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.1 Your qualifications for being a servant of God are completely based on your choices,2 not things you didn’t choose and can’t change or things that other people do or don’t do.3
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.4
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,5 in spite of his warning them that they would do so.6
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.7 To be a friend of God, you must be consistent in your submission to his purpose.8
Enmity against God is the natural state of man, and only those who fully submit to God overcome this state.9 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.10 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,11 even if they consider themselves sheep.12
Footnotes
- 1. 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) ↩
- 2. 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) ↩
- 3. Some of the most diligent and holy servants of God labored for a lifetime with very little response in the people they taught. ↩
- 4. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. (John 15:15) ↩
- 5. And they all forsook him, and fled. (Mark 14:50) ↩
- 6. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? (John 6:67) ↩
- 7. He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad. (Matthew 12:30) ↩
- 8. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. (John 15:14) ↩
- 9. See Mosiah 3:19, previously quoted. ↩
- 10. Behold, this is my doctrine—whosoever repenteth and cometh unto me, the same is my church. Whosoever declareth more or less than this, the same is not of me, but is against me; therefore he is not of my church. (D&C 10:67-68) ↩
- 11. For what shepherd is there among you having many sheep doth not watch over them, that the wolves enter not and devour his flock? And behold, if a wolf enter his flock doth he not drive him out? Yea, and at the last, if he can, he will destroy him. And now I say unto you that the good shepherd doth call after you; and if you will hearken unto his voice he will bring you into his fold, and ye are his sheep; and he commandeth you that ye suffer no ravenous wolf to enter among you, that ye may not be destroyed. (Alma 5:59-60) ↩
- 12. I say unto you, I would that ye should remember to retain the name written always in your hearts, that ye are not found on the left hand of God, but that ye hear and know the voice by which ye shall be called, and also, the name by which he shall call you....And again, doth a man take an ass which belongeth to his neighbor, and keep him? I say unto you, Nay; he will not even suffer that he shall feed among his flocks, but will drive him away, and cast him out. I say unto you, that even so shall it be among you if ye know not the name by which ye are called. (Mosiah 5:12, 14) ↩