Growing from servant to friend
The quality of your service to God is a question of how ardently you seek to learn about him and how valiantly you live like him.5 Your qualifications for being a servant of God are completely based on your choices,6 not things you didn’t choose and can’t change or things that other people do or don’t do.7
The more you learn about and live like God, the more you will be able to contribute to God’s purpose. While even the most minimal knowledge about God provides a person with the ability to serve him, the greatest service to God can only be accomplished by those who know him the most and are most like him.
Servants become friends through faithful service to God over time. As you learn more about God, you gain the required knowledge about him to become his friend. While all that is required to be a servant of God is to receive and obey at least one instruction from him, a friend of God knows what he is actually like.1187
Popular depictions of Jesus portray him as a friend to all. While Jesus invites all people to be his friends, very few accept the invitation. Even his closest friends during his life abandoned him in his time of greatest need,1188 in spite of his warning them that they would do so.1189
Most supposed friendships are based on mutual perceived benefit, but a true friend cares more about you than they do themselves. You can’t be a friend of Jesus without pursuing his purpose above your own.1190 To be a friend of God, you must be consistent in your submission to his purpose.1191
Enmity against God is the natural state of man, and only those who fully submit to God overcome this state.1192 While our modern language artificially raises the criteria of being an enemy to intentional, constant, and extreme enmity, all you have to do to be an enemy of God is not actively and consistently advance his purpose to your full ability.1193 As long as your purpose is different to God’s, you are no friend of God, but his enemy. Those who do not consummately serve the Lord are treated by him as wolves and will be destroyed,1194 even if they consider themselves sheep.1195
Footnotes
- 1. But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto him. (Moroni 7:17) ↩
- 2. Yea, and I also exhort you, my brethren, that ye be watchful unto prayer continually, that ye may not be led away by the temptations of the devil, that he may not overpower you, that ye may not become his subjects at the last day; for behold, he rewardeth you no good thing. (Alma 34:39) ↩
- 3. And thus we see the end of him who perverteth the ways of the Lord; and thus we see that the devil will not support his children at the last day, but doth speedily drag them down to hell. (Alma 30:60) ↩
- 4. For behold, there is a wo pronounced upon him who listeth to obey that spirit; for if he listeth to obey him, and remaineth and dieth in his sins, the same drinketh damnation to his own soul; for he receiveth for his wages an everlasting punishment, having transgressed the law of God contrary to his own knowledge. (Mosiah 2:33) ↩
- 5. Therefore, O ye that embark in the service of God, see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day. Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work; For behold the field is white already to harvest; and lo, he that thrusteth in his sickle with his might, the same layeth up in store that he perisheth not, but bringeth salvation to his soul; And faith, hope, charity and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify him for the work. Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence. (D&C 4:2-6) ↩
- 6. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28) And now, he imparteth his word by angels unto men, yea, not only men but women also. Now this is not all; little children do have words given unto them many times, which confound the wise and the learned. (Alma 32:23) For none of these iniquities come of the Lord; for he doeth that which is good among the children of men; and he doeth nothing save it be plain unto the children of men; and he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile. (2 Nephi 26:33) Behold, doth he cry unto any, saying: Depart from me? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; but he saith: Come unto me all ye ends of the earth, buy milk and honey, without money and without price. (2 Nephi 26:25) ↩
- 7. Some of the most diligent and holy servants of God labored for a lifetime with very little response in the people they taught. ↩