The friendship of Jesus was unselfish. He did not choose those whose names would add to his influence, who would help him to rise to honor and renown; he chose lowly, unknown men, whom he could lift up to worthy character. His enemies charged against him that he was the friend of publicans and sinners. In a sense this was true. He came to be a Saviour of lost men. He said he was a physician; and a physician's mission is among the sick, not among the whole and well.
The friendship of Jesus was not checked or foiled by the discovery of faults or blemishes in those whom he had taken into his life. Even in our ordinary human relations we do not know what we are engaging to do when we become the friend of another. "For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health," runs the marriage covenant. The covenant in all true friendship is the same. We pledge our friend faithfulness, with all that faithfulness includes. We know not what demands upon us this sacred compact may make in years to come. Misfortune may befall our friend, and he may require our aid in many ways. Instead of being a help he may become a burden. But friendship must not fail, whatever its cost may be. When we become the friend of another we do not know what faults and follies in him closer acquaintance may disclose to our eyes. But here, again, ideal friendship must not fail.
What is true in common human relations was true in a far more wonderful way of the friendship of Jesus. We have only to recall the story of his three years with his disciples. They gave him at the best a very feeble return for his great love for them. They were inconstant, weak, foolish, untrustful. They showed personal ambition, striving for first places, even at the Last Supper. They displayed jealousy, envy, narrowness, ingratitude, unbelief, cowardice. As these unlovely things appeared in the men Jesus had chosen, his friendship did not slacken or unloose its hold. He had taken them as his friends, and he trusted them wholly; he committed himself to them absolutely, without reserve, without condition, without the possibility of withdrawal. No matter how they failed, he loved them still. He was patient with their weaknesses and with their slow growth, and was not afraid to wait, knowing that in the end they would justify his faith in them and his costly friendship for them.
Jesus thought not of the present comfort and pleasure of his friends, but of their highest and best good. Too often human friendship in its most generous and lavish kindness is really most unkind. It thinks that its first duty is to give relief from pain, to lighten burdens, to alleviate hardship, to smoothe the rough path. Too often serious hurt is done by this over-tenderness of human love.
But Jesus made no such mistakes in dealing with his friends. He did not try to make life easy for them. He did not pamper them. He never lowered the conditions of discipleship so that it would be easy for them to follow him. He did not carry their burdens for them, but put into their hearts courage and hope to inspire and strengthen them to carry their own loads.
He did not keep them secluded from the world in a quiet shelter so that they would not come in contact with the world's evil nor meet its assaults; his method with them was to teach them how to live so that they should have the divine protection in the midst of spiritual danger, and then to send them forth to face the perils and fight the battles. His prayer for his disciples was not that they should be taken out of the world, thus escaping its dangers and getting away from its struggles, but that they should be kept from the world's evil. He knew that if they would become good soldiers they must be trained in the midst of the conflict. Hence he did not fight their battles for them. He did not save Peter from being sifted; it was necessary that his apostle should pass through the terrible experience, even though he should fail in it and fall. His prayer for him was not that he should not be sifted, but that his faith should not altogether fail. His aim in all his dealings with his friends was to train them into heroic courage and invincible character, and not to lead them along flowery paths through gardens of ease.