, the law finished its work and has been dismissed. So the rituals and habits that separated the Jews and Gentiles are irrelevant. Second, Jesus preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. It was shocking to the Jews, but the same salvation Jesus offered to them He also offered to the Gentiles. The Gentiles did not have to do anything special to be saved. Johns gospel records Jesus saying to the Jews, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent. (John 6:29) And to the Gentiles Jesus said, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household. (Acts 16:31) This was deeply disturbing to the Jews, and for this reason some Jews tried to force Gentile believers to become Jews. But Paul and all the apostles were firm and united in teaching that Jesus welcomes Gentiles who believe.

The result of abolishing the law and preaching peace to Jew and Gentile alike was that Jesus had made one new man in place of the two, so making peace. This new race, this new spiritual mankind, would include Jews and Gentiles equally. In this new race, there is no Jew or Gentile. Those words no longer have any meaning, for now everyone who was chosen by God is a Christian. All people chosen by God [have] access in one Spirit to the Father…[are] fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone…[are] a holy temple in the Lord…a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. In Christ Jews and Gentiles are friends!

Power for Friendship

If Jews and Gentiles can be friends, all people can be friends. The Jews and Gentiles were separated by religion and culture, and the hostility ran deep. On their own, Jews and Gentiles were incapable of being friends. But in Christ, and only in Christ, Jews and Gentiles can be friends. There is no parallel in this world, for there is no other people who were chosen by God, as the Jews were. But Jesus work in dissolving the hostility is an example and a pattern and a hope that all lesser divisions can be overcome. This means that Anglos and Mexicans, whites and blacks, Chinese and Malays, Muslims and Christians can be friends in Christ. But only in Christ. Spiritually dead people have no desire to be friends with strange, difficult, and potentially dangerous people. Consequently spiritually dead people will never make friends of other races or religions or even the neighbors down the street. Sometimes conditions become so uncomfortable or desperate that it becomes necessary for peace and even for survival to act friendly toward others. But such gestures are superficial expedients and not real friendship. Remember what Paul said  natural man is spiritually dead, and dead people cannot make friends.

What is more important to us is that Jesus makes us capable of being real friends with God and each other. The quality of your friendship with each other is only as strong as your friendship with God. Eternal life is not like gold bars under your bed. It is more like a trust fund. Perhaps you have an income that permits you to take lavish vacations, eat at expensive restaurants, and buy designer clothes. Some people are like this. They live all their lives in luxury. But they are not fetching a gold bar from under the bed each month to pay for such extravagances. They are living off the proceeds of a trust fund. Each month they collect a sum from the trust to cover their expenses, and if they spend it all, they can ask for more. Life is good. Life is wonderful, until the trust fund dries up. A stock market crash or offense to the owner of the fund can cause the rich life to disappear instantly. Life is a property of God. Only God has life. The rest of us live because each day, each moment, we draw from the trust fund of life in God. This is true for all people and the universe in its entirety, but it is also true of eternal life. Now, unlike a stock trust, we have no fear that a spiritual market will crash, and we have no fear that God will reject us. God will keep the eternal life flowing to his children forever. That is what makes it eternal! But just as a trust beneficiary could request an increase in disbursements, so we can request an increase in spiritual blessings from God.

You know that old nature we talked about, the rebellious nature inherited from Adam. That is still with us. I do not think I would have done salvation this way if I were God, but God has left us with two natures in competition with each other. In his letter to the Galatians Paul said, For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. (Galatians 5:17) I am sure you have experienced this . You see that you can help your neighbor, but you want to go swimming. You want to contribute to the fund for Ian and Dar, but you also want a new car. All your life, every day of your life, God is pointing you toward friendship with your neighbors, but your flesh craves personal pleasures. We could explore this at length in another sermon, but the point is that Gods desires gain the upper hand as we spend time with Him. Being with God  This is what I meant by saying that the quality of your friendship with each other is only as strong as your friendship with God. Simply being with God draws from the trust fund of eternal life. When you are with God, you become spiritually stronger and stronger. You gain more and more strength to fulfill Gods prompting. The more you are with God, the less urgent will be the sinful desires of your flesh.

Friendship in Action

The first application of todays scripture is to strengthen your friendship with God. You are already a friend of God, if you believe in Jesus. Jesus replaced your old spirit, hostile to God, with a new spirit friends with God. What does it mean practically to be friends with God? It is the same as being friends with anyone. Friends talk. Some friends talk a lot, others not so much, but all friends talk. So talk with God. What shall you say? Well, what do you say to your other friends? If you talk about the days activities, talk to God about the days activities. If you ask your friends for advice, ask God for advice. If you complain to your friends, complain to God. If you chat with your friends about Taylor Swift or the latest video game, chat with God about these things. God is a real person. He is not physically present right now, but He is a person just like all the other persons you know. Do not treat God as a mummy or a machine. Talk to Him!

Do you do things with your friends? Of course. It would not be much of a friendship if you did not do things together. So do things with God. This means that you have to know what God is doing, but there is a whole Bible full of examples of the sort of things God is doing every day. The first thing you see in the Bible is that God is working in the world. So go to work with God. I hope everyone here is engaged in productive work, so what does it mean to work with God? It means to work as though your Friend is there with you  which He is. Conduct yourself in a godly manner, and expect God to see that the work goes well  even when you have doubts. You eat and play with your friends, so include God in the fun of ordinary daily activities. God also does unexpected things, like talking to a sinful woman, or playing with children,  or moving to a foreign country. Sometimes doing things with God will pull you out of your dreary life into unexpected new adventures.

Our second application is to strengthen your friendships with other people. We live in a big city and are surrounded daily with hundreds or thousands of people. But it is possible to go through a day without ever engaging someone as a friend. Even here at church, it is possible to come, sing and pray and listen, and then leave without a significant interaction with someone else. Most of us act friendly  politely, in other words  toward others, but strong friendship is more than politeness. Most of chapters four through six in this letter provide insight on how to act as a friend toward others, and the book of Proverbs is full of guidance. Proverbs 17:9 teaches us to be careful what we say about each other. Loving each other means that we bury offenses against us, rather than complaining to others about how we have been treated. Proverbs 18:24 distinguishes between a companion and a friend. A friend sticks with you, even when you are an idiot. You need such friends. Your boss may have to dismiss you, your nextdoorneighbor may report you to the police if you park incorrectly, your grocer may sell you bad produce  but a friend will encourage and comfort you in all circumstances. Others need you to be such a friend to them. Next week we will look more closely at what friendship with each other consists of.

Invitation to Friendship

If you are here today, but do not believe in Jesus  welcome! We are glad that you joined us, and you are always welcome in our church. However the richness of friendship with God and others that we have been proclaiming is not available to you. If you do not believe in Jesus and have not been baptized, you are still spiritually dead  dead in trespasses and sins, following the course of this world, following the dark prince of this spiritually dead world. You are a child of Gods wrath, not because you are so bad or have done anything obviously wicked. You are trapped in the rebellious nature Adam handed down to all of us. In addition to those sins which you can admit to, your whole nature is in rebellion against God. You will never be Gods friend, and will perish in eternity. The good news is that you can escape! The gospel is the good news that Jesus came to rescue you from the prison of your old nature, and to give you new spiritual, eternal life. Our psalm today concluded, The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. The gospel is the call to take refuge in God. It is good news that you may escape condemnation and become a friend of God.

The question to you is, do you understand what we are saying? Do you agree that you cannot be a true friend in your own power? Do you wish for the blessings of escape from death, friendship with God, and true friendship with others? Then I repeat what Paul said to his jailer in Philippi, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household. Trust Jesus. Trust His words to be true. Trust Him to save you. Be baptized into fellowship with Jesus and the church.