But this is our Lord, the Word of God, who in the first instance certainly drew slaves to God, but afterwards He does Himself declare to His disciples: “I will not now call you servants, for the servant knoweth not what His lord doeth; but I have called you friends, for all things which I have heard from my Father I have made known.” For in that which He says, “I will not now call you servant,” He indicates in the most marked manner that I was Himself who did originally appoint for men that bondage with respect to God through the law, and then afterwards conferred upon them freedom. And in that He says, “For the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth,” He points out, by means of His own advent, the ignorance of a people in a servile condition. But He terms His disciples “the friends of God.”

-Irenaeus, c. 130-200

Irenaeus was the bishop of Lyons and heard Polycarp, who was in turn a disciple of John. He studied in Rome and became a pastor and bishop of Lyons in 177AD. Irenaeus became one of the first theologians of the church by opposing Gnosticism and heavily emphasizing Scripture and tradition, as  did John Wesley.