GOD IS LOVE
A familiar Biblical phrase to which many non Christians cling is this: God is love, from 1 John 4.16. We might not know that the verses leading up to this simple statement are rich.


   The chapter begins with the theme of the Spirit of God. John says test the spirits to see if they are from God. Among other things this implies that only one spirit comes to us from God, the Holy Spirit; He is sent as God to us. Any spirit must confess the Son, that Jesus has come from the Father, 1 John 4.2. And that's because only a spirit from God could do this. That's how we know to trust the spirit. Only the Spirit of God has experienced both the Son and the Father.
   John says that we are from God, agreeing with Ephesians 1.4, and that God is in us, Ephesians 1.14. The spirits which are not from God are, from the world, 1 John 4.5, John 15.19. John says anyone with the Spirit living within them will listen to the apostles because the spirit of truth is in them, 1 John 4.6.


   So we can see from the first 6 verses that the Spirit of God has come to us, He lives in our souls, and that He only can be trusted because He came from God, He did not come from the world. He witnesses to Jesus as the Son of God.

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Now if the spirit of truth is in us, John says, let us love one another, for love is from God, 1 John 4.7, John 15.17. How do we know love is from God? Because of what God did, sending His Son. In the act of doing, love came forth, it was manifested. We know God loves us because He made Himself real to us in His Son. So if God has loved us, we should love one another. Notice John does not say return God's love to God--he says pass it on to one another. In the process of loving one another, God's Spirit will become apparent in us and among us.


   This means, among other things, that the Spirit of God is His love.

   Now we come to 1 John verse 12, a verse loaded with richness.
   First John says, no one has beheld God at any time... So how would God ever be seen? John says He can be seen in us by others whom we love, if we love one another... This is because God abides in us, as He did in the tabernacle, and, His love is perfected in us. But how do we know that He abides in us, as we are loving one another? John's answer is, By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit, 4.13. There is the same thought, the Holy Spirit is God's love for us.


   John saw and came to know not just that Jesus was the savior of the world, but that the Father sent Him. It is this confession that the Father has sent the Son to be the savior of the world which makes every follower a believer, 1 John 4.14. In other words, to be the Son is to be begotten of the Father and sent into the world. When we know this, we have God.
Those who are of the world, who do not confess that Jesus is the Son of God sent into the world by the Father, do not abide in the love of God. They can say, God is love, but the Holy Spirit will not abide in them if they do not confess that Jesus came from the Father as the Son of God. Verse 15 says it: Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God.

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Having said that only the spirit who confesses that Jesus is from the Father sent to us is true, and that we should love one another, how can we love in the perfection of the Holy Spirit?

   First John says if God's Spirit is abiding in us,, God is abiding in us. As He is perfect, so His Spirit in us will be. Abiding is dwelling but it is not inert. We will experience the progress of the soul as we are in God. We will have no fear in love because perfect love casts out fear. This comes through experiencing God. When we receive the love which is from God, we will have no fear of judgment day, 4.17.
   Second, this perfect love from God is also for today. John uses the example of loving our brother. We might recall the last phrase of Matthew 23.8: you are all brothers. Jesus had said to forgive your brother endlessly, Matt. 18.21, and if you have anything against your brother, be reconciled to him, Matt. 5.22, and don't be a hypocrite about your btother's sin, Matt. 7.4. So here, John says if you can't love your brother who stands in front of you, how can you love God whom you can't see,  1 John 4.20.


   When we receive His Spirit, when we confess that Jesus is the Son of God coming to us, when we love one another as He has loved us, then the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, one for another.

   If you want to jump and shout, Halleleuiah, go ahead.

WORSHIP

Worship is the allegiance between the human soul and God. But what does our soul look like?

   The OT tabernacle was given as the meeting of the individual and God. The glory of God was there for the individual soul to approach with a sacrifice. When the sacrifice was accepted, the individual soul was cleansed and purified, restored to God, having entered His presence. In the tabernacle we see God coming to Israel so that Israel could come to God.
Moses went up to the mountain to receive the directions for this tabernacle, by which God could be in Israel's midst. Now in the NT in 2 Corinthians 5.1 Paul says, if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. So the tabernacle represents our soul in its' resemblance to God in heaven, as a meeting of God and us. Peter says in 2 Peter 1.14, I must lay aside this my earthly tabernacle... and John says in Revelation 21.3, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men and He will dwell with them.

   The purpose of the tabernacle in the midst of Israel was so that the Jews would be conformed to the image of God. This was a sacrifice, it was a ceremony, it was a proclamation by the priest, in other words it was their worship.


   But in the NT, this tabernacle through which we are conformed to God is for everyone who believes by faith. Our tabernacle now is Jesus.
He existed in the form of God and emptied Himself to be made in the likeness of men, Philippians 2.6, coming to us. We exist in the likeness of God in order to meet God in the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, Titus 3.5. Instead of animals, when we present our bodies as a living sacrtifice, holy and acceptable to Him, we are transformed by the renewing of our minds that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect, Romans 12.1, 2. This will of God which is good and acceptable and perfect is the life Jesus lived, it is His ministry that we receive and do.


   All of this is to prepare our souls to receive Him, as the tabernacle of our soul, our life, our hope.

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This tabernacle has three qualities of worship.

   The first one is the meeting of past and future in the present.
Many Biblical passages exemplifie this. When John wrote about the Jesus he knew, he began with, In the beginning was the Word...and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory... John the Baptist said, He existed before me, John 1.15. When we contemplate the Biblical passages about God in the past, He comes to us in worship. This is quite evident in Hebrews 1.1, 2, God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. What was long ago has come today. No time or place could reveal the 'now' aspect of the Ancient of Days than communion. However, we must open our souls by faith to these things. Do we believe that the God who made the world is now with us? This question is the essence of worship as an asking God to come. We say we approach God, but it is rather that God approaches us.


   The second quality of worship is recognition.

   In John 4 Jesus says the Father is looking for those who worship in spirit and truth. To worship in spirit is to have the Spirit of God within the soul so that we can recognize Him. When the Wise Men came to Jesus in Matt. 2.11, they fell down recognizing Him. The disciples follow Jesus at the slightest prompting as they recognize Him. James and John left their boat immediately to follow Him. A leper worshiped Jesus, calling Him Lord in Matt. 8.2. A Roman ruler knew Jesus could heal his servant immediately, Matt. 9.18. They all saw in their own soul who Jesus was, recognizing Him. His Spirit was in them. This Spirit will be given to the disciples and to allof us, John 17.8. When Jesus fills our souls as He filled the temple in Isiaiah 6.1, worship will break out.

   The third quality of worship is hope.
When we bring our hopes to worship, we open ourselves to God as the God of love. Places where hopes have been spoken, felt, prayed, lifted up to God are spiritual places. They may be a small chapel or a wide cathedral. What is common to all is the belief that our hopes go to Jesus, as the author and finisher of our faith. Our hopes can be emotional, rational, detailed, personal or worldly. Our hopes ascend like a winding stair, upward, as we lift Him up. The perfect Biblical example is Matthew 8.5, the centurion's daughter. Jesus is willing to come to the centurion's home, but the centurion says, just say the word and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man under authority; with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, 'Go' and he goes and to another, 'Come,' and he comes and to my slave, 'Do this' and he does it.'

   What is being said here is a relationship from God above to us, from we in our need up to God in His majesty. The centurion knows that Jesus has ministering angels under Him who come when He calls, who do what He commands. Paul tells the Ephesians that, all things have been put in subjection under Christ's feet, above rule and authority and power and dominion. The centurion prayed, the angels brought the prayer up to heaven to Christ, who answers every prayer.

FEED MY SHEEP

One of the passages in the Bible which reads cryptically is John 21.15-17, the passage in which Jesus asks Peter three times about his love and tells him three times to feed His sheep.

When John records that Jesus had to say these things 3 times, there has to be more to it than repeating what He said. Jesus always had a way of answering what people need, not what they ask. So maybe we can look a bit further into the Greek words used by John to see something more.

In John 18.25 Peter denies three times that he knew Jesus. Under Jewish common law, denying three times meant that a contract could be voided. So here in John 21 Jesus restores Peter to the covenant with God by asking him 3 times, 'Do you love Me?'

Now let's go to the first exchange, 21.15.
We will isolate 4 Greek words, the word for 'love,' agape, the word for respectful love, philew and two words for 'feed,' boskw and poimaine. In this verse Jesus says,

15--Simon, son of John, do you agapas me more than these?

He said to Him, 'Yes, Lord, You know that I philew You.

He said to him, Boskw My lambs.


The word agapas originally meant a welcoming love. It was used in Homer to mean the love between a man and his son. Then much later in classical Greek, 12 times in the Greek translation of the OT it was used for sexual love. By the time of the NT, the gospel writers used it in it's Homeric sense, the distinguished unselfish love with a family between father and son. Jesus is asking Peter if he loves Jesus intensly, even more than Peter might love his fellow man, the other disciples, or anyone. This is Peter's moment to tell Jesus He loves the Master more than anyone, more than life itself; in this regard the question is Peter's Abraham and Isaac moment. Abraham had to show he loved God more than his own son, and Peter is being asked much the same thing.

Peter does not use the word, agapas, he uses filew, an impersonal and less intense word. When Jesus says, Feed My sheep, using boskw, Jesus is using the conventional word for a shepherd feeding lambs. Boskw originally meant a field of grass and fruit trees. Jesus is saying if Peter must love Jesus intensly, before he can feed the flock as any laboring shepherd would. The follower as a laborer in the field is used in 2 Cor. 6.1 and Colossians 4.11.

But this will not be enough for Peter with Jesus.

The second exchange seems like a repetition but it is not.
16--He said to him a second time, Simon, son of John, do you agapas Me?

He said to Him, Yes, Lord, You know that I philew You.

He said to him, poimaine My sheep.


Jesus and Peter repeat their two words for 'love,' but now Jesus uses another word for 'feeding'. This is the word poimaine, meaning to feed one's own sheep, to care for their needs. What Jesus is saying is that Peter is to take his own love of Jesus and give that love to the sheep, to fellow believers. He is telling Peter to turn from loving Jesus to loving the sheep. Homer uses two forms of this word for 'shepherd and for 'flock', thus indicating the intimate connection between a shepherd and his own flock. It is from this connection of shepherd and flock that we get the expression, to shepherd a church.

When we notice that Peter has not changed his word, filew, this indicates that the flock is not Peter's possession but his care. It is his own to served. Peter seems to have understood this, as in 1 Peter 5.1 he calls himself a 'fellow-elder,' not the chief or the owner but a servant among servants.

Now for the third episode.
17--He said to him a third time, Simon, son of John, do you phileis Me?

Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, Do you phileis Me?

And he said to Him, Lord You know all things; You know that I philew You.

Jesus said to him, Boske My lambs.

Here Jesus does not use agapas, but phileis. He is asking Peter if he truly has turned from depending on Jesus to serving the flock of believers. That Peter uses filew indicates that Peter understands this is the real question. Is Peter ready to leave the fishing and his home behind to serve those he does not personally know, for the cause of Christ? By using filew but not agapas, Peter says he is ready. Now Jesus rewards him by saying, boske, feed the flock as a good shepherd would. It is not Peter's flock, the sheep belong to Jesus.


At last Peter is restored.

MIRACLE
Have you ever noticed the churches which have a spirituality abiding in them?  Or places where Christians have prayed, which have a spirituality on them?  They don't seem to be the rule among churches, but the exception.  Why is that?  What makes certain places spiritual but not others?

  Well, I imagine many answers could be given which are not answers but reactions.  We might say certain churches are so focused on social works that they never contemplate the presence of God in their midst.  Social justice is certainly a large part of the kingdom of God, but when such work emaciates other aspects of the kingdom of God then we have a ministry not a church.
  This is true of an evangelical emphasis on knowing God's Word to the exclusion of belief in the Sacrament and a sacramental emphasis on how precisely the priest performs the Eucharist to the exclusion of the sermon.

  But then, when we step into a prayer chapel or certain churches, we immediately become aware of the Spirit of God.  These places are not always know for their social works or great budgets or numbers of missionaries they support or even their reputation in the neighborhood.  So what do they have?

  First, let's turn to a familiar verse, which has a phrase we all know:
  Again I say to you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.  For when two or three are gathered in My Name, there am I in their midst of them, Matt. 18.19, 20.

  Here we have the promise that if two or more are gathered, the Son and the Father are there with them.  This can only be said through the blessing of the Spirit, which is what we notice in certain places where Christians worship.
  What this means is that what makes a place spiritual is when the people believe in the miracle that the Father and Sn are there with them.  This miracle can mean that the people believe God is with them in the Sacrament, the Word preached, or the works of the Spirit.  The tradition to which one belongs has no special hold, it's the belief in the miracle that God is here, which is the presence of the Spirit we notice.

  Once I was in a Baptist church in which the Sunday School classes were studying John 17.  After those classes, we all went to worship in the sanctuary.  I've never experienced such worship, such holiness in a Baptist church.  They aren't known for their emphasis on liturgy, so why was it so holy?  I think it was because the wonderful people there really did believe in what John 17 said.  God came down because their belief went up.

  The second reason for holiness in a certain places is the wishes and hopes and prayers of the people.  Wherever the hopes of the people are taken up, that place is special.  When the Spirit of God moves on a group of those praying to seek what God is giving, then those  hopes and prayers sanctify a place.  By that I mean not just that hopes and prayers cleanse a place but that those hopes and prayers remain there. 

  We can easily imagine a sports arena where the fans have hoped for a championship for years--their hopes and wishes remain in that place.  These places feel different than a hotel lobby or a bank.  When saints have prayed in such earnest in a place that God answers them, that place will have the atmosphere that God is there.  God seems to excavate a place for Himself in us and in our churches so that we enter into Him.
  This is the miracle of His presence.  We might become aware of Him through the Sacrament, through praying, through gathering with one mind, through serving one another, but He is there in us and for us and around us.  We abide in Him through our prayers, He abides in us through His Word, His Sacraments, His Spirit.

  The church is certainly not infallible, but it is the miracle of Christ among us.

  What this means is, our hopes and prayers sanctify a place, they dedicate a place unto God.  While we have our ceremonies of dedication, they are no more than asking God to come.  It is our prayers and hopes in the Spirit which draw Him and bring us into Him.   The United States was founded by those who had prayed for many years, they had hoped for religious freedom for generations.  So when they stepped upon these shores, all their hopes and dreams had been realized in this land.  God blessed America.

  When I was a boy I watched Oral Roberts in his crusades.  While his theology might be objectionable, the environment of faith was overwhelming and obvious.  He created the atmosphere in which people believed God.  The level of spiritual desire was unusually high, coming after WWII.  The people had almost nothing materially; Oral had great faith; God moved among them under the tent.
  Today many churches promote many things. 
  Do you believe God is in your midst?
  In Him was life and the life was the light of men, John 1.4.

JOB
Job is just awesome.  It is the Biblical epic in the manner of Milton and Homer, with immense spiritual intensity.  It can be read as a Biblical allegory, or as the account of God and the war in the heavenlies against Satan.  Jewish scholars have always thought of Job as the allegory of Israel.  It has associations of God, Satan, and a man which we might link with Genesis 2 and 3.

  Above all Job is spiritual cinemascope.

  If we begin with the simple arrangement of the book, the first two chapters and the last 5 chapters form a simple drama.  God allows Job to be afflicted by Satan for a time, and when Job will not yield to Satan, God rescues Job to bless him.
  This simple arrangement then suggests what a Jewish epic poet might say would have happened had Adam not succumbed to Satan.  Blessing and protection in Job 1 and Gen. 1 and 2.  Testing in Job 2 as in Gen. 3.  Reward in Job 42, just reward in Gen. 3.8 through to chapter 4.

  What has made the book famous is the poetry.  Job 17.7 says--What is man that Thou does magnify him and that Thou art concerned with him?  We are reminded of David's paraphrase of this in Psalm 8.4.  Solomon also quotes and paraphrases Job in several places.
  In chapters 3-37 the poet of Job has the four counselors advise Job on how to get out from under his suffering.  The advise comes in three waves, three sections in which each of Job's counselors has his say.  What makes Job relevant today is the underlying message.  It is this message which has made Job worth preserving as the oldest section of the OT.

  Job begins by saying he wishes he were never born--why did I not die at birth, Job 3.11.  But Job knows God has allowed this tragedy, in fact Job says God has done this suffering upon him, Job 10.8.  His counselors cannot accept that, they must say God rewards the righteous and punishes the sinners so Job must be a sinner, Job 11.13-14.
  But Job has the intimation there is something beyond this in God, Job 12.13-25.  God makes fools, his priests go barefoot, He loosens and He binds, He pours contempt, He makes rulers wander in a pathless place.  This insight by Job that God rules to His own purposes, out of His holiness, sets the stage for Job's greatest understanding of God.

  Beyond justice, God is holy.

  Job knows God does not treat everyone the same, fairness is not His rule.  So Job demands to speak to God personally--I would speak to the Almighty, Job 13.3.  His suffering and God's holiness forces Job into the dramatic rise in thought--Though He slay me, I will hope in Him, Job 13.15.
  Job has realized that even in death he will hope in God.  Job then contemplates what he just said.  He says in Job 14.14--If a man dies will he live again?  This has become Job's hope.  Not the cessation of pain but life through death. That God is to be trusted in life and death will free every man from sin, death and Satan.

  What this means is beyond fairness is God's holiness.  In order to bring Job through suffering God must make Job realize that if God were merely treating every man the same as the counselors say, no man would ever know God in this life.  Men would only know His rule, not His person.
  In order for Job to go from knowing God's rule to knowing God as a person, Job must be able to stand before Him.  He asks God this, but it can only happen if God allows.  God must give Job the act of standing before Him.

  This is grace.

  It is the risk of life through death, as Job says in 13.15.  Because forgiveness replaces punishment, grace glows over justice.  In order to stand before Him, God must choose Job.  Job begins to realize this in a slender manner, Job 16.6-22.  That choosing comes from God's holiness, the theme of the entire OT from Genesis 12 on.  It is this choosing which is God's love.  In the NT this is stated in John 15.16--You did not choose Me, but I chose you.

  What Job comes to realize is justice bars him from God.  Grace includes him in God, Ephesians 1.7.  Grace is God's choosing Job in order to love him, so that Job's relationship to God is God's love chosen and returned.
  No wonder the manuscript of Job has survived the centuries when so much other ancient writing has not.

JOHN 17
This is one of the rarest passages in the Bible.  It is John being allowed to curl back the invisibility of God so that we might stand in the enclosure of the Trinity.
  This chapter doesn't use sanctification, justification, election, predestination or any of the $10 words we might expect of so holy, so rare a Word of God.  It doesn't use an OT reference.

  Jesus says, 'I come to Thee, I was with them, I kept them, I am no more in the world.'  Simple words without a parable, without stained glass or metaphors of light or water or bread.  There are no specific instructions as we find in the Law.  Here the Spirit of God has inspired John to conceal as much as he reveals in such few words.
  Yet the chapter is rich in Biblical themes of Father and only-begotten Son, belief in God, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, and God's glory. While we are not taken through the OT step by step as in Peter's sermons or the Letter to Hebrews, if we put the details of John 17 down for a moment and step back, we might realize what is being conveyed.

  First, God in us and we in Him.
  This is an uncovering of God.  As the Lord revealed Himself to Moses on the mountain, as Jesus showed Philip the Father, so we are allowed to 'see' the relationship with the Father and Son.  John will say in 1 John 1.3--what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.
   Now here in John 17, we see how Jesus is the Son of the Father.  It is a relationship of giving.  Jesus says--Now they have come to know that everything Thou has given Me is from Thee, John 17.7.  What the Father has as creator, He gives to the Son as redeemer.  He says this when He says--the world which Thou gave Me I have given to them and they received, and truly understood that I came forth from Thee and they believed that Thou did send Me, John 17.8.

  If God abides in us and we in Him, chapter 17 is telling us that God is much more in our lives than we might realize.  We often do not 'see' Him, but He is just beyond our invisibility, taking care of us, loving us, being sovereign in the world for us as we are for Him.  God is not the oblong blur of some religions or the philosophical arguer of the ancient Greeks or the dictator of ancient Rome.
  Paul says--all things have been created through Him and for Him.  And He is before all things and in Him all things hold together, Col. 1.16.  He is all in all because all created things have some of His glory.  That glory was given to the Son, who has given it to us as His body, the church, John 17.22.

  When the disciples of John ask Jesus, Are you the expected One in Matthew 11.5, He says--Go and report to John the things which you see and hear...the blind receive sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear and the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.
  All these things the people saw.  As the Father gave to the Son, He now gives to us. The NT does not ask us to go into the church as often as it declares that we would go out into the world.  John says this--As Thou did send Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world, John 17.18.

  We might say that the essence of Christianity is that we belong to the Son as He belongs to the Father, that we would glorify Him.

  Second, we can realize from this chapter how much Christianity is a gift from God.  The Father gives authority to the Son, 17.2, the Father gave the disciples to the Son, 17.6, the words which the Father gave to the Son, He has given to men, 17.8, and the glory which the Father gave to the Son, He has given to men, 17.22.  Over and over, it's a gift.

  World religions aren't like this.  Most deities keep accounts over men or the gods cannot be known  Here the Spirit of God is revealing through the words John wrote that the Father gives to the Son and the Son gives to men and women.  It is more like a family relationship than a world religion.  John will say later in his life that God is love.

  This relationship of giving is perfectly expressed in Acts 3.6 where a lame man cries out to Peter and John as they walk by.
  Peter then says--Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do possess I give to you.  In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene--walk!
  It is a gift.  The man was not wealthy, he was not a Pharisee, a reader of the scrolls or a priest or government official.  But he asked Peter and John, and the gift which they were given--that the lame shall walk--they give to this man.

  A gift cannot be repaid, but it can be passed along.  That's our gratitude, our capacity to love God.  Freely we have received, freely give.  No wonder God is love.

WHAT IS MAN?
When Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, he wrote about a character who had to make choices without regard to repercussions.  So Hamlet questions his own nature, as to who he is.  He says to his friend Rosencrantz--
  what a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
  infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
  admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
  a god!  the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals--and yet
  to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

  Hamlet's question about himself is that he, like every man, is a mixture.  He would like to clutch one element of his manliness but the other qualities are there, always there.  So the question remains.
  In Acts 17.28 Paul says--in Him we live and move and hae our being.  We are completely His even if we don't believe in God.  Jesus says in Matthew 10.29 that--not one sparrow will fall to the ground apart from your Father. We have our existence because God exists.  And yet, nearly all spiritual writers say we must empty ourselves of ourselves to be holy.  We must pick up our cross daily, deny the world, relinquish our self to God.

  So, we must ask, how do we do that?
 
  While the Scriptures say man is evil (Gen.6.3), they also say God is good.  We have been made in His image, Gen. 1.27.  This means, among other things, that mankind is a person as God is a person.  Paul said this in the Acts 17 passage when he says we have our being in God.  Being a person means being self-conscious, which in turn means that we make choices.

  This brings us to our freedom to make those choices.  A man dead in his trespasses and sins does not have choices--he is dead.  The one who has choices is the one who is living as the image of God.  Even after Adam's sin, God speaks to him.  Adam has the freedom to confess his sin, to return in humility to God, even if he doesn't.  It is the man and woman living as God's image who has the choices.  The purpose of that freedom to choose is to be transformed into the likeness of God in Christ.

  God relates to us spiritually as men and women who are nothing without Him--apart from Me you can do nothing, John 15.5.  We relate to God as a person who responds to Him in repentance and belief, Matt. 3.2, Acts 17.30.  We are vessels in His hands, yet we are also impressed by His image to be like Him.

  The disciples were called to be followers of Jesus, brothers of Him, friends of Him.

  The disciples were called to be His followers, that is, those who would learn of Him, Matt. 11.29, John 6.45.  They did follow Him and He revealed special things to them.  But when He ascended, He gave the gift of the Holy Spirit for His disciples to go into the world.  They became brothers, that is, fellow workers in the work of evangelism.  In Matt. 12.49 Jesus calls His disciples His own brothers as--whoever shall do the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is my brother.
  We see this when Paul calls Epaphroditus his brother in Philippians 2.25.  Both Peter and Paul humble themselves in the work of the Lord.  Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1.24--we are workers with you for your joy...  And in 1 Peter 5.1 Peter calls himself--your fellow-elder and witness.  One among many, brothers in the Lord.

  But that is not all.  In John 15.23-17 Jesus says--no longer do I call you slaves..but I have called you friends.  What is a friend according to Jesus?  It is--for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.  Why has Jesus done this?  He has, in order that--you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should remain that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give it to you.
  And then there's more.  According to Paul's word to Timothy in 2 Tim. 2.12, we will reign in heaven with Christ.  In the eternal state, we will reign upon the new earth, Revelation 5.10, 20.6.

  What this means is that as the living image of God we are given the freedom to choose God,  to be his brothers and friends to ultimately reign in heaven with Christ.