Jesus redefines the disciple-teacher relationship in John 15:14-17. His disciples are no longer to be his servants. They are his friends. We tend to read the word “friend” through the grid of contemporary friendships that Jesus is a sort of “best friend” (or, as my daughters say, Jesus is our BFF). Despite the popularity of this mental picture, it waters down what Jesus is saying so much that we are in danger of losing his point. What does it mean to be “Friends of Jesus”?
I want to suggest that the original audience would have heard “friendship” as a statement of status. “Friendship in the Greco-Roman world was a statement of social status, involving far more than the modern term. There were only three categories of people in the ancient world: friends, enemies, and people you don’t know yet. To illustrate this, I list several lengthy quotes from Greek writers describing true friendship below.
Not Like This
First, friendship implies loyalty (Isocrates, Dem. 1, Xenophon, Memorabilia, 2.6.1). A true friend is loyal to his friends beyond what would be expected in other relationships.
Isocrates, To Demonicus 1.1 In many respects, Demonicus, we shall find that much disparity exists between the principles of good men and the notions of the base; but most of all by far have they parted company in the quality of their friendships. The base honor their friends only when they are present; the good cherish theirs even when they are far away; and while it takes only a short time to break up the intimacies of the base, not all eternity can blot out the friendships of good men.
Second, friendship implies intimacy, shared confidence, and shared difficulties (Isocrates, To Demonicus, 1.25). I particularly like the idea that you know who your friends are when you suffer peril with them, they are “gold tried in fire.”
Isocrates, To Demonicus 1.25 Confide in them about matters which require no secrecy as if they were secrets; for if you fail you will not injure yourself, and if you succeed you will have a better knowledge of their character. Prove your friends by means of the misfortunes of life and of their fellowship in your perils; for as we try gold in the fire, so we come to know our friends when we are in misfortune. You will best serve your friends if you do not wait for them to ask your help, but go of your own accord at the crucial moment to lend them aid.
Third, friends share resources. (Aristotle, Rhet 1.5.16; Marital, Epigram 2.43.1-16; Diogenes Laertius, Vit 7.1.124). Friends do not ask for favors or loans. They ask to share resources with their friends, even if there is no expectation of return.
Aristotle, Rhet 1.5.16 A friend is one who exerts himself to do for the sake of another what he thinks is advantageous to him. A man to whom many persons are so disposed, has many friends; if they are virtuous, he has worthy friends.
Diogenes Laertius, Vit 7.1.124 And by friendship they mean a common use of all that has to do with life, wherein we treat our friends as we should ourselves. They argue that a friend is worth having for his own sake and that it is a good thing to have many friends.
In John 15-17, Jesus declares his loyalty to his disciples as friends and reminds them that he has been sharing everything that the Father has revealed to him. In addition, Jesus is leaving to prepare a place in the Father’s house for his friends (14:2), and when he is gone, he will endow them with the resources they need to do the task they have been called to perform, the Holy Spirit (14:26, 16:12-15).
Friendship also helps to explain the very difficult line: “Ask whatever you want in my Father’s name he will give you” (15:16). Since Jesus and his disciples are in the same circle of friends, they share resources at the Father’s disposal. By entering a friend relationship with the disciples, Jesus gives them access to his own “friend network” and family. Since Jesus is the Son, the disciples now will have direct access to the Father.
A student was on the level of a servant to the teacher. There was almost nothing that a teacher could not ask his disciple to do for him. Jesus rejects that relationship, serving his disciples humbly (washing their feet) and then laying down his life for his friends.
Describing the disciples’ relationship as a “friendship” has wide-reaching implications for mutual care. One is responsible for a friend at a deeper level than for a servant. For example, friends share material wealth. In a master/servant relationship, one does a favor with the expectation of a return on that investment. But friends are to serve one another without expecting a returned favor. In a Greco-Roman context, you should not say “I owe you one” to your friends.
Jesus has demonstrated this new relationship by washing his disciple’s feet. He has lowered himself below their level, showing that he does not consider them his servants. Instead, they will all serve each other as friends!
I think you are right that this text must be understood in the social categories of the Greco-Roman world, but the catchy statement you make early on that there are only three categories of people, “friends, enemies, and people you don’t know yet” seems overly simple and actually in contradiction with the rest of the article. You mention servants and disciples; slaves, patrons, and clients are other categories that come to mind.
You say here that friends don’t ask for favors; how do you see 15:14 in this context? “You are my friends if you keep my commands” isn’t exactly asking favors and keeping score, but it does seem to have that flavor about it.
Yes, you are right there is more to social stratification that friends and enemies. What I do not want to deal with here is “client-patron” issues, since Jesus is *not* saying “I am your client, you are may patron, the one who obeys me continues to receive my patronage.” That would also resonate with a Roman, but Jesus is attempting to level things by using friendship language. In the synoptics, friendship is not used, but rather family imagery. Is this an example of John contextualizing to a Greco-Roman World?
I also think I did a poor job teasing out “friend of God” from the Hebrew Bible, that is likely more important.
Thanks for your reply. I see the point you are making about status. I think I’m having trouble with the distinction between the “wide-reaching implications for mutual care” of friendship, and the “expectation of a return on that investment” / “I owe you one” of the master/servant relationship. (Maybe I’m just too stuck in my own culture’s expectations?) I wonder how reciprocity plays in here; how one gets to *be* a friend; how friendships end; and what the social repercussions were for persons who abused friendship by only taking and not giving, for example.
The “friend of God” language from the Hebrew Bible (and especially in its Greek translation, I’d guess) is also a terrific point. And thank you for pointing out that John uses friend language where the synoptics use family language.
I noticed this is the RBL email for this week: Martin Cully, Echoes of Friendship in the Gospel of John (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2010). I have not seen this book yet, but it looks like it does what I was hoping to do in this brief post:
From Anne M. O’Leary’s review: “Thus Jesus’ followers no longer relate to him as a slave to a master. Rather, they share a genuine friendship with him. Their acting in obedience to Jesus is out of the love of friendship rather than out of a patron-client relationship. In this way the Jesus-follower relationship mirrors the Jesus-Father relationship.”
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8018
It would be correct to think that we tend to miss the meaning behind certain words being used in the Bible, because of our lack of knowledge for the context. Like you mention, we tend to read the word friend as like our best friends or people we hang out with regularly. This is not what is meant in this passage. Friend has a different meaning than what we think of when we hear the word friend. Knowing the context of the passage is important. If we do not understand the context, we may miss the point completely. If someone is considered you their friend in that time, they considered you to be loyal. They also were intimate and had confidence in you and recognized shared difficulties and resources. (Long) If you were a friend of someone, you were treated with the utmost respect and were not treated wrongly unless you wrongly treated them. Now that I know what it means to be a friend, the verse that says, “ask whatever you want in my Father’s name he will give you”. It means that since you are a friend of mine, we will share the same resources and that resource is God. Jesus wanted his disciples to be his friends rather than essentially his servants. They were so much more than just servants to him. He wanted a much deeper relationship with them which also translates to us as well.
I must say that I had never thought of friendship as a status statement before this but understanding the context and cultural background it clearly makes sense. It is a statement of how Jesus sees His relationship with His disciples, and how He wants them to see it. Discipleship refers to being under someone- to study and follow after them, and this had been the relationship that Jesus and His disciples had. Now Jesus is calling them His friend. To state this was to put them on the same social level as He was. He was telling them that they now have access to all of Jesus resources; meaning that they were a development of loyalty, relationship, confidence, and even access to the Father. In these times, to have friendship meant that friends were in the same social group of friends and family. Since Jesus is the Son of God this brings His disciples into that inner circle of relationship with Jesus so that they now are able to also be in relation with the Heavenly Father. This also meant that they were in a position to share all that they had and take care of one another. Jesus took it one step further and humbled Himself to the point that He served His friends by washing their feet; and by doing this He is leading by example of what this relationship should look like.
Reading that Jesus redefined His relationship with His disciples as “friends” has always seemed encouraging, but I never did recognize the cultural importance of the status of friendship. In the context of the passage, Jesus is talking about loving the disciples, and reidentifying their servant-master or student-teacher status as something more than that. For Jesus to tell someone that He is their friend was probably something that the disciples looked forward to. Jesus said, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you” (John 15:15-16, ESV). He chose the disciples – He appointed them to do His work, but He also provided that relationship and trust to ask the Father for anything they needed. I am confident that Jesus understood the cultural context of the status of a friendship and that it was accepted for people to ask for things without reciprocating the gift. Something that stood out to me in this passage was, “you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you…” (v. 16). In verse 12, Jesus tells the disciples to love others as He loved them. I think that this statement of Jesus expressing that He chose each one of His friends is one of the greatest acts of love demonstrated by Jesus.
John 15:15 states, “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,” (NIV). The fact that we are able to be friends with Christ illustrates that Christianity is different from other religions in that Christianity is about having a personal relationship with Jesus. God loves His children so much and sent His Son to earth so that we are able to have a relationship with him and participate in the mission of expanding His kingdom. This verse has provided me with encouragement, knowing that Jesus is always there for me and that I have direct access to pray to God because of what Jesus has done for me. Jesus sets the best example of being a true friend, especially through his loyalty and that he shares the resources given to him by God. In addition, Jesus demonstrated the ultimate example of friendship by sacrificing himself and dying on a cross in our place. Jesus was willing to endure so much pain and persecution out of his deep love for us. Jesus also showed that we are friends rather than servants through humbly serving his disciples. He was willing to serve his disciples rather than demand that they serve him. Matthew 20:28 says, “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” As Long mentions, Jesus does not view his disciples as his servants, rather, as friends who serve each other.
The disciple were servants as they were under training during their apostleship course. Jesus had to provide everything they wanted as any Master would do to his or her servants. That was the type of a servant/master relationship. Jesus had provided everything and shared with his disciples whatever necessary resources he acquired from his Father as a demonstration of what he really meant by loving one another as a new commandment, love expressed in deeds not in words alone but also in action. But now that Jesus knowingly that his earthly ministry was about to end on the cross, he was now as a teacher giving his final remarks, a rap up of the story and a conclusion before a “sendoff” into the field of play. Jesus opts to terminate that prevailing type of relationship by providing an uplifting and inspiring invitation to a new relationship bound in obedience and royalty to what they learn from their Master. Jesus was obedient and royal in everything to his Father in a God/Son relationship to the point of death on the cross and as a consequent He was risen, or He rose from the dead and seated at the right hand of God on the Throne of Judgement. Thus, Jesus expects his disciples to follow his example under a new relationship of Friendship. Under the new relationship terms, Jesus is guarantying a better security that is meant to cast off the fear of loneliness, thus he promises to be with them always. He promises not to leave them as orphans but would come back to dine with them and even to be in them forever. To me, that’s a typical of a best friend.
Jesus calling his disciples “friends” is how drastically different that would have sounded in the first century compared to how we hear the word today. We tend to think of friendship as casual, emotional, or based on personality, someone you hang out with, someone who “gets you”, maybe even a kind of spiritual buddy. But in the ancient world, friendship carried serious weight. It meant loyalty, shared life, shared resources, and a kind of mutual responsibility that went far beyond what we usually imagine. With that in mind, Jesus’s words in John 15 feel even more powerful. He isn’t just offering emotional closeness; he is raising his disciples’ status. A servant didn’t get explanations; a friend did. A servant obeyed orders; a friend shared the mission. A servant had limited access; a friend had full access to the household. When Jesus says he has told them “Everything” from the Father, he’s pulling them into the inner circle. He’s treating them with the kind of trust and transparency that ancient friendship required. What amazes me is that Jesus models this friendship before he even names it. He washes their feet, he shares his Father’s revelation, he promises the Spirit who will empower them, and he commits himself to laying down his life for them. He’s already shown loyalty, intimacy, and generosity. The very qualities ancient writes used to describe true friendship. Seeing Jesus define friendship this way pushes me to rethink what it means follow him. It’s not about climbing a spiritual hierarchy or earning favor. It’s about responding to a relationship he already initiated one marked by humility, shared purpose, and sacrificial love. In that sense, being a “friend of Jesus” isn’t a cute slogan; it’s an invitation into a radically different way of living and loving.