Audio Transcript

What makes for a best friend? That’s the question from one listener today, a friend of ours. “Pastor John, I was recently asked by a friend of mine to explain your theology of friendship. I’ll say what I said and see if I got it right or wrong. Here’s my summary, and I’ll let you approve or disapprove or correct this and then substantiate it as you please. Okay. I said this. First, in this universe, Christ is of greatest worth. There’s no greater attainment in life or in death than to know and to love him. That means — he means — the value of our friendships is determined by how much of Christ we see in a person and how closely we can work to share Christ to the world through that relationship.

“So, a non-Christian friend, all about themselves, their own self-image and success, is a dead end. There’s nothing of Christ being magnified in them to us or to the world. We get nothing of Christ in them, and we cannot partner to show Christ to the world. So, a friendship with a non-Christian is of lesser value, beyond us seeking to be Christ to them — which itself is important. However, true Christian friends, our best friends, those whose lives are all about Christ and living for his glory, are a means of us seeing Christ and receiving his grace. And with such friends, we participate together to show the worth of Christ to the world, which is the highest value and delight friendship can ever attain or experience.

“This raises the bar on all our friendships, even the friendship we have with our spouse too. Christ gives our relationships worth — reflecting him to one another and sharing him together. Pastor John, what do I get right? What do I get wrong?”

Well, that’s pretty weighty and amazing. And yes, I think I could affirm that vision as essential to friendship and the way I would think about friendship. So, I’m happy with what he said there. It might shed light on the more relational nature of friendships — or the nitty-gritty, practical dimension of friendships — if we start not with the great, ultimate values (which he did and I’m fine with; I love it), but also you can come at it with the nitty-gritty statements about friendship in the Bible. So, let’s try that. Let’s see what happens if we put together these two approaches, one from the bottom up and one from the top down.

Friends and Neighbors

Here’s one remarkable thing about the word “friend” in the Old Testament, for example. There is one Hebrew word, re’ah, behind almost all the uses of the word “neighbor” and the word “friend.” It’s the same Hebrew word behind both. About eighty times, the word re’ah is translated “neighbor,” and about thirty times that same word is translated “friend,” and only a tiny handful of other Hebrew words are translated “neighbor” or “friend.”

“Friendship is crucial for us in life and ministry.”

Now, one of the implications of this is that the Jewish people who spoke this Hebrew language did not have a peculiar word that they used for friend — that’s amazing — the way we do and the way the New Testament does. We’ll get there in just a minute. The word they used most often for “friend,” almost always, was the same generic word used for “neighbor.”

One dictionary defines re’ah as “those persons with whom one is brought into contact, with whom one must live on account of circumstances of life.” Well, good grief, that’s about as general as you could get. So, the generic word re’ah covers those who are ethnically near you or geographically near you or vocationally near you or near you because of some common interest. It’s very broad. So, our understanding of friendship as it emerges from the Old Testament is not based on the meaning of a particular word but rather on the nature of the relationship in different situations.

Closer Than a Neighbor

Here are some examples, because there really is a vision of friendship in the Old Testament, but not because of a peculiar word.

“Oil and perfume make the heart glad, and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel” (Proverbs 27:9). So, clearly, the reality of friendship as a close relationship of trust and helpfulness is there. It really existed. Or Proverbs 27:6: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.” So here, there’s a clear difference between someone who is near and hostile and someone who is near and friendly. So, “friend” is someone who’s not only near you, but for you. Or Proverbs 18:24: “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” So here, “friend” is closer than many companions, but not a biological brother, yet even more committed to you than a brother. And Proverbs 17:17: “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”

So, it’s clear, I think, that even though there is no peculiar word for “friend” as distinct from “neighbor” in the Old Testament, the reality of a close, deep, strong bonding is clearly present in the Old Testament: earnest counsel, sweetness of camaraderie, faithful wounds, no enmity, closer than a brother, trusted to be there in the worst of times.

And like our friend said (who sent in this question), in a God-besotted culture — like Old Testament Judaism was at its best — this earnest counsel, sweet camaraderie, faithful wounds, brotherly closeness, constancy in the worst of times, all of this is in the service of knowing and trusting and enjoying and obeying the greatness of God. If a friend began to take us away from devotion to God, he would by definition pass from being a friend to being an enemy.

One Who Loves

Now, here’s what’s remarkable when we turn to the New Testament. We just read in Proverbs 17:17, “A friend loves at all times.” Now, unlike the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the Greek of the New Testament does not treat “neighbor” and “friend” with the same word. It separates “friend” and “neighbor” into two words. “Neighbor” picks up on the idea of nearness. That’s what plēsion means, essentially, when it’s translated “neighbor” (and that is the word for “neighbor” in the New Testament), “the one who is near.”

And “friend” picks up on the idea of love. “A friend loves at all times.” About 30 of the 36 uses of the English word “friend” in the English New Testament are a translation of philos. Philos is a word relating to love. We get Philadelphia: brotherly love, city of brotherly love. We get philosophy: love of wisdom. Friend is never a translation of plēsion — “neighbor” or “the near one.” It always is carrying this idea of “a friend loves at all times.” So, the vocabulary of friendship in the New Testament becomes less geographical or spatial and more affectional.

And here’s a really significant illustration of that. In James 2:23, it says, “[Abraham] was called a friend of God.” But when you go back to Isaiah 41:8 and 2 Chronicles 20:7, which are the only two places where Abraham is called God’s friend, in both texts, the word “friend” is not the word re’ah, but the participle of the word love, ’āhaḇ. “The one who loves God” is the literal translation which comes over into New Testament Greek as “the friend of God,” because the word “friend” carries such connotations of love.

Crucial Companions

So, the upshot of all this is to say that, in addition to that big picture that our friend painted for me — capturing the big, Godward notion of friendship — to that can be added now some details (put some flesh on the bones) by observing that friendship involves earnest counsel coming from each other, a sweetness of camaraderie, faithful wounds if necessary, constancy of being there for each other in the best and the worst of times.

A friend is unique in not quite being the same as a brother or a sister, and not being quite the same as a spouse, but being a — what should we say? — a comrade in a shared vision as you pull together for some significant cause. And my assumption is that the importance of this kind of friendship is why Jesus always sent out his emissaries — his apostles and workers — two by two, not by themselves, and why the apostle Paul always traveled and ministered in groups, in friends. He was very eager not to be left alone anywhere. In other words, this kind of friendship is crucial for us in life and ministry.