On the role of Christian Friendships in Christian lives

I want to mention first that I will use the word ‘the church’ and ‘Christian friendship’ somewhat interchangeably. This is because you find Christian friends in the church (not a physical church, but the universal church that God instituted).

First, to contrast it with marriage:

I will mention firstly that the Bible is not mainly a book about marriage. It does mention some things about it, but we must understand that the Bible is mainly about Gods redemptive work, about salvation, about Jesus. This is not a statement that I came up with alone, many people agree ( https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/columns/ad-fontes/5-surprising-things-that-the-bible-says-about-marriage/ ).

Marriage is very highly regarded in the bible. From creation, God used the phrase ‘one flesh’ to describe the intimate union of man and wife. This union forms a new family unit and supersedes even parent-child relationships in importance (Genesis 2:24). In Ephesians 5 Paul describes the picture that Christians should have of marriage, with husbands being commanded to love their wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. It is modelled on the relationship between Christ and the church, with self-sacrificial love and utter commitment from the husband, and loving submission from the wife. It is clear that the act of marriage is like binding 2 people into one body.

Marriage also is accorded a permanence when we are on earth. Marriage is an union that God has created and to break it up is to destroy Gods work (Matthew 19). Although we also must remember that in heaven/the resurrection there will be no marriage (Matthew 22).

One thing to note: There is no mutual exclusiveness between marriage and Christian friendship/Christian brotherhood. Indeed, I believe ones spouse ought to be your greatest Christian friend.

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul seems to suggest that marriage is to help us avoid the temptation of sexual immorality (Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband).

In terms of friendship (Christian brothers and sisters), friends are to build up, help, and encourage one another. This is seen in numerous passages. The highest thing a friend can do is to lay down our lives for our friends (John 15:13). This is precisely what Jesus did on the cross for us. Indeed, in John 15, he calls us his friends. But we should not mistake this with what secular society calls as friends. Jesus is talking about a friendship based on different things, which is why sometimes I call it Christian brotherhood. In John 15:14, Jesus explicitly says that we are his friends if we do his commands, which does imply that if we do not, we will not be considered ‘friends’. This point is repeated in Matthew 12, where he says that whoever does the will of God is his brother and sister and mother.

So now we have to look at what is supposed to characterize Christian friendship/Christian brotherhood, and by extension, the Church.

Acts 3: The church devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship, the breaking of bread and to prayer. The church is comprised of people who ought to be doing this.

Acts 4: The believers shared all the possessions they had. The church ought to be doing this. At very least, there should be some form of distribution to the needy in church.

Matthew 18: If your brother sins, go and show him his fault, and if he does not listen, and even after establishing the testimony of multiple witnesses and telling it to the church, if he refuses to change, treat him like a pagan or tax collector, aka, cast him out. The church ought to cast out unrepentant sinners.

1 Corinthians 5: Paul commands the church to expel the immoral brother, to break fellowship with him. A repetition of the previous point.

1 Corinthians 12: Paul describes the church as one body. Indeed, the church is the body of christ (verse 27), and each one of us is a part of it. I want to make an observation here. 1 Corinthians 13, the famous love chapter that is always read out at weddings, was not written by Paul in the context of talking about romantic love. It follows, and is followed in 1 Corinthians 14, by Paul talking about the church, about orderly worship in the church. I think it is fair to say that Paul is saying that we ought to have all these characteristics to love to ALL in the church, not just married couples.

Matthew 8: Jesus tells someone who requests to go and bury his father first (probably an expression to say to let him wait until his father has died before he follows him around the countryside, because he needs to take care of his father when his father is old) that he should follow him and let the dead bury their own dead. Jesus is stressing the cost of following him. I want to mention this, while people might bring up the commandment to Honor thy father and mother, Jesus is explicitly mentioning here that the cost of following him might mean breaking the bonds of the parent-child relationship. We must be prepared to acknowledge the cost of following him might demand this of us.

I think it is important to summarise what is actually going on. Jesus is building a new family, bounded together by his blood, that supersedes any worldy divisions. This is described in Ephesians 2, where Paul mentions that formerly there were divisions between Jews and Gentiles, now all ‘who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two’. This family is characterized by obedience to Jesus, by godly love, and by the decision to follow him no matter the cost. This family is to be part of our identity. Formerly we might be identified by our family, by our race, by our job, but now we are to be identified as one family of Christians.

So what do I mean by trust? I trust that at very least, my Christian friends have submitted to God. They acknowledge the lordship of God over every aspect of life. And to me, that is enough. This is not a question of trusting them with everything, but rather, its about different degrees of trust. To give an analogy, even though I know my parents love me very much, and I love them very much, when I am sick, I do not trust them as much to diagnose me as I do a doctor, even if they give the most well-intentioned advice. And it is important to recognize that Jesus describes our condition as being spiritually sick (Mark 2). How can non-Christians help diagnose and heal me, when they are not the doctor, nor have they gone through similar healing from the doctor before? Similarly, I do not trust non-Christians to understand my actions and motivations as much as compared to my Christian brothers and sisters. I do not trust non-Christians to give me good Christian advise as compared to my Christian brothers and sisters. While I love them, I don’t trust them with my soul. And when I say I trust my Christian brothers and sisters, this is not putting my trust in man, its putting my trust in the body of God. Indeed, it is putting my trust in God, as God has commanded that Christians are to love each other over themselves. I sometimes find it confusing when people say they can trust God but not trust other Christians. After all, isn’t our most biblical knowledge taught to us by pastors and bible study leaders? Don’t we trust them to teach us the right thing? Didn’t we come to faith by trusting that people were preaching the truth of the Gospel to us, rather than trying to deceive us for their own gain? Don’t we trust that since most of us do not read Greek and Hebrew, that the Christian missions that translate the bible translate them faithfully? How can we trust God if we don’t even have the trust in the bible (translated by Christians) and the trust in the basics of the Gospel (taught to us by Christians). My point is, trust in God involves some degree of trusting in Christians. Sometimes I will be disappointed because we all are not perfect Christians. But I don’t think that is a reason to close ourselves to the body of believers.