“These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.” John 15:11-15
The Lily of the Valley is a beautiful depiction of the tremendous friend the believer has in Jesus. The themes in the song are rich and varied, describing Him as: supplying all we need for cleansing and wholeness, comforting us in our time of sorrow, steadying us in times of trouble, bearing our cares and grief, empowering us in times of temptation, assuring us of the attainability of the eternal goal, being the One who will never leave nor forsake us, feeding our hungry souls, and thereby making Him the fairest of ten thousand to our souls. It is little wonder the second line of the song declares that “He is everything to me.”
Isn’t it so easy to sing about the abundance of blessings we enjoy in and through the Christ? Isn’t it likewise easy to sing that line declaring that He is everything to us? For sure it is, however, this is where the self-reflection must begin because that phrase is one which is much easier to say than to live out. What does it mean to live out a declaration of Christ’s worth to us? The answer lies in both the song and the biblical text describing the nature of this friendship.
The idea of friendship with Jesus flows from John 15:9-15 as He prepared the twelve for His upcoming departure. He assured them that, just as the Father had loved Him, so He loved them (vv. 9-10). This He did to infuse His joy into their hearts to bring their joy to fullness (vs. 11). The call for them was to love one another in the same way He had loved them (vs. 12), at which point He defined the nature of that love (vv. 13-15).
The friendship Jesus extends to humanity is one of self-sacrificial love, to the point of dying for His friends. This is why extolling His virtues is so easy. Where the difficulty arises is in His definition of who is in fact His friend. Note the conditional clause in verse 14 where we learn one is His friend “…if you do whatever I command you.” Jesus’ friendship to us is lived out in His dying for our sins. Our friendship to Him is lived out in our dying to sin (Romans 6:1-7, 15-18), and if necessary, dying for Him and/or His friends (1 John 3:16; Revelation 2:10).
This corresponds with the second verse of The Lily of the Valley where the song declares, “I have all for Him forsaken, and all my idols torn from my heart…” Again, while recognizing the ease of the declaration, we must carefully examine our lives to see if our actions verify our words (2 Corinthians 13:5).
Thankfully, He has done so much for us that we ought never begrudge or refuse the struggle to remove whatever previously unrecognized “idols” our self-reflection reveals to us. At the end of the day, we know we have found a friend in Jesus, but life’s greatest question is, has He found a friend in us?