Tuesday | 18 November 2025

A friend of Christ

The first action of baptising involves messengers of Christ establishing a specific kind of relationship with those who hear and receive them. A messenger is a friend of Christ. Jesus said, ‘You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.’ Joh 15:14. Evidently, a messenger is, himself, a disciple and a slave of Christ. He belongs to Christ and, accordingly, his loyalty and commitment is to Christ. We note, for example, that Paul identified himself in this way as he introduced the gospel, saying, ‘Paul, a bondslave of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures.’ Rom 1:1‑2.

Those who make disciples are joining their hearers to Christ by first joining these people to themselves. They are able to do this because they are, themselves, a disciple and a slave of Christ, and they belong to Him. We note that through his teaching, and the demonstration of the dying and living of Jesus Christ, Paul’s hearers were joined to him. As Luke recorded in the book of Acts, ‘Then Paul, as his custom was, went in to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ.” And some of them were persuaded; and a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women, joined Paul and Silas.’ Act 17:2‑4.

As a friend of Christ, the apostle Paul readily testified about his relational mode and connection to his hearers. He said to the Ephesians, ‘You know, from the first day that I came to Asia, in what manner I always lived among you, serving the Lord with humility, with many tears and trials which happened to me by the plotting of the Jews; how I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you, and taught you publicly and from house to house.’ Act 20:18-20.