Only one human relationship is truly universal: friendship. Not everyone has a spouse, children, siblings, or living parents, but anyone can have a friend. Jesus’ closest human relationships were with his friends, and the Bible mentions friends and friendship nearly six hundred times.
Friendships can fall by the wayside when family relationships, work, or ministry take precedence. But it’s clear from its prevalence in Scripture that friendship is important to God, so it should be important to us too.
Here’s what the Bible says about friendship:
A friend loves at all times, especially in adversity.
Facing the impending anguish of Calvary, Jesus brought along his three best friends into the Garden of Gethsemane and shared his grief with them: “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me” (Matt. 26:38). Our wholly divine Savior, who enjoyed perfect fellowship within the Trinity, still desired the companionship of his human friends in his time of deepest sorrow.
It’s wonderful to have friends to celebrate and enjoy life with, but it’s even more important to have friends to struggle and grieve with—friends who will help you cling to the Lord when darkness surrounds you.
“The bonds that tie persons together in friendship
are too precious to be made of the cheap material of convenience.
Choosing such a friend and being such a friend are among life’s major decisions.
Happy are those who treat that decision with high respect.”
True friendship is wrought in the fire of adversity. Everyone needs a friend who will weep with her, listen to her, bring her a meal, give her advice, pray faithfully for her, and remind her of the Lord’s goodness when she’s struggling to see it. Do you know someone who needs that kind of friend?
David Hubbard writes, “’Foul-weather friends are the only ones worth having. More important to the point of the proverb, they are the only ones worth being.”
Friends sharpen each other with good, truthful advice.
When a friend is straying from the truth in her attitude or actions, it’s our responsibility to “speak the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15), even when it might harm the friendship. Proverbs 27:5 says open rebuke is better than hidden love. When we’re forced to choose between loyalty to a friend and loyalty to the Lord and his Word, it’s obvious which comes first.
While it feels loving to protect someone’s feelings, withholding the truth is not love at all. When we’re afraid to tell a friend the truth, we’re actually loving ourselves and our comfort more than we love our friend. To love someone is to desire God’s will for her life, as expressed in his Word.
In his book Being There, missionary and church planter Dave Furman tells of a time he and his wife, Gloria, received a loving and life-changing rebuke. Caught up in the whirlwind of launching a new church plant, they were caught off guard when their close friends drove two hours to their house to confront them about the way they were treating each other:
“He rebuked me for being angry and mean to [my wife]. They told Gloria that even though she was being unjustly treated, if she didn’t cut out the bitter roots in her heart, then the bitterness would begin to characterize her life. If things didn’t change, our friends said, our marriage was going to end in disaster. . . . It was like a ton of bricks had been unloaded on top of us . . . That conversation was one of the hardest moments of my life, and yet I am eternally grateful for it . . . Even though it wasn’t easy, [our friends] chose to uphold God’s values despite the potential awkwardness in our friendship. They loved us more than they loved their own comfort. What if we hadn’t responded well? That possibility didn’t stop their willingness to be used by God in that moment. Their loving rebuke was a starting place for repentance and transformation in our lives.”
Friendships can be ruined by gossip.
Something I love most about my closest friend is her commitment never to gossip or to share information about others without their permission. Her friendship is a safety zone for me—a relationship that’s utterly free from the temptation to say or listen to negative things about others, and free from the fear of my own weaknesses being exposed.
Countless proverbs warn against gossip (see Prov. 16:28, 17:9), and for good reason: it utterly destroys trust, and it is the antithesis of love, which “covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). Thomas Constable says that when we share someone’s failings with others, we’re playing the role of Satan, the accuser of the brethren.
Proverbs 18:18 compares words of gossip to tasty morsels that go down into the innermost being. The sinful nature savors hearing unsavory things about others. Once we hear them, they become a permanent part of how we think of those people. May we never be the one to dish out those morsels, and may we have courage to turn them down when they’re offered to us.
The righteous choose their friends carefully and hold them closely.
If you’ve heard the saying that you become like the five people you spend the most time with, you’ve likely thought about your five. Do you notice the effect they’ve had on your life, for better or worse? Proverbs 13:20 says, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.”
While we should always be seeking to build friendships with non-Christians and share Christ with them, our “inner circle” should consist of people who are zealously following Jesus. And when we find these friends, we must treasure them.
David Hubbard writes:
“Superficial friendships cannot be counted on and should be avoided, since what we really need are not more casual acquaintances who have no stake in our welfare but a few, perhaps only one, true friend to stand by us through thick and thin. ‘Friendship inflation’ is what a friend of mine, a Greek scientist raised in Germany, labeled our American habit of making lots of friends quickly and then dropping them lightly. The bonds that tie persons together in friendship are too precious to be made of the cheap material of convenience. Choosing such a friend and being such a friend are among life’s major decisions. Happy are those who treat that decision with high respect.”