Of the many great things about Justin Whittle Earley’s Made for People (and there are many great things), the greatest is the assertion Earley makes early in the book about Jesus and friendship:

It may seem odd to cast the story of Jesus’ salvation in terms of friendship.  But that is exactly how Jesus himself tells it.  In his final evening with his disciples, Jesus describes his act of salvation as an act of friendship.  “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends . . . 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 did not choose me, but I chose you.”

And then:

Spiritually speaking, friendship is our final destination.

Earley asserts this truth after talking about the contemporary reality of loneliness and the context of our current predicament as the result of both creation and fall in the opening chapters of Genesis.  And while he could have spent more time on the image of friendship throughout the Old Testament, he gets straight to the point, for which I am grateful.

For some years now I have been making connections through the Old and New Testaments and the idea of friendship.  Earley’s new book puts it front and center in a way that I hope catches on, in a way that will maybe “shift the conversation” some when it comes to the work of God amongst people.  Because I firmly believe that whatever else it is, friendship is a real mark of the the resurrection.  It is an open door that God invites all of us through, first with the Triune God and then with one another.  Earley continues:

When we understand Jesus’ life as an act of friendship, the word suddenly leaps from some luxury on the periphery of life to a necessity at the center of life.

Earley has much to say about friendship in Made for People, and I think I’ll spend some time unpacking some of his larger points.  But for now I’m glad to note where he starts: with the example of Jesus.