Biblical Friendship, Part 5: God's Goal
Introduction
The ultimate goal of friendship is sanctification
Maybe that needs to be qualified. Really, the ultimate goal of friendship is glorification, when true believers in Jesus Christ are given new bodies, their sin natures are removed, and they are free forever to do the only thing their heart desires – the will of God – which will look like perfect friendship with God and people. In this new and soon-coming era, there will be no need for sanctification in the sense of fighting sin – the battle will be won! And it is toward this goal that we are to push one another in our friendships. To this end we encourage, warn, affirm, confront, serve, and love. When the problems of vertical, motivational, and missional corruption[1] are forever healed in eternity, we will finally be as God intended us to be: perfect humans with a perfect relationship with God and a perfect relationship with each other forever. This is God’s goal for each of us: perfect friendship with himself and others. As Drew Hunter put it, “Friendship is the goal of salvation and the ultimate end of our existence.”[1]
Friendship with God
God wants to be your friend. This thought, so clear in the
study we have done thus far, was earth-shattering to me when I first grasped
it. Since I conceived of God’s love in the same vein as my human love, which
often must choose to act when there is feeling of resentment, I viewed his love
for me as reluctant and capricious. But God never has a ‘good day’ or a ‘bad
day;’ he is never short-tempered, irritable, or half-hearted in his commitment;
he does not claim to love one day and falter the next. God is God. He is
infinite, unchanging, perfect in wisdom, and transcendent above his finite
creation. For this reason, we know that his love is constant, pure, freely
chosen, and freely given to those who do not deserve it in the least. And
because of this love, God became human in the person of Jesus Christ, laying
aside his glory for a time to be humiliated and massacred by sinners in the
place of sinners. All for love. As J. I. Packer states,
“There is … great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as his friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given his Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.”[3]
God wants to be your friend. This is the whole story of
salvation.
God wants to be your friend
Not only that, but God is the best friend we could ever
want. His motives are perfectly pure, he desires only what is best for us, and
his every action in the relationship is to pull us deeper and deeper into
himself, which is the absolute highest good we should ever want – which we
would only ever want if we could but see it for its true beauty! For God is
glorified as we come to see him as his is. His glory is his reputation, and he
does all things to proclaim the truth about who he is (Eph. 1:6, 12, 14), and
his desire for us is that we would behold his glory (John 1:14), be changed by
it (2 Cor. 3:18), and so worship him forever (1 John 3:1-3). Christ himself has
called us friends as his disciples (John 15:15), and as Jonathan Edwards wrote,
“Whatsoever there is, or can be, that is desirable to be in a friend, is in Christ, and that to the highest degree that can be desired.”[4]
What could compare to the immeasurable riches of Christ’s
friendship? Surely nothing and no one in this world, with its lackluster
promises of self-destructive idolatry, and its twisted motives that use rather
than love those it chooses.
“To be called friends by our Master, to know Him as the Lover of our souls, to give Him entrance to our hearts, is to learn the meaning of living, and to experience the ecstasy of living. The Higher Friendship is bestowed without money and without price, and is open to every heart responsive to God's great love.”[5]
God’s friendliness has flowed toward us since before the
foundations of the earth, when he “chose us in him before the foundation of
the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Eph. 1:4),
saving us by his glorious grace, “so that in the coming ages he might show
the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus”
(Eph. 2:7). God’s plan is for us to continually know more and more of his
goodness and greatness forever in perfect friendship with him, which will serve
only to benefit us more and more as each day of eternity passes by. In the
words of Martin Luther, “God’s friendship is more precious than that of the
whole world.”
How should we then live? If, as James put it, “friendship
with the world is enmity with God” (Jas. 4:4), and the solution is to “Submit
yourselves therefore to God” (Jas. 4:7), we must respond to this glorious
grace with a humble obedience to God which is centered in a love for God and a
hatred of that which is opposed to him. Charles Spurgeon once said, “If Christ
has died for me, I cannot trifle with the evil that killed my best Friend.”[6] Because we are dead to sin and alive with Christ by virtue of our union with
him, we must not present ourselves as weapons in support of Satan’s hordes, but
rather in support of God (Rom. 6:12-13). This fundamental re-orientation of our
values, called in Scripture “[being] transformed by the renewal of your mind”
(Rom. 12:2; cf. Eph. 4:23), not only flows out of the most meaningful
friendship of all, but is essential for true friendship with others.
Friendship with Others
If the sacrifice of Christ makes true friendship possible,
it is the image of God within us that makes it desirable to us. The words of Timothy
Keller ring true here: “The less you want friends, the less like God you are.”[7] Friendship is a necessary part of living out the communal nature of our triune
God, and there is no place in Scripture for a “Lone Ranger” Christian who has
nobody and needs nobody. Such an abomination is an affront to God’s good plan,
for he has not left us alone in this world; he has freely and graciously
provided us not only with his word and the indwelling Holy Spirit, but also
with a community of Spirit-indwelt people called the church, the very bride of
Christ.
“The friends of Christ must be friends of one another. That ought to be accepted as an axiom. To be reconciled to God carries with it at least a disposition of heart, which makes it easy to be reconciled to men also.”[8]
Friendship with others – love that draws them closer to God
– is not only encouraged and necessary but commanded.
But friendship is a risky business. It is not a lifelong
covenant like marriage, so in a way our friendships in this life are
intentionally temporary in nature; and yet, our friendships enter their final
and fullest form only in eternity. While marriage will not exist among human
beings in the eternal state, friendship will be the bond of every redeemed
human with every other as well as with God – friendship is eternal. This
renewed perspective empowers us to live out the difficulties of friendship in
hope of its future restoration. And yet, to enter into friendship is to enter
the potential for great hurt. The words of C. S. Lewis are instructive here:
“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.”[9]
Truly, friendship can be a terrifying prospect because of
the potential for great grief, but to remove it from your life is to attack the
very image of God within yourself and to leave yourself bereft of all its
God-designed benefits, the chief of which is knowing God himself. To embark
upon the treacherous voyage of friendship requires faith in God that the winds
and waves will be used to bring us to the destination of knowing him and are
worth it in his plan, even if in our own minds the benefits never outweigh the risks.
We must mirror the friendship of God himself
Instead of hiding from friendship, we must mirror the
friendship of God himself, who as part of his unchanging character seeks out miserable
objects of undeserving devotion for their own benefit, that the truth about God
might be seen in his acts of abundant grace. This calls for an about-face in
our attitude toward friendship, for often we are convinced that it is others
who are at fault for our lack of friendship, when really it is the other way
around. Rebecca McLaughlin issues the following challenge:
"Stop asking, 'Who will love me?' instead, ask 'Who can I love?' I've found this shift to be transformative. When we sit around and think ‘Who will love me?’ loneliness and discontent creep in. But when we give ourselves to loving other people, we will find that love boomerangs back at us when we least expect it."[10]
Daunting words, to be sure – yet also full of hope. While we
have no guarantee from God that any individual friendship will have this
“boomerang” result, we are guaranteed that, if we seek to practice friendship
according to God’s plan within his body, we will see these effects at some level
now, with their full consummation guaranteed in eternity.
Boundaries in Friendship
But are there no limitations to this fellowship? To be sure,
there are times when, even within the body of Christ, we or those whom we
befriend will choose “the evil that killed [our] best Friend” (as Spurgeon
called sin). At such times, it becomes necessary to confront sin in the lives
of our siblings in Christ out of love for both them and their Lord. We must do so
in-person, taking great care to ensure communication, and offering every chance
for repentance (Matt. 18:15-20). Remember, the goal of confrontation is always
restoration and reconciliation (1 Cor. 5:4-5). Yet, even if this process is
unsuccessful in inciting true repentance, we must “not regard him as an
enemy, but warn him as a brother” (2 Thess. 3:15). The command to love is
never rescinded from a lapsed brother – or even from an apostate, for that
matter – since it extends to all people, just as the love of God himself (Matt.
5:44-45). Yet, this love will take a different form, and it can no longer be
called friendship, since the mutual desire to grow closer to God is gone (1
Cor. 5:9-11). Further, we cannot consort with false teachers – “do not
receive him into your house or give him any greeting” (2 John 9-11) – yet
we must deal gently with them all the same: “God may perhaps grant them
repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:24-26). When friendship
ends because of rebellion against God, love still remains.
The goal of confrontation is always restoration and reconciliation
But what of friendship with the opposite gender? This is an
altogether different question, for while friendship with those in rebellion
against God is impossible, Godly and mutually-encouraging friendship between
men and women is modeled clearly and often in Scripture, both by the Apostle
Paul and by our Lord himself. Jesus was friends with the many women who
followed and supported his ministry (Luke 8:1-3), such as Mary Magdalene (Mt.
27:55), Joanna the wife of Chuza (Luke 8:3), Susanna (Luke 8:3), and others (Mt.
27:55); additionally, Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-39; John 11), Mary the mother
of James and Joseph (Mt. 27:55), and Salome the mother of the Apostles James
and John (Mk. 15:40). Paul counted many women as his co-laborers, such as Lydia
(Acts 16), Priscilla (Rom. 16:3), Phoebe (Rom. 16:1), Euodias and Syntyche
(Phil. 4:2-3), and Apphia (Philemon 2). While it is true that the Fall taints
our appreciation for gender, our perspective of sex, and our personal motives, the
fact that opposite-gender friendships can prove difficult does not mean that we
should abandon them, cutting ourselves off from God’s intended blessing and
gifting to his church. We are co-laborers (Phil. 4:2-3), body members (1 Cor.
12:12-13), and spiritual family (Gal. 3:25-28) with the opposite sex; we will
live together in peace in the kingdom forever (Gal. 3:29), so we should live
like it now (Eph. 5:5-12). What the world has termed “platonic” friendship
should be the norm among God’s people, not the exception – and that at a deeper
level.
Since friendship is God's goal for us, is there not a time to end friendships? Indeed, there is
– but this path should not be entered upon lightly. One must be certain that
the person is either actively leading them away from Christ or continuing in an
unrepentant lifestyle sin that has been confronted according to the process
laid out in Scripture (Matt. 18:15-20). Such discussions offer the opportunity
for us to distinguish between sin and misunderstanding.
“Much of our dissension is due to misunderstanding, which could be put right by a few honest words and a little open dealing. Human beings so often live at cross purposes with each other, when a frank word, or a simple confession of wrong, almost a look or a gesture, would heal the division. Resentment grows through brooding over a fancied slight.”[11]
Therefore, allow me to present you with six considerations to work through before seeking to end a friendship.
- Since all relationship problems are God problems, examine yourself and them. Begin by praying for clarity and for God to show you your own faults and give you wisdom to see the situation accurately (Ps. 139:23-24; Jas. 1:5-8).
- Since friendship is about God, preserving friendship is not the highest goal. Preserving friendship is a noble goal, and we should be reliable and faithful people, but God is the highest good – “It is better to lose a good thing that the greatest thing."[12]Meditate on the preeminence of Christ in creation and in your salvation (Col. 1:15-23).
- Since God demands our exclusive friendship, we cannot overlook idolatrous friendships. If a friendship detracts from our walk with God, it is the friendship that must change; idolatrous friendship twists God’s good gift for our purposes and teaches lies about God. Separation is an antidote for strongholds – get space for prayer and counsel (1 Cor. 7:5).
- Since friendship cannot fully satisfy, we must guard against the fear of losing people. Following God will cost us relationships with people (Mt. 10:34-39; Lk. 14:26), yet following God will bring other and better relationships not and in eternity (Mk. 10:29-30). Consider and accept loss in relationships as part of the Fear of the Lord.
- Since the goal is sanctification, we cannot allow friends to influence us away from God. Being right with God is about what you do and who you spend time with (Ps. 1; Pro. 1:10-19). The way to make sure we do not become like our friends in sin is to confront sin (Gal. 6:1-5), and the way to make sure we are not confirmed in sin is to confess sin (Jas. 5:16). Be the one who points the friendship to God regardless of consequences (Dan. 1:8).
- Since Christian friendship requires a Spirit-filled life, we must forgive failure. Ending a friendship is never the first step – disputes between professing believers should ideally end in either reconciliation or church discipline, which has reconciliation as its intended goal (Mt. 18:15-22); however, many failures can simply be overlooked in love without confrontation (Pro. 10:12; 1 Pet. 4:8). Remember that the Gospel is sufficient to change anyone – don’t write anyone off as hopeless (Rom. 1:16-17), and don’t end a friendship just to make your life easier (John 13:12-16). Be faithful in showing love by praying for the other person to repent (1 Jn. 5:16-17).
If, after working through these considerations in prayer, meditating on Scripture, and seeking godly counsel you find yourself concluding that ending the friendship is the best course of action, the below process from Kelly Needham will be helpful for you:[13]
- Repent and confess – Be honest with yourself, God, and others about the relationship.
- Create space – Spend time together in group settings rather than alone, avoid intimate personal conversations, mutual confession, and prayer together.
- Prepare for grief – If you have grown idolatrously close to this person, separation may feel similar to a romantic break-up; take time to process and grieve the loss.
- Cultivate other friendships – We all need a group of friends, mostly of the same sex as us; be actively pursuing these kinds of relationships for spiritual growth and stability.
- See a biblical counselor – If you are moving from dependency on a friend to dependency on God, seeing a counselor to help you work through that process can aid and expedite the process.
- Get to know God – This is the ultimate end of friendship and the only solid foundation for friendship; if you are to have God-honoring friendships, knowing God always comes first.
Friendship must be done according to God’s purposes
Friendship must be done according to God’s purposes; when
those purposes are no longer the goal, our friendships must change. This should
lead to loving confrontation that results in restoration of the relationship to
God’s pattern; but if it does not, a friendship may need to end, or it may end
by default. But do not write people off because of your convenience, comfort,
or fear of commitment, or because of their sex or repeated failings on the
trajectory toward glorification. Such friendship does not meet God’s goal of love
that magnifies his character as the God of love, and so cannot be called true
friendship.
Diagnostic Questions
Each previous article has ended with a set of diagnostic questions, and for the sake of space I will not repeat them. Rather, I include several specific questions that flow from the content of this post. Since friendship that sanctifies us by revealing his character is God’s goal for us, how ought we to live?
- Beware of idolatrous friendship – Are you willing to lose a good thing (a human friendship) in order to keep the greatest thing (friendship with God)?
- Beware of marriage-mimicking friendship – Do you view friendship as a substitute for a spouse or as a consolation prize for singleness?
- Beware of selfish friendship – Do you humbly serve the way Christ did in dying for your gain, or do you only put in what you can get out again?
- Be friends with the opposite sex – Do you avoid close friendships with the opposite sex out of fear or convenience?
- Be looking forward – Do you live now in light of the coming, perfect friendship you will have with God and others?
These questions get at the very heart of what friendship is
to be for a believer, and we must ask them often and allow ourselves to be
convicted by God’s high goal.
Conclusion
I know that every time I have presented this material, I
have been challenged myself by the quality of my own friendships as based upon
the effort I am willing to put into them. This could be the subject of another
article entirely, but as an introvert I tend to avoid accumulating
relationships, which means my natural tendency is to eschew ministry, since
ministry is people. I am challenged by the example of Jesus when he passed
through Samaria and, instead of keeping to himself after a long journey on foot
with poorly-behaved disciples, took the time to speak to a woman in need of the
salvation he offered because it was the Father’s plan to do so (John 4).
It is only a renewed vision of our Savior as the friend of sinners which will liven our hearts to the true riches to be found in friendship as God has designed it. It is his idea, since it from his very nature and is part of his image engraved upon us; it is his gift, which grants us abundant blessing as we worship him through its proper use; it is his tool, working within us both the knowledge of himself and the resulting sanctification; and it is his goal, his perfect plan for each of us to live in blessed friendship with our creator and his images. Oh, that we would value friendship more than the ancient pagans who came before us, and as much as the saints of old who rejoiced in it as one of God’s greatest gifts!
[1] Jonathan
Holmes, The Company We Keep.
[2] Drew
Hunter, Made for Friendship, p.150.
[3] J. I.
Packer, Knowing God.
[4] Jonathan Edwards, “The Excellency of Christ.”
[5] Hugh
Black, Friendship.
[6] Charles Spurgeon, All of Grace.
[7] Timothy Keller, “Spiritual Friendship.”
[8] Hugh
Black, Friendship.
[9] C. S.
Lewis, The Four Loves.
[10] Rebecca McLaughlin, No Greater Love.
[11] Hugh
Black, Friendship.
[12] Kelly
Needham, Friendish.
[13] Kelly
Needham, Friendish.
All Scripture verses come from the ESV.
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