Biblical Friendship, Part 3: God's Gift
Introduction
Thus far in this series, I have argued that the biblical
definition of friendship is “moving toward God together,” and that it is not a
result of human ingenuity but rather woven into the very fabric of our being as
images of the God who himself exists in perfect, eternal friendship as a
Trinity. But a biblical view of friendship does not stop there, for friendship
is not only God’s idea but also his gift to humanity.
In Praise of Friendship
Though friendship has fallen upon hard times in our modern
western world (see my first post), and though we have largely neglected God’s
good plan for friendship and duly suffered the consequences, such has not
always been the case. In fact, Christianity has a long history of extolling the
value of friendship as a gift of God, so much so that Reverend Hugh Black has
stated of the Bible:
“There is no book, even in classical literature, which so exalts the idea of friendship, and is so anxious to have it truly valued, and carefully kept.”[1]
But Black is not alone in this assessment of the value and necessity
of friendship in the Christian life. Allow me to offer you a brief sampling of Christian
friendship throughout church history.
“This is friendship, that a man should not consider his goods his own, but his neighbor’s, that his possessions belong to another; that he should be as careful of his friend’s soul, as of his own; and the friend likewise. … A great thing is friendship, and how great, no one can learn, and no discourse represent, but experience itself.” ~John Chrysostom
“Two things are essential in this world: life, and friendship. Both must be prized highly, and not undervalued. They are nature’s gifts. We were created by God that we might live; but if we are not to live solitarily, we must have friendship.” ~Augustine
“The greatest benefit which life has brought me is your friendship.” “If anyone were to ask me, ‘What is the best thing in life?’ I would answer, ‘Friends.’” ~Gregory of Nazianzus
“[Friendship] is the highest happiness of all moral agents.” ~Jonathan Edwards
“He who would be happy here must have friends; and he who would be happy hereafter, must, above all things, find a friend in the world to come, in the person of God.” ~Charles Spurgeon
“Wonderful as are both the presence of the Lord Jesus every day and the prospect of his coming on the last day, they are not intended to be a substitute for human friendships. . . . When our spirit is lonely, we need friends. … To admit this is not unspiritual; it is human.” ~John R. W. Stott
“This world is full of sorrow because it is full of sin. It is a dark place. It is a lonely place. It is a disappointing place. The brightest sunbeam in it is a friend. Friendship halves our troubles and doubles our joys.” ~J. C. Ryle
I being a person who has discovered the joys of true biblical
friendship in the fires of intense personal trial and grief, these statements
warm my heart because they convey what I so long for the church to recover in
this modern age. Lest we think that such statements are simply the delusions of
men influenced by their cultures rather than by the pages of holy Scripture,
observe the following statements from the book of Proverbs, which Hugh Black
referred to as “a treatise on friendship.”
“A friend loves at all times,
and a brother is born for adversity.” (Pro. 17:17)
“A man of many companions may
come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
(Pro. 18:24)
“Faithful are the wounds of a
friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.” (Pro. 27:6)
“Oil and perfume make the heart
glad, and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel.” (Pro.
27:9)
Ecclesiastes further adds:
“Two are better than one,
because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift
up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to
lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep
warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will
withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” (Eccl. 4:9-12)
Surely, it is this kind of friendship that lies behind the
friendship of David and Jonathan.
“[T]he soul of Jonathan was knit
to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. … Then
Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul.” (1
Sam. 18:1, 3)
Friendship is an inestimable good
The case seems to be made for us. My previous post claimed
that friendship is not optional but a necessity in God’s world. Far beyond that,
we must recognize that friendship is an inestimable good granted to us by God
for our good, which is his glory. Drew Hunter, in his book Made for
Friendship, summarizes the teaching of Proverbs on friendship this way:
“The great assumption behind
Proverbs’ vision of the good life is this: God made the world, and he made it
to work a certain way. Therefore, the wise embrace his design. They know how to
live well in God’s world. They see reality clearly, and they adjust to it. And
if Proverbs emphasizes friendship to the point that it ‘might almost be called
a treatise on friendship’ [here he quotes Hugh Black], then this topic deserves
our closest attention. Friendship is essential for the good life because God
wove it into the fabric of the world.”
But does such a high view of friendship conflict with my
previous assertion that friendship always comes second to God?
Worshiping Through Friendship
In the interest of answering the question of whether a high view of friendship is inherently idolatrous, allow me to briefly summarize a key theological point from my previous post. God has created all things “very good” as gifts of his grace (Gen. 1:31; Eccl. 2:24-26; 1 Tim. 4:4-5), yet God created us to be satisfied only in him and dissatisfied with idolatry (Jer. 2:12-13; Isaiah 44:9-20). So, God created friendship for us to enjoy as a blessing, but all gifts from God come with three caveats: they cannot fully satisfy you, since only God can (Eccl. 1:2); you can only fully enjoy them by enjoying God first (Eccl. 12:13); and they can only be enjoyed in the way God dictates (Eccl. 12:14).
To be thankful is to recognize that a good gift comes from God
This warning against making good things ultimate things
might inspire us to preemptively cut ourselves off from friendship along with
anything else that could be used idolatrously, but that is not the solution Scripture
provides. Indeed, the human sin nature is so depraved and intent on idolatry
that it will do so even when we think we have deprived it of all opportunity.
Rather, Scripture teaches that instead of leaving the world we should be
renewed in our minds so we use God’s gifts for their intended ends and not as
substitute gods (Rom. 12:1-2; Col. 3:1-4). Further, when these good gifts are
used correctly according to God’s plan, that action becomes worship (1 Cor.
10:31).
But how do we ensure practically that we are using a gift
well for its God-intended purpose rather than as an idol? The answer colors the
pages of Scripture from one Testament to the other: thankfulness. To be
thankful is to recognize that a good gift comes from God and yet is distinct
from God, so we focus on him while using the gift. Thus, thankfulness is a
repeated theme of Colossians (1:12; 2:7; 3:15-17), both before and after its
call to “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on
earth” (3:2), in contrast to “covetousness, which is idolatry”
(3:5). In Philippians, thankfulness is a key component of living with joy
(4:4-7). This is how Paul managed to deeply love his many friends and yet
subsume those relationships to God, his greatest friend: he thanked God for
them in prayer (1 Cor. 1:4; Eph. 1:15, 16; Phil. 1:3; Col. 1:3, 4). As Drew
Hunter put it:
“When we thank God for friendship, we aren’t praising friends; we’re praising God for friends. As God shows his goodness through his generosity, we give him glory through our gratitude.”[2]
And so, friendship is a great gift from God, for which we
must always thank him while submitting to his plan for his purposes, which will
end in our ultimate good. But what is that good – what are the benefits of
friendship?
The Blessings of Friendship
In some ways, we have already explored the blessings of friendship: they are an aspect of the image of God, and so the greatest benefit of engaging in friendship is that we come to know God himself better, which is the essence of eternal life (John 17:3). Timothy Keller’s aforementioned “four keys of friendship” – constancy, carefulness, candor, and counsel[3] – identify several additional blessings of friendship. Later in this series, I will argue that a primary purposes of friendship is to be one of many means of sanctification in our lives. Friendship surely has many benefits, which God has designed for our good! For your further consideration, I include six practical benefits from Drew Hunter’s Made for Friendship, which I summarize in brief.[4]
- Doubling our joys – Friendship gives us an environment in which to share our greatest joys so that they combine with the joys of friendship itself. “A joy unshared is a joy unfulfilled. And a joy shared is a joy doubled.”
- Halving our sorrows – Friends ease our sorrows through their presence with us and their encouragement toward the truth of God’s Word. “God’s encouragement comes to us through the words of Scripture, and those words often come to us through friends.”
- Counsel from the heart – Since our friends know us better than anyone else, they can counsel us in ways that nobody else can; since they love us more than any author or counselor does, we cannot replace them with these helpful resources. “What happens to us happens to them. Our problems are their problems. Our future is their future. They are bound to us in a way that others are not.”
- Changing the world through friendship – Friends strengthen our good resolves by stirring our souls into action through their encouragement. “It often takes a friend to strike the match and then fan the flame with encouragement. Without friends, many of our resolutions would either never light up or quickly flicker out.”
- We make friends and then our friends make us – Our friends shape our character, for better or for worse, by influencing the moral direction of our lives and making it easier to sacrificially love both our friends and what they love, which then has an impact on the society around us. “We choose our friends, and then our friends shape who we become. In other words, at first we make our friends. From that point on, our friends make us.”
- Friends make friends less weird – Having friends improves us socially as we gain interaction with others who are unlike ourselves in key ways. “Like stones in a river, the waters of friendship smooth us out over time. As we submerge ourselves into the lives of our friends, they each polish us and smooth over our jagged edges.”
Friendships must be centered on the truth
However, many of these benefits could also become curses if
our friendships are not first founded on our most important friendship with
Christ. Friendships must be centered on the truth of God’s word and done according
to the pattern he has established if they are to work for his glory and our
good. But how do we maintain this focus?
Diagnostic Questions
In her book Friendish, Kelly Needham explains various ways that we create “counterfeit friendships” that are focused upon ourselves rather than upon God who created it for his glory and our good. One of the ways friendship becomes counterfeit is when it becomes idolatrous, when it replaces Jesus in our life. Needham points out six specific roles of Jesus which we tend to fill with friendship;[5] when friendship encroaches upon any of these roles, it has become idolatrous.
- Savior – Is your friend the first or only person you reach out to for help? (1 Peter 5:6-7)
- Mediator – Do you believe your friend necessary for you to feel close to God? (1 Tim. 2:5-6)
- Shepherd – Is your friend the only one you trust to help you make decisions? (Phil. 1:9-11)
- Satisfaction – Do you view your friend as necessary for your soul’s joy and happiness? (Phil. 4:10-13)
- Judge – Is your friend the one whose opinion you obsess about and look to for ultimate approval? (2 Cor. 5:9-10)
- Boast – Is your friend the person you constantly brag on and praise, and are you more thankful for that friend than for Jesus? (1 Cor. 1:38-41)
When our friends enter any of Christ’s roles in our lives,
we are committing idolatry by replacing God with his gifts.
Again, the cure for idolatrous friendship begins with
thankfulness to God, but then we must understand our relationship to Christ;
the Scriptures listed above give correctives to wrong thinking about friends
toward right thinking about Christ. These questions are for any relationship – a
spouse who enters these roles of Christ has also become an idol. As Needham
summarizes this issue:
“Most of our problems in friendship are a result of searching for right things in the wrong places. We’re digging for treasure in treasureless fields. No matter how hard we look, friendship will always turn up empty.”[6]
The gift cannot replace the Giver, so friendship cannot
satisfy us if it replaces God; instead, it will leave us increasingly unsatisfied
because God has created us to be satisfied only with him and unsatisfied with
idols.
Conclusion
C. S. Lewis once called friendship “the chief happiness of life,” and when friendship is practiced according to the pattern set forth in Scripture, this is a true statement. Friendship is an immense gift from God which benefits us in many ways; this is true even when we do not follow his exact prescribed pattern because his good gifts are common graces that he bestows on the just and the unjust. In the next post, I will seek to lay out that friendship is God’s tool in our lives for sanctification.
[1] Hugh
Black, Friendship.
[2] Drew
Hunter, Made for Friendship.
[3] Timothy
Keller, “Friendship,” youtu.be/8Tc4VIQrXdE.
[4] Drew
Hunter, Made for Friendship.
[5] Kelly
Needham, “Friendish.”
[6] Kelly
Needham, “Friendish.”
All Scripture verses come from the ESV.
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