What Does God Want?

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you (Jn. 15:15). 

It's the darndest thing! (Or, as my next-door northern Mississippi neighbor would say, "Dang!")  We could not have guessed it on our own, although the Greeks probably came closest to it with their gods accompanying people on their journeys.  The Canaanites and other pagans often threw their infants into the fire as a sacrifice to appease their gods.  The Aztecs built temples wherein they cut and mutilated themselves at the top, or offered human sacrifice to their gods.  And the Pharisees scrutinized every practice to see whether Yahweh would or would not be pleased with the tithes and offerings of the hoi-poloi.

And then came Jesus, eating and drinking with sinners and tax-collectors, scandalizing everyone by healing on the Sabbeth, and asking whether it was lawful to do good on the Sabbeth, or to do evil.  (He asked the question because "Some of them there were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus....")

And then He said, "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.  Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, 'Sir, open the door for us.'

"But he will answer, 'I don't know you or where you come from.'

"Then you will say, 'We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.'

"But he will reply, 'I don't know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!'"

So what is "the narrow door" of which He spoke?  What does God want from us?

Dang! He wants to be friends with us!  Who would have guessed it?  He wants to know us!  Matthew 7 has people coming to Jesus "on that day" saying, "....did we not prophesy in your name, and drive out many demons and perform many miracles?"  Then I will tell them plainly, "I never knew you."  He wants to be friends with us, wherever we are, wherever we are coming from!  He did say that we would do miracles in His Name, indeed, but it seems that it is not the miracles that cause us to enter the kingdom "on that day," but rather that He knows us!  And how, then, will He know us?

When I think about my good friends, whether I see them seldom or often, I think about an ease between us; I think about us easily walking in the same direction, not in opposition to one another.  I think about a free exchange of speech and a kind of undercurrent, or excitement, in being together.  I think about laughter and discovery, and maybe even free argument of ideas that does not wound but that ends in a shared glass of wine.  

God HAD to come in the flesh so that we could "walk with Him" and learn His innermost thoughts.  We have to somehow share the same Spirit with Him, as unlikely as it would seem.  When Jesus said to the Apostles, "I no longer call you servants, but friends," He said it at the Last Supper, at the same time He promised to send the Spirit to reveal what they could not then bear to hear. He would "take from what is mine and reveal it to you" (Jn. 16).  

We CAN be "friends" with God if we share one Spirit with Him, and Jesus promised to send the Spirit after He was raised from the dead.  The Acts of the Apostles is the story of that Spirit acting in the Apostles so that they continued to do what Jesus had done in the flesh.  2 Peter says :

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  Through these he has give us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

What does God want?  He wants our friendship; He wants us to participate in His own Spirit.  As for everything else, He will provide whatever we need for "life and godliness."