9“I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. 10When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. 11I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!

12This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. 13There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command.

15I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. 16You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. 17This is my command: Love each other.  John 15:9-17

Jesus says, “You are my friends!”

Jesus envisions friendship with Him to have benefits.
…so… you will be filled with my joy.  vs. 11
…so… you will bear lasting fruit.  vs. 16
…so… the Father will give you what you ask for, using my name. vs. 16

Jesus sees days when these benefits of friendship are ours right on the surface of our experience. He also sees The Day when our faith becomes sight and these promises are fully experienced by His friends in the communion of God.

Joy.

Purposeful and fruitful results from our lives.

A dynamic connection with God, in which we actually realize answers to prayer.

I was nine years old when my Sunday school teacher, Molly McCraken read this Scripture and announced to us, “Jesus wants to be your friend.” In that moment God changed my life. With all that I understood at that moment of my life, I gave my life to Jesus and have lived in the grace of friendship with Him ever since.

Even as a nine year old I saw that Jesus had done for us the very thing He says friendship does. “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” vs. 13  I love these verses from 1 John 4:9-16, where the John proclaims again the truth and grace of the Gospel:

9God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

11Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 12No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.
13And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. 14Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. 16We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.

Praise the Lord!