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Is Jesus Just Your Facebook Friend?

Friend requests, pokes, wall-to-wall, and messages? Facebook lingo aside, there would be something very disturbing if Jesus was just your “facebook friend”. If you’re on facebook long enough, you’ll probably end up with a person or two on your “friend” list that you’ve either never met, or you met one time and have forgotten who they are.

It’s kind of a weird situation. You know their name, you know what they look like, you know their “info”, and you know who they are friends with — but you don’t really know them. It’s the appearance of a relationship without the reality of it. If you’re not careful, the Bible says, you can deceive yourself into thinking you know Christ when he is really nothing more to you than a random facebook friend. You can go to church a long time and be at all the youth events — and know a whole lot of things about Christ; without really knowing Him as a Lord and Savior. “On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'” (Matthew 7:22-23)

There are few things more embarrassing than forgetting someone’s name who is your facebook “friend”. But as embarrassing as that is for you, it’s still better than thinking you’re someone’s friend and you’re really not. That’s the kind of deal we are talking about here. It takes more than knowing the story of Christ or knowing things about Him to really call yourself a Christian. To be a Christian requires a change of heart and a response of faith. Jesus doesn’t want to be your facebook friend, he wants to be your Lord and Savior.

And that is what his life and death were all about — making a way for sinful man to be reunited with a holy God. At the end of the day, knowing Jesus like a facebook friend will leave you “separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” (Ephesians 2:12) But there’s good news! It doesn’t have to be that way. For “now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. ” (Ephesians 2:13) When you repent of your sins and place your faith in Christ, He doesn’t come to live in your computer — He comes to live in your heart. And that’s enough to change your status forever…