Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
Friend of Christ
(From Forerunner Commentary)
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Proverbs 13:20
We are admonished to bond with people who will encourage our better behaviors and characteristics. We eventually take on the characteristics of the people with whom we bond. We find numerous biblical cautions on this principle or law of bonding: » Can two walk together, unless they are agreed? (Amos 3:3) » He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed. (Proverbs 13:20) » Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man do not go, lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul. (Proverbs 22:24-25) The world's psychology claims that friendship is enhanced by communication. Godly psychology stresses communication but with a slightly different emphasis. Encounter groups (products of well-meaning but misguided psychological principle) encourage, "Let it all hang out—give vent to your pent up feelings." One psychologist suggests that, if one genuinely feels like saying, "I hate you! I hate you!" he should just say it, if it is an honest feeling. However, consider God's instruction: "A fool vents all his feelings, but a wise man holds them back" (Proverbs 29:11). God's psychology insists that friends build up instead of tear down. The Scripture gives ample instructions for godly communication between friends: "Open rebuke is better than love carefully concealed. Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful" (Proverbs 27:5-6). A friend ought to be able both to offer and receive encouragement and loving criticism. As we in our local memberships now number in the teens rather than the hundreds, our faults become more transparent to one another. We need to come to appreciate both the encouragement and the candid criticism from our friends, as well as their kindness and generosity. A friend should never commiserate with or encourage his friend's bitter attitude or rebellion against any of God's laws, statutes, or principles but should encourage him to change course: » Ointment and perfume delight the heart, and the sweetness of a man's friend does so by hearty counsel. [A true friend both gives and accepts good counsel.] (Proverbs 27:9) » As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. (Proverbs 27:17) Godly communication between friends involves sharing common interests, giving and accepting advice, giving and accepting criticism, and giving and accepting encouragement. A healthy relationship requires both giving and receiving, with the primary emphasis on the way of give.
David F. Maas
Godly Friendship: A Priceless Commodity
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John 11:1
Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus. The text indicates that His love for them was more than a passing friendship but something far closer. The scriptures suggest that when Jesus traveled to Jerusalem, He stayed at their home. He slept in their house, ate meals with them, and undoubtedly conversed with them a great deal. Consider their being that close to Him, spending long hours talking with Him, sharing their lives with Him. They had a closeness that other people (other than the apostles) did not have. They really knew and trusted Him. They relied on Him in a way that few people could.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Faith and Prayer
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John 15:13-15
John 15:13-15 presents us with an interesting and exciting expansion of our place within our relationship with Christ. Redemption, at first glance, elevates us from being a slave of unrighteousness and Satan to being a slave of righteousness and Jesus Christ. Yet, here Christ elevates our calling to an almost unimaginable height—intimate friendship with Him and the Father. In many cases, our understanding and therefore our appreciation of this falls short of what it should be. Few or none of us have known either the depths of actual, physical slavery to another individual or the heights of walking the halls of power. In ancient Rome, the friends of the Caesar had greater access to him than his governmental counselors and military advisors. History says they had access to him at all times, even into his bedchambers. A slave would never know such a relationship. A slave never receives a reason for the work assigned him; he simply must do it because he has no other choice. However, a friend of Christ is a confidant of the One in power, who shares the knowledge of His purpose with him. Then the friend voluntarily adopts it as his own, perhaps for no other reason than the basis of their friendship. We do not follow Christ simply because of some chance impulse. We have been specifically chosen, summoned by Him to be His friend! Here is our obligation set boldly and clearly before us: "You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give it you" (John 15:16). We have been specifically appointed, ordained, placed in this unique relationship that we may produce the right things in life. At first, our obligation rests upon the fact of Jesus giving Himself as the price of our spiritual redemption from slavery and death. If we have any sense at all—any discernment of what He has rescued us from and what He has given us the opportunity to possess—our sense of gratitude should explode in zeal and motivate us to loyalty because we owe Him so much! Our sense of obligation is further built and strengthened by the knowledge that we have been specifically summoned and appointed to share in an intimate, loving, family relationship and friendship that He sustains through His office as High Priest. If we have any sense of gratitude for His work in intervening, leading, guiding, correcting, and perfecting our character so that we produce much fruit and love one another, our sense of obligation will be further stirred to ensure that we do not let Him down in any area of life. We will always strive to glorify Him. This motivational factor is largely dependent upon feeling—but not the sickeningly sweet sentimentality of some of this world's Christianity. This feeling is derived from a clear understanding of what has been done and continues to be done in our behalf. This deep, heartfelt, and comprehending feeling arises in the minds of people who have had firsthand experience with the suffering that sin and death bring. They know in their heart of hearts that they are guilty of rebellion against this wonderful Personality who created us, died for us, and continues to be our friend through thick and thin. They know He greatly desires that friendship to continue for all eternity because He is changing us to be like Him and be one with Him.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Elements of Motivation (Part Four): Obligation
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1 Corinthians 11:23-32
Through the apostle Paul, God has made certain that all of the members of the Body of Christ recognize, not only the necessity of participation in this solemn memorialization of Christ's death, but also the careful preparation that is a key to proper participation. Each individual must scrupulously examine himself while recognizing the inestimable cost of what has been done on his behalf. God has clearly shown what He expects from all the participants leading up to that evening. He does not intend for us to go through this examination process with a sense of self-condemnation. Rather, as the Greek word for "examine" indicates, God intends it to be an approval process of making an honest evaluation of how we are relating to the One who has paid the price for our lives, the One to whom we owe allegiance in our every thought and action. The other side of the coin is that, without proper preparation for the Passover, we bring condemning judgment on ourselves for not undergoing the preparation process with all our hearts. God has given us an assortment of tools to handle this process, and probably one of the best is to go through Jesus' own words spoken in the last 24 hours of His human life. Of the 21 chapters in John's gospel, five of them (13-17), almost a quarter of the book, are detailed instructions from that one day, which we can use as a guide for our self-examination leading to the Passover. Jesus spoke these words either directly to His disciples or indirectly, as in His prayer to His Father just before He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane to be tried and crucified. We could focus on various points from these words to guide our personal examination as we approach that most solemn evening, but we will concentrate on one important and telling piece of our relationship with Him, as seen in our relationships with one another. In John 15:11-19, in the middle of His last crucial directions to His chosen disciples on the night before He offered Himself for our sins, Jesus teaches: These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I 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 remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another. If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Of all the instructions Jesus gave to us on that night, this may be the most encouraging, and at the same time, among the most difficult for us to realize in our blossoming relationships within the church. God has ordained that we produce fruit engendered by a loving relationship among the friends of God in a world of those who are, through blindness, His enemies. Out of the entire world, we have been chosen now to develop that friendship, not with the world, but with those placed in the love and friendship of the Body of Christ! This relationship, unique among the brethren separated from the world to Christ, is a critical part of the judgment God is talking about in I Corinthians 11:31. This should be a key element of our evaluation as we strive to keep the Passover in a worthy manner. Are we really living up to the ordained responsibilities of the friends of God within our relationships with one another? Proverbs 18:24 reads, "A man who has friends must himself be friendly, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." The deep meaning of this verse in Hebrew gets lost in the English translation. At first glance, it seems to say merely that to be a friend we need to be friendly, but a closer examination reveals it to be a clear warning to those God has separated from this world through Christ. The exact translation of this verse has spawned quite a bit of controversy, but it is not difficult to see a clear tie between this verse and what Jesus tells those who are in a proper relationship with Him, as recorded in John 15. Those in a relationship with Him must have the same relationship with one another, a relationship that binds to Christ and separates from the world!
Mark Schindler
Passover and Friends United in Truth (Part One)
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