The Lord Jesus speaks of this privilege as belonging, through divine riches of grace, to His saints when He says, "Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of My Father I have made known unto you." John 15:15.
This friendship, this communication of secrets gives a wondrous sense of gracious and confiding intimacy. When we pray, we feel that we need something; when we serve or when we worship, we judge that we owe something, at least that He is worthy; but when we are receiving communications (not commands as from a master, but communications as from a friend) we listen without any necessary reflection upon our own condition, freed of all sense of either need or obligation. Our proper attitude then is neither standing like Martha so as to serve, nor kneeling like Mary to worship, but like Lazarus—sitting ( John 12:2).
The inspirations of a prophet are not equal to the divine communications which a friend receives. They do not intimate the same nearness or dignity. A prophet receives an inspiration as a vessel or oracle, and he may understand it or not (1 Pet. 1:10, 11). A friend learns secrets on the ground of personal confidence.
All the elect are, I grant, according to the grace and calling of God, endowed with this privilege; but among them I believe Abraham, Moses, David, and John had it very conspicuously. They illustrate it.
Abraham was told what the Lord was about to do to Sodom. "Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do?" says the Lord, and then tells him of the business which was then taking Him down to Sodom (Gen. 18).
What a moment that was! The Lord had come to Abraham's tent at Mamre and there sat at his table and his feast. The Judge of Sodom was communicating with the conqueror of Sodom—the divine Judge of that vile, reprobate place, conversing with him who had already, through faith and the victory of faith, refused all its offers.
Again I say, What a moment! And in the confidence which all this inspired, Abraham drew near
and stood before the Lord while the attendant angels withdrew and went on their way.
And so Moses in his day, for we read, "And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend." Exod. 33:11.
Wonderful! The Lord dealt with Moses as a man will deal with his friend. He talked with him. We are not told what He said, because it is the business of the passage rather to exhibit the grace of this intimacy, or divine friendship, than to convey information to us. But we do learn the use Moses makes of this gracious friendship—the very same use which Abraham of old had made of it. He speaks to the Lord about others. He pleads for Israel, as the patriarch had pleaded for Sodom. The Lord had approached Moses as His friend; He was not receiving him as His suitor or debtor. It was fitting, therefore, that Moses should occupy the place and the moment in a manner which showed freedom from himself.
And so David, as we see in 1 Chron. 17 David was a penitent, wearing sackcloth in the day of the plague, and going up to Mount Olivet with dust on his head in the day of Absalom. He was a worshiper, too, singing and dancing as he bore the ark of the Lord to Zion. But David was a friend as Abraham and Moses had been. He received communications from the Lord through Nathan; and then, as one whom the Lord in the ways of His grace had thus endowed and privileged, he went in, as we read, "and sat before the LORD." Beautiful and wonderful, but withal right. To have stood or knelt then would not have been obedient or holy, for holiness is consistency with God; and if He "mourn" we are to "lament"; if He "pipe" we are to "dance"; if He reprove and convict us we may be in sackcloth before Him; but if He deal with us face to face as a man speaks to a friend, we may and should sit before Him.
But again, John was the nearest to Jesus at the last supper. He lay on His bosom. And thus it was he who reached the secrets of that bosom. Peter in the distance used John's nearness, and the Lord admitted its title and gave him the privilege of it. John pressed the bosom afresh, in the confidence of an Abraham or a Moses, that the secret which was there would make itself his ( John
13:25).
Surely all this tells us of the peculiar grace of this wondrous thing—this state and relationship of "friends" into which the Lord has called His saints—and we see the glorified saints in the full use and joy of this privilege. On the holy hill (to which I have already, in a passing way, alluded) Moses and Elias "talked" with Jesus. Sharing the glory, they knew the privileges of it, while Peter beholding it, felt the power of it, saying, "Lord, it is good for us to be here" (Matt. 17:3, 4).
It is not to present something strange or striking that I notice all this, but rather to aid the soul in assuring itself of that love wherewith the elect are loved—a love which gives us a place where forgetting both our need and our obligation, neither kneeling to supplicate, nor standing to serve, we may sit to listen, and receive communications as a man is talked with by his friend. And when we see this to be the ways of His grace, we may still be conscious of slowness of heart in our selves; but we cannot but know that we are in possession of a love on God's part that passeth knowledge.
And here let me add that this grace of friendship is eminently ours. It is seen in the apostleship of Paul. Paul was let into the secret which had been "hid in God" before the world was—the good pleasure which God had purposed in Himself. (Eph. 1-3). This was a divine communication, as to a friend. For Paul knew the secret, and knew it for himself. In our Apostle, and so in ourselves, this privilege takes us into strange and excellent intimacy. And accordingly we "sit" as David did, or as Lazarus of Bethany did, but it is in "heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6).
This excelleth. Friendship, as we have seen, is no new form of grace. It has been among the privileges of the elect from the beginning. But with us it has peculiar elevation, as everything else has that belongs to the Church.