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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Following the Christ (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 56. The Deeper Meaning of Friendship
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The Deeper Meaning of Friendship
A friend in need is a friend indeed. Our Lord Jesus was our friend in our need. It was a desperate need. It could not be worse. We had been badly hurt by sin. The hurt was so bad that we could do nothing without help. Our Lord Jesus came to our help.
It was not easy for Him to be our friend. Friendship is sometimes very costly. His reputation went, and then His life. But He never flinched. He was thinking of us. Our need controlled Him. There were two controlling words in our Lord Jesus' life—passion and compassion. He had a passion for His Father. He had compassion for us. The two dovetailed perfectly. The Father had an overwhelming compassion for us. The passion for the Father in our Lord's heart included the throbbing, sobbing compassion for us. The compassion was the manward expression of the passion for the Father.
It was this compassion that controlled Him those human years. It drove Him hard along the road we've been looking at. He was driven into the Wilderness, through the years of sacrificial service, out into the grove of the olive trees, up the steep hill of Calvary, down into the depths of Joseph's tomb. Step-by-step He pushed His way along, for He was thinking of His Father and of us. The passion for the Father meant a compassion for us. Things proved worse in realization as He came up close to them, as they began to touch His very life. But He never wavered. He never flinched, for He was thinking of us. He was our Friend, our Friend in our desperate need. A friend in need is a friend indeed. It was by deeds that He met our needs.
But friendship is mutual. It has two sides, its enjoyments and its obligations. That word "friendship" has two meanings. It means fellowship. Two who are congenial in thought and aim and spirit can have sweet fellowship together as they make exchange with each other of the deep things of their spirits. This is one meaning, and a sweet, hallowed meaning, too. Then there is the other. You are in some sore need. It is a desperate emergency in your life, and out of the circle of your friends one singles himself out, and comes to your aid. At real cost or sacrifice to himself perhaps, he gives you that which meets and tides over your emergency.
This is the deeper, the rarer meaning of the word, rarer both in being less frequent and in being very precious. Fellowship friends may be many; emergency friends very, very few. And if circumstances so turn out that this man who has so rarely proven himself your friend, is himself in some emergency, and you are now in position to help him, as once he helped you, you count it not only an obligation of the highest sort, but the rarest of privileges. And with great joy you come to his help without stopping to count the cost in the doubtful, questioning way. Friendship is mutual.
Now this second, this deep, rare meaning, is the one we're using just now. It comes to include the fellowship meaning, so enriching the emergency friendship yet more. But the emphasis is on the emergency meaning of the word friendship. Our Friend was a friend in this deepest, rarest way, in the desperate emergency of our lives.
And now this Friend of ours is in need, a need so great that it is an emergency. And this seems a startling thing to say. You may think I'm indulging some rhetorical figure of speech merely. He, the Lord Jesus, in need! He is now seated at the Father's right hand in glory. He is "far above all rule and authority and power and dominion." He is the sovereign ruler of our world. How can it be said, with any soberness of practical meaning, that He is in need, and in desperate need? Yet, let me repeat very quietly, that it is even so.
He needs our co-operation. He needs the human means through which to work out His plans. The power of God has always flowed through human channels. And His plans have waited, have been delayed because He has not always been able to find men willing to let Him use them as He will. This is the only explanation of the long, weary waiting of the earth for His promised Kingdom. This, only, explains centuries of delay in the working out of His plans. The delay, the dark centuries, the misery,—these have been no part of His plan, but dead set against His plan.
"The restless millions wait the Light,
Whose coming maketh all things new.
Christ also waits; but men are slow and late.
Have we done what we could? Have I? Have you?"
Some unknown friend, on seeing the statue of General Gordon, as it stands facing the great desert and the Soudan at Khartoum, made these lines:
"The strings of camels come in single file,
Bearing their burdens o'er the desert sand:
Swiftly the boats go plying on the Nile.
The needs of men are met on every hand,
But still I wait
For the messenger of God who cometh late.
I see the clouds of dust rise in the plain,
The measured tread of troops falls on the ear;
The soldier comes the empire to maintain,
Bringing the pomp of war, the reign of fear,
But still I wait
The messenger of peace, he cometh late.
They set me brooding o'er the desert drear,
Where broodeth darkness as the deepest night.
From many a mosque there comes the call to prayer;
I hear no voice that calls on Christ for light.
But still I wait
For the messenger of Christ, who cometh late." (Anonymous, in "Egyptian Mission News," copied from S. M. Zwemer's "Unoccupied Fields of the World.)"