Can I Really Have Friendship with the Triune God of the Universe?
Our Sin, God’s Grace
In one sense, the answer is no. On our own, we can’t be God’s friends. Our sin precludes us. It alienates us from a relationship, a friendship with God. We wouldn’t enjoy a relationship with God anymore than a traitor would enjoy being around the king that he’s rebelled against.
If you’re an employee embezzling from your company, you don’t look forward to a long, leisurely dinner with the boss. That’s our relationship to God on our own, naturally. But because of everything that God has done for us in Christ—he died for us, rose for us, ascended into heaven, and now is seated at the right hand of God and intercedes for us—we can shockingly have a relationship—a friendship—with God.
Friendship with God
Mike McKinley
What does it mean to be friends with God? Each chapter of this book takes a key insight from John Owen’s Communion with God and clarifies it for modern readers.
The great thing about this is that once you’re God’s friend, you really can’t mess that up because he’s done everything. It was all his initiative. It was his part. It’s not something that I can lose by virtue of my weakness or failure. In that sense, we have this union with God that he has affected—that he’s caused to come into being. And so it’s not really dependent on me when we talk about friendship with God. Another term we might use is communion with God. Well, that’s something that actually I participate in.
I can never lose my union with Christ, but I can lose my sense of communion with him. If I commit my myself to certain sins or if I neglect to spend time with God in prayer or in his word or worshiping him, I’m going to lose that communion, that sense of friendship with him. God has made me his friend, and I get to live out a friendship with him.
Mike McKinley is the author of Friendship with God: A Path to Deeper Fellowship with the Father, Son, and Spirit.
Related Articles
10 Things You Should Know about Communion with Christ
Before we can have communion (or fellowship) with Christ, we must first be in a right relationship with him. That relationship can only come from our being in union with Christ.
Our Friendship with God Is a Two-Way Street
Most Christians know that they are supposed to do some basic things: go to church, avoid sin, read the Bible, and pray. But what do any of those things have to do with being God’s friend?
What Is the Difference between Union and Communion with Christ?
An important distinction that a lot of Christians misunderstand is between the eternal union we have with God and the experiential communion that we have on a daily basis.
All our human friendships have a limit to what they can withstand. But what if there were a friend with no limit?
