“Let’s be friends! You just do everything I tell you.”

“Okay! That sounds great!”

No, it doesn’t sound great, it sounds wrong. Obviously wrong.

Except there was one person who said that, and his friends actually did all they could to do obey Him, even long after He died, all the way to the point of giving their own lives for Him. Jesus Christ is the one, of course, and there is only one.

I keep noticing things like this about Jesus: ways in which He’s utterly and totally unique. Skeptics must account for these things. As for me, it leads me to ever-increasing wonder and worship toward this man, the most remarkable human in all of history.

Let’s take a closer look and see.

“You Are My Friends If You Do What I Command You”

The passage where He spoke this, John 15:12-15, begins with one of the Bible’s more familiar lines:

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. 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 are my friends if you do what I command you.” What an outrageous thing to say! But it was no mere slip of the tongue; it was a repeat of something He’d said earlier, in John 14:21:

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.

What Kind of Man Would Say That?

“If you love love me you will obey what I command.” What kind of man says that? Tyrants, for one. I’m sure there have been plenty in government, business, cliques, gangs and cartels who’ve said, “Just do what I say, and you can be my friend.”

The idea, of course, is that you can climb the ladder of influence along with this person. But tyrants and crime lords are always in it for themselves; and this language of “friendship” is pure manipulation, a power play to multiply their control over others. Their “friends” are hardly friends at all; they’re in it for themselves, too. It’s all play-acting at friendship.

Tyrant? Manipulator? Power-seeker? Hardly! He came to serve and to give his life for others.

Everything we know about Jesus, though, is different. He had no need for fawning followers to solidify His hold on power; He already had all the power anyone could want. Who else ever commanded the wind and the waves, or fed 5,000 with a word? Yet He never used that power for His own benefit, only for others. No tyrant has been so other-oriented, so self-giving!

As for play-acting, Jesus actively discouraged insincere followers from sticking with Him. Consider the crowds who chased Him at the end of John chapter 6, after He fed the 5,000, for example. Or the three half-hearted would-be followers in Luke 9:57-62. He was quite content to let them walk away.

But his true disciples stuck with Him to the end, and they weren’t in it for the power they could pick up from Him, at least not by the end. There was a hint of power-seeking along the way, in Matthew 20:20-21, but Jesus used it as an opportunity to correct them (Matthew 20:25-28):

But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus is Not a Tyrant

Tyrant? Manipulator? Power-seeker? Hardly! He came to serve and to give his life for others.

Apparently they learned the lesson, too. Even though He’d told them, “No longer do I call you servants … but I have called you friends,” they went on humbly to call themselves His servants anyway.

Paul introduced himself that way in his letters to the Romans, Philippians and to Titus. James and Jude called themselves servants to Jesus Christ in their letters, which is especially noteworthy since they were most likely the same James and Jude who were half-brothers to Jesus Himself. Peter said it in his second letter, and John in the Revelation.

These men were among the small group of those who knew Him better than anyone else. If Jesus had been a power-hungry manipulator, they’d have known it. If their devotion to Him had been insincere, they’d have shown it.

And they spoke of their servanthood in the present tense, by the way. They weren’t “servants of the late Jesus of Nazareth, God rest His soul.” No, As Paul said at the start of Romans 1, “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, [who] … was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.” Jesus was their living Lord and Master.

The One Who Has the Character to be Totally in Charge

So again, what kind of man says, “Let’s be friends. You obey everything I tell you”? Someone who believes He ought to be totally in charge. What kind of friends keep obeying Him as self-described servants long after He dies, even to the point of giving their own lives for Him? Friends who are convinced He’s right: it really is right and proper for Him to be their Master, both now and forever.

There is something very real, very sincere and not the least bit manipulative going on here — something that skeptics would have trouble accounting for, but which believers understand completely. Those who knew Jesus best believed He really did have the authority to command obedience. He had the character, too, to cause them to love Him to the end of their days, as the One who had died yet still lived and still ruled.

Speaking as a believer, not as a skeptic, I have to catch my breath in wonder: Who could hold so much eternal authority, yet earn such absolute love and devotion? Only God in the flesh. Only One who is so infinitely great, He is worthy of my own love and obedience, now and to the very end.