Friendship with the Friend of Sinners

Have you ever wondered what it means for Jesus to be your friend? Do you only relate to Him as Savior and Lord, but not your friend?

In his new book, Friendship with the Friend of Sinners: The Remarkable Possibility of Closeness with Jesus published by Baker Books, Jared C. Wilson—author, pastor, and professor at Midwestern Seminary (my alma mater!)—seeks to show readers what it means for Jesus to not simply be our Lord, our Savior, or our Creator, but our friend.

Wilson begins his work with helping readers understand that, to truly understand Jesus as our friend, we must remember He’s a real person.

He writes:

To move from a servant spirituality to a friendship spirituality means really believing and not just theologically-that Jesus is a real person.

And in order to even see Jesus as a person, Jared notes, we must come to the Word of God biblically.

He goes on:

There’s a marked difference between seeing the Bible as a resource and seeing the Bible as sustenance (Matt. 4:4). Reading the Bible is how we listen to lesus as one would listen to a friend. Because the whole Bible is about Jesus. Yes, the whole Bible. Not just the New Testament. Not just the Gospels. Not just the red letters. The whole thing.

Later on, Wilson reminds Christians that Jesus, as the truest friend, is never far away—He’s always nearby.

Wilson writes:

There is no friend closer than Jesus. As we follow him, he never strides too far ahead. He never dodges or ditches us. If we are weary, he slows. If we pull up lame, he stops. If we wander, he circles back. He won’t let us be lost.

And Jared borrows from Samuel Rutherford to accompany this point. “The sea-sick passenger shall come to land; Christ will be the first that will meet you on the shore.”

What Wilson strives to do—and I think he does well—is make Jesus personal to the reader.

He pens:

When you’re praying to the Father through Christ, Christ is truly there with you, listening as closely as a trusted friend or beloved brother. It means that when we’re reading our Bibles and listening to his voice, Christ is right next to us, looking at the text alongside us, speaking those words to our hearts. And it means that in those painfully common times when we don’t particularly feel near to Jesus, he isn’t actually far away from us.

Wilson has always been my favorite author, so I’m biased when I say this, but this was the best book I’ve read in awhile, and is likely the best book I’ve read of his. It’s so natural to speak of Jesus as our Lord and/or Savior, but speaking of Him as our friend—which He is!—makes Him much more personal to us.

Go get this book! It doesn’t release officially until the first week of September, but you can certainly preorder it.

I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.