Biblical friendship

Friendships are an essential part of our daily Christian lives, and yet few of us have a biblical theology of friendship. This article seeks to highlight a few key biblical principles for us to live and evaluate our friendships by.

The overarching biblical philosophy on human relationships is that that it is “not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2: 18). Before mankind was created, the Trinity has been in relationship; since mankind was made in God’s image, it is not surprising that, having created a perfect world, God recognised that Adam still required company (a “helper”). And this despite the fact that Adam lived in perfect relationship with his creator: we need the company of other humans! Tim Keller asserted that we shouldn’t be ashamed to be lonely, since to be lonely is to be fully human (even a pre-Fall human), and this makes sense, since we are made in the image of our creator. This should be a comfort to us: we were made for relationship. 

Friends are family

The question is how friendship fits into the wider picture of human relationships in the Bible. Although in the Garden of Eden God’s solution to Adam’s isolation was a wife to be his helper, in the overall biblical narrative we see that humans need more relationships than simply marriage. In the Old Testament, the extended family and wider family of Israel (God’s chosen people) are the most commonly discussed human relationships, with a few exceptions of friendship lifted for our admiration and inspection (David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, Job and his friends). In the New Testament the key relationship is between Jesus and His church. “God’s family” transforms from being one big biological family (that of “Israel”) to being the “true Israel” God hinted at in the Old Testament: a chosen group of people “from every nation, tribe, people and language” (Revelation 7: 9) who worship God with all their hearts. This explains why Jesus uses familial language to define His relationship to his friends (the disciples):
‘“Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother”’ (Matthew 12: 48-50).

Jesus’ radical preference of His spiritual family over His biological family in this instance was no less controversial in His day than in ours. This new type of “family” would have all the usual characteristics: permanence, platonic relations between siblings, duty of care and a commitment which goes beyond natural affection.

As Jesus’ family and friends, we are commanded to care both for our biological families and for the church family at large (1 Timothy 5: 8 ff). At the foot of the cross, Jesus paired up His spiritual brother with His biological mother, kickstarting this style of blended family (John 19: 26-27). The church is collectively committed to each other, not individually committed to each other, with different members of the family providing and giving support as required. This means that our society’s “marriage partner fixes my loneliness” or “best friend fixes my loneliness” culture falls short - we don’t need just one person. The family of God is the community God has chosen for us as Christians: maybe that’s why Jesus uses “family” vocabulary more than “friend” vocabulary.

Practically speaking, we can’t be friends with the entire family of God, even with everyone in our local church family. The Oxford English Dictionary describes a friend as “a person with whom one has developed a close and informal relationship of mutual trust and intimacy”. Paul described some (but not all!) of the individuals in his parting greetings in Romans 16 as “friends”: clearly it is possible and permissible to be closer to some than others within the body of Christ. 

We need more than one friend

Among the twelve disciples who lived and travelled with him during his earthly ministry, Jesus also had three closer friends: Peter, James and John. Critically, Jesus didn’t have a “bestie” amongst these 3: to single one out is like the disciples arguing about who was the greatest. Yes, John was the “disciple whom Jesus loved” (e.g. John 13: 23), but he also built the church on the rock of Peter, and James was also present at the transfiguration and other miracles. We may like to tidy things into pairs of friends, or a married couple, but this is a modern obsession, not a biblical pattern. Some have proposed a concept of covenantal friendship: exclusive relationships between 2 individuals often of the same sex used to alleviate loneliness. This is a modern concept not grounded in biblical truth. David and Jonathan made a covenant with each other for a very specific purpose: to protect one another as natural rivals for the throne. David and Jonathan had other friends, extended families, and wives for companionship.

Friendship is a team effort - we don’t have to be everything to everyone - and this is a good lesson for marriage as well. Jesus’ model of 3 close friends, 9 other good friends, and 72 good acquaintances is an appropriate model for us to follow too in building healthy relationships.
It’s okay to have friends of the opposite sex. This is perhaps a controversial point in modern Christian culture which is understandably cautious of close friendship between sexes for fear of sexual immorality. Friendships across sexes were controversial in Jesus’ day too, and yet we see both Jesus and Paul having meaningful friendships with women. The siblings Mary, Martha and Lazarus seem to have been significant friends of Jesus whom He loved and invested in: crying at the tomb of Lazarus, challenging, loving and respecting Mary and Martha - showing more emotion and closeness than even with the 3 main disciples. It’s also easy to overlook that Jesus had many other female friends and supporters: a group of women who “followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs” (Matt 27: 55-56). These included Mary and Salome (almost certainly his aunts), women He had healed such as Mary Magdalene, and Joanna and Susanna (rich and important women - Luke 8: 3). It was some of these women, not the 12 disciples, who stood at the foot of the cross, and who sought to tend His body after death.

Likewise, in Romans 16, Paul greets several female friends whom He holds in high esteem and great affection, such as “my dear friend Persis, another woman who has worked very hard in the Lord”. The fact that Paul commanded Timothy to treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers and younger women as sisters with absolute purity (1 Timothy 5:1-2) shows that they weren’t cutting themselves off from each other! I think this has great practical relevance for us today - we should be careful in what we wear, say and do not to lead our brothers and sisters into sin. But holding each other at arm’s length and never allowing any intimacy to form across gender lines outside of marriage is also not biblical. 

The purpose of friendship

We have identified some general principles of biblical friendship, but let’s now examine what friendship is for. I wish to highlight two areas:

1) Good friends point to God

Friendship isn’t just “for fun” or a distraction from family and work commitments, but serves a key function in the believer’s life. The friendships listed in Romans 16 were based on mutual service and work for the Lord Jesus - rather than just mutual affection or shared interest. C.S. Lewis defines friendship as “unnecessary, like philosophy, like art … It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival” (The Four Loves). However, in this instance I believe Lewis grossly undersells the spiritual importance of biblical friendship. 
David and Jonathan’s relationship was based on their shared love for God and passion for His glory: they didn’t hang out with each other because of a mutual love of archery! God rebukes Job’s friends for not speaking truth about Himself to Job, despite the level of commitment they showed. As friends we have a duty to point to God and we need to be serious about speaking the truth about Him, in and out of suffering. Godly advice and accurate rebukes from Christian friends are extremely valuable because they know us, love us and may be able to help us identify our blind spots.“Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.” (Proverbs 27: 6) Speaking the truth in love, (Ephesians 4:15), we need to build one other up in greater obedience to Christ, and that means bringing up God in conversation, and asking each other how our walks with Him are going. Since “bad company corrupts good character” (1 Corinthians 15: 33), we should be mindful of the spiritual impact of even our Christian friendships. The goal of friendship is not that we should fix our gaze on each other, but that we should together fix our gaze on Christ.

2) Good friends provide care and a healthy degree of constancy

Job’s friends gave pretty terrible advice, but they started out with good intentions, leaving their homes and meeting “by agreement to go and sympathise with him and comfort him” (Job 2: 11). Impressively, they sat with him in silence for a full seven days! When our friends are suffering or grieving, sometimes they don’t need wise counsel, they just need people to be with them and provide practical care. Although there is no biblical basis for exclusive covenantal friendship in the Christian life, constancy in friendship is still praised, and unreliability condemned:
“Anyone who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty.” (Job 6: 14)
“One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” (Proverbs 18: 24)

Jesus was betrayed by one of his closest friends, and denied by another, and the other ten were asleep at his time of need! Lack of constancy in friendship hurts – and Jesus understands this more than most. We would do well to show constancy and commitment in our friendships like Ruth and Naomi, but not to the exclusion of other friendships. Knowing what this should look like in our modern culture is challenging, particularly when people move away. Since the majority of the New Testament teaching on human relationships is about relationships within the church, I believe our primary commitment (outside of marriage) is to God’s people in the local church. A natural conclusion is that ideally our key friends should be found within this group, where possible. This may mean that those we share our deepest secrets with, and whom we counsel, are not those we would humanly speaking have most in common with, but there is a heavenly beauty in discovering true friendship in unlikely sources!

Final thoughts

None of us are doing friendship perfectly, and there are many pitfalls which are easy to fall into. I hope that this article provides a foundational (if partial) biblical view of these key relationships, and that it encourages and challenges you to be a good friend focused on Christ, our closest friend!

This article was originally published in the Autumn 2024 edition of the TFT magazine, Ascend. Click the button below to download your copy.