11. Relationship Words in the Word: Friendship (with God)

11. Relationship Words in the Word: Friendship (with God).

“Intimate friendship with the Lord is reserved for those who stand in awe of Him in reverent fear and who completely trust in His character; He will confide in them, tell them what is on His heart, and reveal to them His covenant promises of faithfulness.” (Psalm 25:14).

Is the word “relationship” even in Scripture?  Actually, it is a relatively new word, first used in 1744, that tries to sum up many old ideas. This very modern word is not even mentioned in the Bible, but the concept is as old as the hills, as ancient as creation, as eternal as the Trinity. So there are a truckload of terms and ideas in Scripture that describe different aspects of relationship, words like fellowship, community, active participation, partnership, indwell, kin, with, union, presence. We have biblical titles like Emmanuel and Paraclete. And we can find biblical pictures of relationship in marriage, friendship, companionship, and family. Even the word “knowledge” is a relationship word. There is one Greek term, though, that is in this series, and it seems to come closest to “relationship,” and that New Testament word is “koinonia.” But maybe we should start at the beginning. Actually, relationship began before the beginning, in the Holy Trinity.

A Basic Question. Why did God create mankind? He didn’t need to, because He is utterly and eternally complete within the intimate communion of the Trinity. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit have enjoyed the most intimate of relationship forever, before time, outside of time, for all time. This divine Threesome share an interrelatedness that is far beyond our understanding. The Trinity is the Original Relationship, the deepest personal communion imaginable, a unity of love and connection. The Three Persons are so intertwined that they are somehow inside each other. Relationship with Creator God is, then, the whole point of our existence, our friendship with the Lord is the center-point of mankind’s life purpose and meaning. We humans can find our significance only in a relationship with God, and He has set in place our destiny to be in union with Him.

Why would the Almighty Creator God stoop to having friendships with those who He formed from the dust? He doesn’t need to, and never has. God is utterly and eternally complete within the intimate communion of the Trinity. So He doesn’t really need us as if we could complete Him in any way. One simple way to look at this basic question is this… God created humanity because God is love, because He wanted to spread around His love to those who could respond in friendship. He is so full of love that He wanted to create people in His image with whom He could enjoy a meaningful relationship. God created us to have deep fellowship with Him, and He gets great joy out of that fellowship with each of us. He didn’t create us because it would complete Him in some way… He created us knowing that friendship with Him would complete us! The Trinity is so full of love that they couldn’t resist sharing their love with beings made in His image.

A Friendly Stroll in the Garden of Eden. Creator God tipped His hand right from the start after Adam and Eve were created. He could have simply gone rogue and kept a distance from His creation. He could have been a basically impersonal caretaker of the universe. But He didn’t. God made the universe, and then He wanted to get personal.  God personally keeps track of everything in the world, including us, with whom He desires a personal relationship. In Genesis 3:8, we find an amazing passage, “Adam and Eve heard the sounds of God’s voice as He was strolling through the Garden in the cool of the day with its fresh breeze. But the man and woman hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the Garden.”  It is truly astounding that Creator God simply wanted to enjoy Himself with His friends. He wanted to have intimate fellowship with them and develop a deep friendship. That’s what He has always desired from the very beginning.

Hiding in Shame. But the original parents of all mankind knew they had disobeyed God by listening to Satan and doing his bidding. So they hid from God in guilt and shame. They knew they would be fully exposed in their sin before God, and they hid themselves from His presence. God then mysteriously called out, “Where are you?” Of course, God knew very well where they were hiding, and He wanted to give them a chance to voluntarily come to Him and confess what they had done. They were well aware of what they had done… They broke God’s trust, they were unfaithful to the One who made them. The result of their disobedience was a fracture in their relationship with God, a loss of the intimacy they once enjoyed with their Lord. No longer will they enjoy an unbroken friendship with God as a loving parent. And God expelled them from paradise. But God didn’t give up on them, He actually exiled Himself and followed them out of the Garden in order to remain a presence in their lives. God loved them too much to desert them.

Two Hebrew Friends of God. There were only two old saints in the Hebrew Bible that reportedly enjoyed a friendship with God: Abraham and Moses. Two different Hebrew words for friend were used with these two men: With Abraham, the word points to a person whom God loved deeply, a beloved friend. In the case of Moses, the word was the more common term for friend in Jewish Scripture (“rea“), and could mean anything from brother and lover to neighbor and husband to companion and fellow. With Moses, friend of God meant close companion or intimate neighbor.

1. “Abraham was a friend of God” (2 Chronicles 20:7; James 2:23; Isaiah 41:8).

“My Friend Abraham.” Abraham is the Biblical champion of saying hineni, ‘Here I am,’ saying it three times in one chapter alone (Gen. 22). By this time in their relationship, Abraham and God were in the process of building an intimate friendship. Many years earlier, Abraham left his home in Ur at the simple urging of Yahweh, and “Abraham went forth as the Lord had spoken to him” (Gen. 12:4). When he and Sarai and his possessions finally made it to the land of Canaan, he built an altar at Bethel and “called upon the Name of Yahweh” (Gen. 12:8). He made a little side trip to Egypt and returned to Bethel, and once again “called on the Name of Yahweh” (Gen. 15:4). Abram was then known as “Abram of El Elyon, God Most High,” and was blessed by Melchizedek (Gen. 14:19), the mysterious king and priest of Salem, the ancient site of Jerusalem. Yahweh then spoke to Abram in a vision and promised him a son and countless descendants. Abram fully trusted God and took God’s words to heart, as he always did. Fast forward to the miraculous birth of his son Isaac, and the divine encounter with the Lord in respect to the doom of Sodom. Abraham and the Lord seemed to be bargaining as to Sodom’s fate at that time, and they seemed to trust each other as close friends through the whole exchange (Gen. 18). As we approach chapter 22, it’s clear that Abraham is a model of faith in God, and that he maintained, usually, an attitude of “Here I am” with Yahweh. Abraham lived with God in the spirit of ongoing availability and trust. It’s no wonder why Abraham became known in Scripture as “the friend of God.”

“Then they turned away from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. And Abraham came near and said, ‘Would You also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:22,25).

Challenging God? A prime example of Abraham’s friendship with God occurred when Abraham challenged God regarding Sodom’s destruction. What gave Abraham the right to challenge the almighty God? Call it the “right of friendship.” The Lord had just stated before the Sodom conversation that He “knew” Abraham (Gen. 18:19), which underlined an intimate personal relationship between the two of them. Besides that, God had just introduced this whole episode with a rhetorical question, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing?” (Gen. 18:17). In other words, like all close friends, God wasn’t about to keep a secret from His bosom buddy Abraham. And, as in any solid friendship, they are free to challenge each other in a spirit of respect and trust. God didn’t consider Abraham to be insolent or impudent. God and Abraham seemed to be reasoning together, which is what good friends do. Their friendship was mutual… Abraham believed in God, and God believed in Abraham. God and Abraham enjoyed a faith-fueled friendship.  Abraham had chutzpah, was audacious, but not disrespectful. “True faith requires bold perseverance. Sometimes it is expressed by brazen impudence. Faith can be defined as chutzpah. Persevere with unyielding tenacity.” (Brad Young, Jesus the Jewish Theologian).

2. “And it came to pass, when Moses entered the Tent, that the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the Tent, and Yahweh talked with Moses. So the Lord Yahweh spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” (Exodus 33:9,11).

Moses, Face to Face. When God and Moses were said to have spoken to each other “face to face,” a few questions come to mind. God is said to be a spirit (John 4:24), and spirits do not have a human form. Since God is a spirit, He then has no body, no less a face. Besides that question, we find a little later in this same chapter Exodus 33, that God told Moses not to try to see His face, and that he wouldn’t survive the experience if he did (Ex. 33:18-20). God is implying here that His face, His whole Person, would overwhelm Moses’ human capabilities. A mere human being would not be able to tolerate the fullness of God’s glory. God’s full presence is heavenly, not earthly. We can only experience a portion of God’s glory, so Moses would be limited to the “back” of God’s presence, only a portion of His glory. God is a “consuming fire” (Ex. 24:17 and Heb. 12:29). So to approach God in His complete presence would be similar to our attempting a journey to the surface of the sun. We earthlings are simply not made to be able to do that. So God covered Moses’ eyes and passed by him as he was hidden in the cleft of a rock. At that, Moses could only sneak a peek at the “backside” of the Lord (Ex. 33:22).

Presence to Presence. In the ‘face to face’ interaction between God and Moses, most translators would say that “face,” as it does in many other passages, is meant to be translated as “presence.” Face to face is a metaphor, a figure of speech, that means “presence to presence.” In other words, God and Moses were intimately present with each other. Face to face is a way of describing the strong bond of friendship that God and Moses enjoyed, much like lifelong next-door neighbors. Face to face is not meant to be taken literally. That phrase conveys a two-way relationship, with no third party involved. It meant one person able to personally communicate clearly and directly with another person. It’s not unlike another phrase we don’t use literally but we know what it means… a “heart to heart” conversation. Of course, our hearts are not actually interacting with each other. Face to face is similar to that, in which there is the implication of deep personal contact. Moses reported a similar figure of speech in Numbers 12:8, when the Lord said, “With Moses I speak mouth to mouth.” With Moses I can have a meaningful conversation, says the Lord. Face to face means it was a real exchange between them in real time, not in a vision or a dream. The conversation actually occurred in the context of reality, but it wasn’t literally face to face. If Moses looked at Yahweh God full in the face, He wouldn’t be merely radiating God’s light as he did so often. Moses would have been burnt to a crisp in the consuming fire of the Lord.

Friendship with God. When we become friends with God, the qualities of true friendship are of course present, since the whole idea of friendship was invented by Him. God is the original source of all the qualities that make a friendship, such as: Trust and Faith in each other; Loyalty and Faithfulness to each other; Transparency and Openness with each other; Mutuality and Reciprocity between each other; Sacrifice and Self-denial for each other; Patience and Intentionality when building a friendship together; the willingness to Listen to and Learn from each other; Willingness to Obey what the friend has requested to demonstrate the friend-love, the trust needed to serve the friend’s best interests. Abraham and Moses were both close friends of God, and now because of God’s Son Jesus, we too have the Way to friendship with the Father. “I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6).