The Keys to Being a Good Friend
November 10, 2019 • John 15:12–17
Summary:
Proverbs 13:20 says,
"Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise,
but the companion of fools will suffer harm."
Wise friends set us on a trajectory of wise living. Foolish friends predict a foolish future.
Who are your friends? Are they wise? Are you a good friend? Do you treasure friendship?
This week we look to the greatest friend ever, Jesus Christ, to study what made Him such a great friend, and how, thanks to Jesus, we can all grow to become better friends.
Audio Transcript:
You're listening to audio from Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit http://mosaicboston.com.
Heavenly Father, Holy Son, and Holy Spirit, we thank you, Holy God, that you are a perfect community. In the Holy Trinity, there's a perfect friendship and perhaps that sounds a little strange to us in particular because the word friend has been so hallowed in our culture, and I pray today, Lord, that you remind us that you have created us for friendship, friendship with you and friendship with one another, a friendship that once we're reconciled with Christ, the greatest friend whoever lived, since he gave his life for his friends, once we receive Christ's friendship, we are friends with one another and with you for all of eternity in a place called heaven.
Show us today that the foretaste of heaven is true friendship with those who love you. I pray, teach us how to be better friends. Each one of us we long to have more friends and some of us we do struggle with loneliness. I pray today, Holy Spirit, come, give us wisdom and also infuse us with your presence so we know that when we are in you, when we have Christ as our greatest friend, we can be truly satisfied, we can be truly completed, we can be truly content, therefore not look for those things from people. Instead, we can be givers. You gave yourself and we can be givers to other people, which, and now the secret to friendship, like the secret to all blessing is to give rather than receive. We pray Holy Spirit, that you prepare our hearts to hear from you and we pray all this in Christ's holy name. Amen.
We're in a sermon series that we are calling Tough and Tender, Developing Resilience for Life. And what we're doing is we're looking at the paradoxical nature of Christ, that he is the lion of Judah and the lamb of God at the same time, and the more that we revere Christ, the more that we worship Christ, walk with him in his presence, the more we begin to look like and resemble him, that we can have the confidence of a lion taking on the challenges of life, or we can have the tenderness of a lamb and continue to be intimate with the people around us and tender with them, and we're looking at the greatest spheres of life, the most consequential areas of life, through those lenses. Today we are looking at friendship.
When's the last time that you gave significant thought to the topic of friendship? Friendship is one of the most important aspects of life and the least thought about. We all long to be less lonely, we all long to be more intimate, more well known and loved by other people, and we live in a day and age where we are connected with many, the average person on Facebook has 338 friends, connected with many yet connecting with few.
The UK actually has appointed a minister of loneliness to address the problem of social isolation. There's companies started in Japan and now they're popping up all over the West, they're called to rent a friend, where you go and you pay money, rent a friend for a day or longer. In 2018, Cigna ran a study of 20,000 US adults and they found that nearly half feel alone, 46%, or left out, 47%. One in four Americans, 27%, rarely if ever, feel that people understand them.
Two in five Americans, 43%, sometimes or always feel that their relationships are meaningful, meaning the rest do not. One in five people rarely or never feel close to another person or have another person that feel that they can truly talk to. Generation Z, that's people of ages 18 through 22, are the loneliest. And the group of people 72 and older, were the least lonely. Another study came out that said, one in five millennials, it's 20%, have no friends.
The ancients, Christians who went before us, they understood the importance of friendship in a way that we rarely do. J. C. Ryle, a pastor and theologian, he said, "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 sun beam is a friend. Friendship halves our troubles and doubles our joys." How many friends do you have? I'm talking about true friends through thick and thin. Friends drop everything to help you in a time of need. Friends, "When are you moving? I'm there. Give me the other end of the couch," friends. That's the true test in Boston.
Most of us think we know true friendship, a few of us do, and particularly young people because you go through school, you go through high school, your friends are always there, you didn't have to plan to be there, you're just there together all day, proximity. You go to college, you make new friends, and again, proximity. And then you graduate, you move to a city where you don't know anyone and you're like, "Where's my friends?" And particularly because we live in the West in a very hyper individualistic culture, and particularly because we live in Boston where everyone is crazy busy, "Let's hang out. How's your December or January?" And then also the transients. Like you're here, you make friends, and then move away.
C.S. Lewis says, "To the ancients, friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it." C.S. Lewis wrote to his lifelong friend, Arthur Greeves, and he said, "Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life." In The Weight of Glory he wrote that friendship causes perhaps half of the happiness in the world. This is a person who's very specific about his words, very particular.
Augustine said, "Two things that are essential in this world, life and friendship both must be prized highly and not undervalued. They are nature's gifts. We are creatured. We are created by God that we might live, but if we are not, then we are not to live solitarily, we must live, we must have friendship."
And then Jonathan Edwards, the greatest theologian of the United States, the one United States produced is, "Friendship is the highest happiness of all moral agents." By the way, not just Christians know this, everybody knows this. Atheist, A. C. Grayling, a modern atheist philosopher, he wrote a book called Friendship, he said, "The highest and finest of all human relationships is arguably friendship." He says that marriage is to be the best of friendships and then parent-child relationships are to develop into friendships.
Arthur Brooks wrote a book on happiness called Why Happiness Matters for America. He said, "You need four things for happiness, one, faith. Two, family. Three, meaningful work. Four, friends." Think about the happiest moments of your life, happiest moments ever, who's there? Definitely not alone. And if you are alone, most likely that wasn't in the top five. Why? Because joy is consummated. The pinnacle of joy happens when we can share it. Friendship consummates joy. When we experience something amazing, you can't but share it.
I was listening to this guy who for the first time ever experienced ESPN television sports all the time, and he experienced it by himself watching a game and he couldn't believe this comeback and he got up and he started yelling, "Did you see this?" And nobody saw it. And he says, "It's gray, but tinged with sadness." Because joy not shared, is joy unfulfilled. And a joy shared, is a joy multiplied.
Now, the big idea of this sermon is not how to help you find your best friends. Perhaps that's what you want. Give me a list where my friends at. The point of this sermon is to help you become a better friend, and I know in my own life and I know just watching other people's lives, better friends are also better at making and keeping friends. We're going to look at John 15:12-17 today, to frame up our time.
John 15:12-17, the words of Jesus Christ. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another."
This is the reading about holy, inerrant, infallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points in Roman numeral format with seven practical points. It worked last week. Let's do it again. I, Jesus the lion lamb friend. II, friends following Jesus. And III, growing as a lion lamb friend, with seven practical sub-points, treasure friendship. Form concentric circles of friends. Choose friends intentionally. Be a giving friend, a wise friend, a loyal friend, and be a fun friend. Come on, that's free.
I, Jesus the lion lamb friend. Do you find it fascinating that Jesus, as he talks about the greatest expression of love, he points to friendship? And this is fascinating because I've always been taught that in Greek there's different levels of love. There's agape love, and there's phileo love, there's love of God, and there's love of friendship, and there's eros, et cetera, but one of the things that Jesus does is he conflates agape love and phileo love, love of a friend and the love of God. The true love is sacrificial love and the highest expression of friendship is a sacrificial love in that friendship.
Why? Why does Jesus do this? Because he understands that friendship is at the heart of the universe, because the friendship is at the heart of God, that God is a God of friendship. There's perfect friendship in the Trinity. That God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are in a perfect community of friendship, of love, and then God creates us in that friendship image.
Genesis 1:26, "Then God said, "Let us," plural, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."" The next verse. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them." That it takes two in order to understand God more fully. That out of the outflow of his goodness, God creates us out of the outflow of the love. In this friendship, he creates us to image that friendship. So we are created for friendship, friendship with God, friendship with one another, and we can't experience the fullness of God, we can't experience the fullness of a true life, a good life, a Shalom life, universal flourishing, without deep meaningful friendships that God wove it into the fabric of the world.
That's why before the fall, God looks to Adam and says, "It is not good for man to be alone." That's the first malediction. Benediction is, it's good, it's good, it's good, it's good, everything's good, except it's not good for man to be alone. This comes prior to the fall. It takes place before sin enters. So the first problem in human history and the first problem in Holy scripture is not sin, it's solitude. Adam was alone, not because Adam was imperfect, Adam was alone because he was perfect, he couldn't fully enjoy paradise without friends, without community. And it's not until Adam and Eve are created together, until God brings them together, that God looks at everything and says, "It is very good."
We need another human being. It's an ancient and primal ache. That's why solitary confinement is a punishment. Social isolation leads to increased anxiety, depression, mental illness unravels our humanity. Friendship is the ultimate end of existence with God and with one another. This is what made the fall so tragic. Adam and Eve alienated themselves from God, they isolated themselves from the greatest friend that there is. Now there's hostility, there's enmity, between us and God, and we see glimpses of God beginning to reconcile humanity to himself.
He goes to Enoch and says, "Enoch walked with God." It's the Hebrew word, halak. That they walked in a way that friends walk with another. Abraham was explicitly called a friend of God. God calls Abraham explicitly, my friend. Moses says spoke with God face to face as a man speaks with a friend. God pursues Israel, cares for them, provides for them, as he does for a friend. Isaiah 41:8, "But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen the offspring of Abraham, my friend." And as the storyline of scripture progresses we see Israel spiraling downward and they fundamentally reject God, his presence, his friendship, and one another as true friends.
The Old Testament ends with a cry, a plea, for someone to come and restore humanity's relationship with God. Enter Jesus Christ. Fully God, fully man, lives the perfect life. He's fully God, does he need anyone? He's got Trinity, but he's fully man, and he needs friendship. And the same way the first Adam needed friendship, the second Adam, Jesus Christ, needed friendship as well. He comes and he spends time with people, Matthew 11:19, so much so that Jesus's enemies throws spurns and derogatory term at him.
It says, "The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, "Look at him, a glutton and a drunkard," he was never a glutton or a drunkard, "A friend of tax collectors and sinners."" He's a friend, yet wisdom is justified by her deeds. Jesus is a friend. How does that sound to you? How does it sound that Jesus offers his friendship to you? There's two things that come immediately to mind, and this is when I was prepping the sermon. That one is Buddy Jesus, where it's Jesus with the thumbs up, and then there's like '80 song on YouTube, Jesus is a Friend of Mine, I can't get that out of my head, Jesus is my friend. It's so bad.
For some of us it's hard to understand that the God of the universe offers his friendship to us that we can call God friend. It seems even irreverent, and I would submit to you partially that's the case because of what we have done in the English language with the word friend. We have hallowed it out probably partially because it's so hard to make friends, so now everyone we meet is a friend. Anyone who's nice to us is a friend. Any acquaintance, any contact we ever made is a friend.
We've stretched the words so broadly semantically that it's ambiguous at best, what do we mean? So what does it mean that God is my friend? Is God my best friend? Is God an acquaintance? Is God just someone that I pay homage to once in a while? Well, Jesus comes in and says, "No. Friend is the person with whom your soul is bound. That's who a friend is. Your souls are intertwined." God is giving us this level of intimacy to the Holy Trinity. We can come to him because of the throne of grace. So God wants us to have friendship, friendship with him, friendship with other people. What gets in the way? It's our culture. It's our sin. Sin makes us naturally antisocial. Sin makes us bend in on ourselves, drives to isolation. And God is a God of friendship, so the more that we seek friendship, the more that we become like God. The more that we seek isolation, the less we become like God.
And Jesus was a man of friendship. He came, he didn't live alone. He comes to his disciples, the very first thing that he says is, "Follow me." And that imagery he borrows that from the Old Testament, it's the halak imagery. It's Adam walking together with God in the garden. It's Enoch walking with God. It's Noah walking with God. It's Moses, Abraham walking with God. Jesus comes and he tells his disciples, "Follow me." Now he spends three years with his disciples, his best friends, walking dusty roads together, fishing, talking, feasting. There's a meme going on recently where it said the most underrated of all Jesus's miracles was the fact that he had 12 friends in his 30s. Something to it. Why is that even a meme today? Because honestly, you get to your 30s and you're like, "There's nobody here."
Jesus had friends. He invested in friendships. He invested in different concentric circles of friends, we'll talk about that. He grieved over the death of Lazarus. The scripture said, "His friend." In his most distressing moment, Jesus in anguish in Garden Gethsemane wants his close friends there and he's disappointed when they're not. So I start here showing you what friendship is in terms of the gospel. Jesus says that the greatest love, the essence of love, is someone giving themselves for their friends. Meaning that the secret to friendship, the same secret as a secret to all blessing, it's more blessed to give than to receive, it's sacrifice. And I say that because we're so busy, "I don't have time for friends. I have schoolwork to do, and then I have a job to go to, and then I need promotion to pay off my loans, and then I have kids. I definitely don't have time for friends," it goes on and on and on. But we always make time for what we treasure, for what we value.
Jesus valued friendship, and he offers friendship to us, not just as equals, he doesn't throw off his crown and say, "I'm no longer king," no, this is the king of the universe welcoming you into his presence as our Lord, our King, our truest friend, who knows us fully and loves us completely. That's what makes Jesus such a good friend. That with Christ we are never alone and we are never unknown. Jesus Christ welcomes us into the heart of God through sacrifice.
John 15:15, "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." By the way, this is what makes Christianity so utterly unique. There's no other faith that comes even close, and
Jesus speaks these words on the eve of his death, meaning that the cross is not just the greatest demonstration of love, it's the greatest cosmic act of friendship.
John 5:13, "Greater love has no one than this that someone laid down his life for his friends." Friendship is about sacrifice because love is about sacrifice, because you love your friends who are willing to sacrifice. The more time you spend with Christ, the more you understand how much he loves you, the more you find contentment in him, satisfaction in him. He satisfies your soul, he completes you. Therefore, now you are recharged, you are encouraged, you are filled with the Holy Spirit, now you can go and be a blessing to your friends, be an encouragement to your friends, be what Christ is to you.
So the cross is a heroic act of friendship because on the cross Jesus gets what we deserve. He gets the opposite of what he deserves so that we don't get what we deserve. What do I mean? I mean that Jesus Christ on the cross bears the penalty for our sin, which is hell. Jesus bears the flames of hell upon himself on the cross. You're like, "I didn't see any flames, that's not in the text," he cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Meaning he bears abject loneliness, the darkness of abject loneliness on the cross when God the Father and the Holy Spirit turn from God the Son because God the Son took upon himself the sin of the world, the wrath of God upon the sin of the world.
When you realize how much Jesus sacrificed in order to welcome you in to friendship with God, that right there makes Jesus your greatest friend, which now begins to give you the resources to be a better friend. Puritan Walter Marshall said, "Justification," we talked about that last week, "Is God's way of taking you into friendship with himself." So seeing the way that Jesus treasured friendship, seeing the way that Jesus sacrificed for friendship, seeing the way that Jesus was perfectly humble and confident at the same time humble, why? Because he doesn't look down on his disciples and say, "You're beneath me, we're not going to be friends." He doesn't say, "Your IQ isn't high enough to be my friend. Your education isn't high enough to be my friend. You don't live in the same neighborhood that I live in, we can't be friends." He doesn't look at the disciples and say, "You can't give me anything. I can't benefit from you." He doesn't do that. He comes and utter humility and he says, "I can serve you," and that's the first step to the friendship and yet he's incredibly confident, humility and confident, he knows who he is.
He knows that he's the son of God and he gives us both humility, "You're sinners saved by grace," and he gives us the confidence, "I was willing to save you," and that right there, that formula of humble and confident lion and lamb and now gives us the recipe for being great friends. So vertical friendship with Christ transforms our horizontal friendships, and that brings us to point two, friendship following Jesus.
The disciples were such great friends. The early church was an outflow of that love between friends. The church was a community of friends on mission. The New Testament repeatedly portrays the church, not just the place to go to, but a community that you belong to. Acts 4:32, "The full number of those who believed were of one heart and one soul and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common." It's the two souls coming together, it's multiple souls coming together, in love and friendship. Practice as normal across ethnic socioeconomic divides.
Peter and John are flogged and imprisoned. Once they're let out, scripture doesn't say that they went back to the Christians, says that they went to their friends, Acts 4:23, B. The apostle John refers to the local church as the friends, in third, John 15. Why? What united these people? They had nothing in common prior to Christ. What united them was the love of Christ and the mission that God had given them. What do I mean? What I mean is that friends always have something to do together. If you think of your best friends, like there's always some activity, there's always something.
There's so many people in New England today bemoaning the day that Tom Brady is going to retire because then it's like, "What is left? There's nothing else to unite any of us just other than that we live in New England." It's sports, movies, literature, running, working out, friendship is always about something and the more important that something, the deeper those relationships, the more significant those relationships. Well, what is the most consequential thing ever? It's eternity. It's an eternal God and it's eternal souls, things that will never change, and it's Christians who've been united to eternal God, reconciled with him, will spend eternity with him, and now we're on mission for as long as we live to help others who are not yet reconciled with Jesus, who still are at enmity with God, hostility with God, to help them meet Jesus, have their sins forgiven, accept the friendship of God, and be welcomed into eternal life.
All of my best friends, I look back in my, all of my best friends, people with whom I've connected on a soul level, they've all loved Jesus, all have followed Jesus, and all care about the mission of God. All of my best friends. And all of the deepest relationships I've ever formed were with people with whom I was on mission together wherever I lived, because those things don't change. If you look at a relationship that's based around sports, based around education, based upon proximity, where you live, your roommates, all of those things change and after those things are removed, you're like, "What do we even have in common?"
If your relationship is built on something eternal, that thing will never be removed. I have friends that I've been on mission with in college and after college in D.C. and down North Carolina when I was in seminary, and years go by, and then we see one another it's as if nothing's changed because nothing truly important has changed. We still have Christ, we still have the Holy Spirit, we're still on mission with God.
By the way, dating, this is my test when I met my wife. I wanted to know, "Do you love Jesus? Are you a member of a church? Very important. Do you care about the mission of God?" Because I knew like I want to marry a true Christian, and true Christians really care about the mission of God. Because when you've been found by Jesus, you want to give your life to help those who are lost find Jesus. In Matthew 4:19, Jesus says, "Follow me," to the disciples, "And I will make you fishers of men."
I love that he uses that analogy because one of the greatest bonding activities is fishing. You're together, throwing the rod and whatever, I don't really fish very often. This is all hypothetical. I live in Boston. I want to get into fishing, but apparently it's one of the greatest thing to bond people, and Jesus uses that imagery to talk about the mission of God, "Follow me, I'll make you fishers of men." What is it? Catching them, releasing people from the entanglement of sin.
Matthew 28:18-20, the Great Commission, "Jesus said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples, go together make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold I am with you always to the end of the age."" This is the mission that God's... This is really important. At Mosaic, we care about community, not community for community's sake, not unity for unity's sake. The greatest unity, the greatest community, is always a byproduct of serving the Lord together, being on mission with the Lord.
Just a word here about being on mission in a place like Boston where it's so transient, where people come and people go. I've been here for a decade, hundreds of people, thousands of people, come and go. What really allows me to keep my heart open to people is the fact that eternity is real, and if I form a relationship with another believer with another Christian here on earth, that eternity is for ever. We're going to be friends for ever. And by the way, that love, that friendship, is one of the greatest apologetics to an unbelieving world.
John 13:34-35, "A new command I give you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another." It's really shocking to people when they walk in and they experience love in the community, they experience love amongst friends who are together because of Jesus. Like what unites you guys? It's Jesus Christ, and that's apologetic.
And point three is, III, growing as a lion lamb friend, Jesus was incredibly loyal, tenaciously loyal. Gave everything for his friends as a lion, but incredibly intimate. You see him with the disciples in the Last Supper, they're embracing one another, both lion and lamb. We can grow in this paradoxical nature of friendship through the following seven points.
First is, treasure friendship. Why did Jesus treasure friendship? Is friendship a luxury or a necessity? And I would argue, it's a necessity, and Jesus knew that as a human he knew that he needed friends. Imagine life without friends. It's not just depressing, it's also dangerous. When we come unglued socially, we begin to unravel emotionally, psychologically, and physically. US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, he says the most common illness that he came across in his medical practice wasn't cancer or heart disease, it was loneliness.
A Judith Shulevitz says loneliness poses a particular threat to the very old, quickening the rate at which their faculties decline, cutting their lives shorter. We need friends. Do you treasure friendship? Proverbs 18:24, "A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." Companions meaning many acquaintances, many people with whom you're connected but don't really know you. There's no one really in the circle of intimacy. And some of us, I like this, we have a lot of companions. We keep them at arms length, "I'm too busy for friends. I don't have time to cultivate friendship between work, family, and just living in the city. I don't even have time for sleep, not even mentioning friendship." Extroverts make fast friends really quick, but usually they stay at the surface. And this vision of treasuring friendship, pushes us deeper, introverts, like we need to recharge, us, introverts, together. I too am one. Sunday is really difficult for me. It is. This just shows you how much I love you guys.
We need time to recharge, but some batteries if left plugged into the side like the wall too long, they lose their capacity to hold a charge. So we get recharged in order to re-engage. Do we treasure friendship? We always make time for what we value. John 15:12-13 Jesus said, "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this that someone laid down his life for his friends." According to Jesus, no one exceeds... No love exceeds friendship love, and we need to make time for that.
Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse and she serve in hospices and she wrote down people's epiphanies at the end of their life and what they talked about, what they asked for, in this book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, which is often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks, and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years and there were many deep regrets about not having friendships the time, not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
Saint Paul at the end of his life writes his last epistle, 2 Timothy, and he says in verse nine of chapter four, "Do your best to come to me soon," talking to Timothy, and he's not a writer that repeats himself. In verse 21 he says again, "Do your best to come to me before winter." If this were your final week, who are the three friends you would like to see? Specific names. Now, what are the concrete steps that you want to take to deepen those relations? Do they even know that? Do they even know that they're in that circle?
Two is, form concentric circles of friends. By concentric circles, I mean like small circle and then a widening circle and then a widening... You understand concentric circles? Yeah, you're all wicked smart. You know, I should've showed an image. Just imagine the line in the land, it's one circle, and then... Okay. Here's what I mean by concentric circles. The closer you are to the middle, the greater level of intimacy, but it's also smaller. The more it widens, less intimacy, wider, broader, more people included.
So at the very center for every believer, it's got to be you and Christ, you and God, nobody knows you like Christ knows you, nobody loves you like Christ knows... He knows all of your thoughts before you even think. He knows everything, so that's Christ. Then that's your closest friends. And for the believer, for the Christian, those people have to be Christians. If you are truly going to be intimate with someone, if you're going to be best friends, lifelong friends, covenant friends, it's got to be a person who understands your greatest relationship, your deepest relationship, which is with the God of the universe. They will never get you. They will never understand you in the same way that Christians will understand you.
And by the way, this is just practically in this Bible verse where practically this is why Christians shouldn't date unbelievers and Christians shouldn't seek to pursue marriage with unbelievers. Because either that person will draw you out of the most intimate circle or they'll be on the outside looking in and you'll never have the same intimacy with them. So for marriage, from a Christian perspective, you're best friends with someone else who knows your soul in the same way that Christ does or similarly like begins to understand you in the same way that Christ does.
A Song of Solomon 5:16, "His mouth is most sweet and he is altogether desirable. This is my beloved, this is my friend." Scripture talks about marriage as the union of two souls and they're best friends. My wife and I, we are best friends, and I said that in the first sermon and I have all these stories. I can actually start sharing now. We connect on a level. We don't even have to talk. This is one of my favorite things about my wife. I come home, I'm worded out, she looks at me, there's like no words, zero words. We just connect just like two friends, two best friends, and what really connects us is our love for the Lord and our mission together.
But we also need to make space in our lives and time for friends that enrich our lives, and then when we come together, there's a greater enrichment. So Jesus had these concentric circles. So Luke 6:12-16, there's a list of his disciples, I won't read it, but it's right there. He's got 12 disciples. These are his 12 best friends. And Luke 10:1, it says that there's 72 others that he sends out. So he's got another concentric circle that's a lot broader, a lot wider. Later on in the book of Acts, it says, "120 gathered together." So he had another concentric circle. 1 Corinthians 15, "A broader circle yet of those who saw the resurrected Christ."
However, he had a circle within the 12. This is in Matthew 17:1-2, "After six days, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves, and he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light." So he had three closer friends to whom he revealed more of himself because of this intimacy. So he had the disciples friends. Then he had his best friends, Peter, James and John. How do we know that they were his best friends? Partially from this text, partially because he gave them nicknames. You don't just give random people nicknames, you've got to feel close enough to look at a guy and be like, "Your name is Simon? No, Simon. We'll start calling you the rock. Why are you going to start calling me the rock? Because you're dumb as a rock, Peter. I love you, but you're the rock. You're Peter."
And then he looks at James and John and he's like, "You guys have anger issues. I'm going to start calling you sons of thunder. Stop trying to call down fire from heaven. I can do that, but am I going to do that because I love those people too." But those are his best what brings these people in with whom he shares more of his life. Therefore, do not feel bad that you're not at the same level of intimacy with everybody, Jesus wasn't. So don't feel bad about having a limited number of deep relationships. You've got your best friends then you've got your close friends, your casual friends, your acquaintances, fewer people, as you move to the center.
One great example is King David. King David had lots of relationships. He had relationship with his brothers, he had relationships in the Saul's Court, but his greatest friends, best friend, was Jonathan, the son of Saul. In 1 Samuel 18:1 says, "The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David." So friendships, sometimes you don't even choose your friends, it's as if like your souls are just bonded, you weren't looking for one another. It's like C. S. Lewis says, "I thought I was the only one in the world." Oh, you too. Like you connect on the soul level that you didn't even know could exist. It says in 1 Samuel 19:1, that David delighted much in Jonathan and vice versa.
A crucial moment of testing, Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul. So when Saul forces David away, Jonathan, it says, they embraced, they cried, and they kissed on the cheek. When Jonathan dies in battle, David was so crushed in spirit. He says this in 2
Samuel 1:26, "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan. Very pleasant have you been to me. Your love to me was extraordinary surpassing the love of women." Seemingly strange. You read that and you're like, "What is going on?" But then you read the scripture talking about how intimate of friendship that Christians had with one another.
In Acts 20:37, Saint Paul, the great Saint Paul, the most cerebral person who have ever... He wrote the book of Romans. It says that there was weeping on the part of all, they embraced Paul and kissed him. Incredible affection. To respond to why this seems so strange to us, why it makes us feel so uncomfortable, C. S. Lewis in The Four Loves, he says, "On a broad historical view, it is of course not the demonstrative gestures of friendship among our ancestors, but the absence of such gestures in our own society, that calls for some special explanation." He's saying, don't ask why they're so expressive with their love, ask why we aren't and why it makes us feel so uncomfortable. And I'll tell why.
Because we live in a culture where we understand lust without love. It's very difficult for us to understand expressive affectionate love without lust, and that should not be. It should not make us squirm that two friends actually express their love for one another. Jesus did.
Point three is choose friends intentionally. First we make friends and then friends begin to make us. They shape our characters, they shape our personalities. They reveal the hidden parts of us. That's why when you have a friend who passes, it's as if you lose a part of yourself. Proverbs 13:20, talks about walking with the wise, "Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, the companion of fools suffers harm." Interesting. It's not just reading wisdom literature that makes us wise, is living to the walking together that sets the trajectory of our lives. Why? It's because of the power of affection informing us that we do what we love and we begin to emulate or copy those whom we love.
Proverbs 22:24-25, says, "Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and untangle yourself in a snare." It's the power of affection. So be careful whom you let into the inner circle of intimacy. We can have like lots of people in the circle of care, we have to care for one another and care for our neighbors, not as many in the circle of influence, be careful who we... But in the circle of intimacy, be careful who we let in there, and make sure it's a person that you want to resemble.
Here just a word about friendship with unbelievers. Can we have as Christians friendship with unbelievers? Yes, of course. Not in the inner circle of intimacy, but definitely in the circle of influence and care. Jesus was called a friend of sinners. He influenced them more with his love than they influenced him with was sin and sinful past. James 4:4-5, says, "Be careful you adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?" Meaning friendship with the sinful worldview, the sinful systems of the world. "Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says, "He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us?"" So we can be friends with unbelievers without being friends with the world just like Jesus was.
Four is be a giving friend. We've mentioned this already, but great friends give. They give of themselves, they give of their affection, they give of their attention, they give of their worth, they give of their finances. Luke 15, talks about make friends with unrighteous. Means talking about finances, and the secrets of friendship is the secret to blessing, to give is more blessed than to receive. To share time together. 2 John 12, "Ihough I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face that our joy may be complete."
The people who are closest in your life, spend time together in one another's presence. Not just group chats, not just memes and gifs, all wonderful, spend time together. Block off time together, eat together. Great friendships are... Friends and food they just go together. There's something about it, something Biblical there. Be generous. The best friends that I ever had have always been generous friends. Strengthen long-time friendships. You make friendships, keep in touch with one another. Make friends where you live. Don't just move to a new place and say, "Oh, I miss all my friend," make friends where you live. Invest in new friendships.
When you move to that place, it hurt to leave your friends. Invest so deeply here that while you're here, you're invested, and when you do move, you feel the same way, but you might not have to move. You might want to stay here forever because you actually factor in how enriching your friends are, and I know like family pulls away and finances and jobs and things like that, but shouldn't friends at least be a factor in the decision of should I move? But parents do this all the time. "I'm not going to move my kids out of a school because why? They're going to miss their friends." If this is important, why isn't as important to us? What do we value more? What do we treasure more? And I say that just out of a place of my own personal bitterness, all my friends moved away, but we've got new friends, and you're here. Let's be friends. Okay, move on.
C. S. Lewis, Collected Letters, "If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say, sacrifice almost everything to live where you can, be near your friends." I know I'm very fortunate in that respect. Practically in terms of giving, be a radiator, not a drain, and this is very important categories. There's some people that you hang out with and they're radiators. They just radiate heat and encouragement and affirmation, you love spending time with them and you feel so good after spending time with them. And some people, they just drain the life out of you and you're like, "I need a vacation after meeting with this person." Don't be that person.
And it works itself out in all kinds of ways like keep an eye, like be attentive to how much you say when you meet and how much the other person says. Be a good listener. Interact with what they say. Be attentive to their needs. Saint Paul talked about friends who refreshes soul. Proverbs 12:25, talks about anxiety in a man's heart weighs them down, but a good word makes him glad. Be generous with words of affirmation and encouragement. Proverbs 18:21, "Death and life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it will eat its fruits." Saint Paul at the end of Romans, he greets 28 people by name and just encourages them. Encourages them for their service to the Lord. Romans 12:10, "Love one another, brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor."
Five, be a wise friend. Be a friend that speaks truth and love, tough and tender, with others. Proverbs 27:5-6, "Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy." Open rebuke is better than hidden love, what does he mean? When you see a friend on a path of holy folly doing something that's going to lead to their pain and you hide a rebuke, why are you doing that? Because you are treasuring something more than the best for that person. You're actually potentially being selfish. "Oh, it's just uncomfortable to... I shouldn't meddle." Or you're afraid of losing this person's affection or friendship, therefore you don't want to bring up a hard conversation. But true friends are willing to have that hard conversation, because you want to do what's best for your friend. It takes courage, it takes candor, and it takes love.
Proverbs 27:17, "Iron sharpens iron as one man sharpens another," so learn to go deep where you are sharpening one another. Proverbs 27:9, "Oil and perfume make the heart glad and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel." When you need counsel, where do you go? Sometimes we do need therapy and sometimes we do need counseling, but in my experience, the best counsel I've ever received from anyone, it's a person that loves me, knows me, has been through the highs and lows of joy and sorrow of my life, is actually invested in this decision that I'm making because they will be with me and seeing this decision come to fruition. Rejoice with the rejoicing, weep with the weeping, this takes emotional intelligence. Friends ease our sorrows through presence and words.
Empathy. True friends feel our pain. They're there when we need them, attentive to our needs to our emotions. Provers 27:14, "Whoever blesses his neighbor," I'm talking about... This is just emotional intelligence, this is being a wise friend. "Whoever," one of my favorite verses I love, "Whoever blesses his neighbor with a loud voice rising early in the morning, will be counted as cursing." "God bless you," at 5:00 AM. No, no. By the way, if you want to go into business with me, we're going to start coffee cups with this Bible verse on it. No talking before coffee. But what this verse gets at is just common sense when it comes to friendship. That's what I mean by a wise friend. Common sense. You know the right time, the right place to come to visit. You know about just timing. You know about closeness. You know how to engage a person in a way that you connect. You know how to have a conversation where you look a person in the eyes and you listen, you respond, you're not a close-talker, nobody likes that in the United States.
There's an aroma of the gospel around you, about you, scripture says, but there are also aroma of like, "You smell nice. We'd like to be around people that smell nice." This is important. It's really important. Hygiene is important. Like being a person that smells nice is crucial. Crucial, write that down. It's in the Bible. Careful of friendship fatigue, important. Friendship fatigue. Provers 25:17, "Let your foot be seldom in your neighbor's house, lest he have his fill of you and hate you." Friendship fatigue. Like no, don't overstay your welcome. Max, maximum, two hours. Maximum. That's like we love each other and we're hanging out, max two hours. Hour and a half, hour, an hour and a half, that's the sweet spot.
Don't go to someone's house, if they invite you, don't go with empty hands. Just don't do it. Just stop somewhere, grab something, a little something, makes everything better. Proverbs 12:18, "There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." So don't provoke people, know what to say, when to say, how to say. Be a loyal friend.
Point six, openness, trust, transparency. Talking openly about how you feel, openly about things that matter, is more important than talking often, and true friends walk in the light together. So if you sin against a friend, go and ask for forgiveness. If your friend sins against you, tell them, "You hurt me. What you're doing like your reaction, actually cause me a lot of pain." And this is what it means to walk in the light. John 1:7, "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin," and trust of course. A friendship is built on trust. Distrust always erodes friendship. And what leads to distress, gossip. When what you share with a friend, you start hearing from other people.
Proverbs 16:28, "A dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends." Proverbs 17:9, "Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends." And then constancy, like you're together through thick and thin. Proverbs 17:17, "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." Don't be a consumer friend, be a covenantal friend. Here's what I mean. There's people in our lives where you view them in terms of using instead of loving. It's a very consumeristic mentality. Provers 19:4, "Wealth brings many friends, but a poor man is deserted by his friend." Many seek the favor of a generous man and everyone's a friend to a man who gives gifts. Obviously that's not true friendship, it's consumeristic, it's, "What can I get from this person?" Therefore, I'll invest in true friend. Like you're together through thick and thin, useful or not. I'm going to love you, serve you, and give.
And finally, this is really important, be a fun friend. Be someone people want to hang out with. People, "Should we invite that person?" "Yeah, definitely. That person's always fun." Jesus did not get invited to party after party after party because he was boring. No, the Pharisees were like, "You're always at a party," and they call him a glutton and a drunkard. Was he a glutton and a drunkard? No, of course not, but every time they saw him, he's with his posse rolling in with his entourage to a party, and he's got a lamb chop in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.
Jesus was a lot of fun to be around. How do I know? Because Jesus was the wisest man who ever lived. Here's my basic theology of Jesus was a lot of fun. Wisest man that ever lived, Solomon, the second wisest person to have ever lived, said that there are appropriate emotions for appropriate times and he says, "There's a time to plant, a time to reap, a time to build, a time to tear down, a time to dance, a time to sing, and a time to laugh." Jesus was the wisest person ever, and he knew this is a time to dance. He goes to a wedding at Canaan in Galilee, you cannot have 180 gallons of wine with no dancing, you just can't do that. It's impossible. A time to dance, a time to sing, and a time to laugh.
I'll close with this. C. S. Lewis knew about friendship, about deep friendship, and in The Four Loves he describes just spending time with some of his best friends like this. "Those are the golden sessions, when our slippers are on, our feet spread out toward the blaze of the fireplace, and our drinks are at our elbows. When the whole world, and something beyond the world, opens itself to our minds as we talk, the same time an affection has mellowed by the years enfolds us. Life, natural life, has no better gift to give."
Let's pray, and the last points are up just in case you missed them. Lord, we thank you that you are the greatest friend, and I pray, Lord, continue to make us better friends to one another. And as our friendship and our love deepens, I pray, Lord, that many who are not yet Christians see that and are just blown away by this gospel-centered love that you have given us and they too become Christians, and I pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.
