Speaking as a friend

No article on friendship would be complete without a cheesy quote, so let’s begin with not one, but two from quotemeister extraordinaire, Oscar Wilde:

Anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend’s success.

A true friend stabs you in the front.

We could also try the Oxford Dictionary, which defines a friend “one joined to another in intimacy and mutual benevolence independently of sexual or family love”.

But do we really need a definition? The first joke book I ever read contained the joke, “What is the difference between an elephant and a bottle of milk?”. The right answer, of course, is “Well if you don’t know, I’m not sending you to do my shopping”. Likewise with friendship. We know what a friend is instinctively, and indeed there’s something slightly pathetic about the person who is always asking, “Are you sure you’re my friend?”.

There are some fine pictures of friendship in the Bible. One that springs immediately to mind is the friendship between David and Jonathan the son of Saul:

As soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul … Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. (1 Samuel 18:1, 3)

This conveys the idea of friendship very well. Friendship is a close relationship. It’s closer than with a neighbour, since a neighbour can even be a person who is normally seen as an enemy, as Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan pointedly reminds us (Luke 10:25-37). By contrast, “there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Prov 18:24).

In the New Testament, Jesus has special friends: he takes Peter, James and John with him to the mount of transfiguration; John is referred to in John’s Gospel as the disciple Jesus loved. Paul the apostle has his special friends—Timothy is “very dear” to him.

None of these revelations should make us fall off our seats with surprise. It’s a human thing to find some people more attractive, some people less. It’s a human thing to find that because of our stage in life or where we go to church or what we are passionate about that we will make friends and have friends. Friends are a gift from God.

The proverbial friend

Perhaps the best place to turn to in the Bible to discover the nature and purpose of friendship is the book of Proverbs, and this is hardly surprising. Proverbs is a book of wisdom—that is, a book of practical knowledge about how God’s creation operates and how we can gain this knowledge for ourselves. For thinking about how to live life in God’s world—including how to be someone’s friend—Proverbs is a great starting point. Let’s look at some of the helpful, specific things Proverbs says about friends:

The poor is disliked even by his neighbour, but the rich has many friends (14:20)

(So, for example Jamie Packer, son of Kerry, had 750 guests to his first wedding. That is a lot of friends! But then again, he has a lot of money.)

A dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends (16:28).

Whoever covers an offence seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends (17:9).

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity (17:17).

A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother (18:24).

He who loves purity of heart, and whose speech is gracious, will have the king as his friend (22:11).

Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare (22:24-25).

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy (27:6).

Oil and perfume make the heart glad, and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel. Do not forsake your friend and your father’s friend, and do not go to your brother’s house in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbour who is near than a brother who is far away (27:9-10).

Each of these proverbial sayings are well worth chewing on—indeed, that’s what the book of Proverbs is for. It prompts us to think about life, and interpret our experience in light of what the different proverbs say, remembering all the while that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (1:7). Look back over the proverbs listed above. Read them two or three times each. What picture of friendship begins to emerge?

As we start with these proverbs that specifically mention friendship, and move outwards to other proverbs that discuss the idea of friendship (without using the word), a number of key themes float to the surface.

Not all friendship is good friendship

“Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise,” says Proverbs 13:20, “but the companion of fools will suffer harm”. Likewise, in Proverbs 1:10-16 we discover that some friends have a love for violence, theft, greed and murder. Such people may well be friends and friendly, but they are enticing us into something that is going to bring disaster —on them, on us for believing them, and on the ones we might hurt.

Whether it’s children who succumb to peer group pressure and use drugs, or whether it’s dodgy business dealings amongst work colleagues, there is a friendship that leads us astray. In Proverbs 7:18, a woman leads a fool into adultery, saying, “Come, let us take our fill of love until morning, let us delight ourselves with love”. Neighbours can have the same influence:

A man of violence entices his neighbour and leads him in a way that is not good (16:29).

So the advice comes:

Do not enter the path of the wicked, and do not walk in the way of the evil (4:14).

And again:

Be not envious of evil men, nor desire to be with them, for their hearts devise violence, and their lips talk of trouble (24:1-2),

Not all friendship is worth pursuing. In fact there are some friends you actively want to avoid.

However there are two really important aspects of friendship that Proverbs also remind us about: stickability, and the words that friends speak.

Friends have stickability

A friend is not a friend until they’ve shown that they can stick by you:

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. (17:17)

It is also covered by the verse “Love your neighbour as yourself”. Think of Sam sticking by Frodo as they take the ring step by step towards Mt Doom in The Lord of the Rings. Or (to illustrate the opposite) think of that old series of beer ads that featured the Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian sidekick, Tonto. They are surrounded by other, hostile, Indians, and the Lone Ranger says “What are we going to do, Tonto, we’re surrounded!” To which Tonto replies, “What you mean ‘we’, Paleface?”.

A friend will be there for hard times. If you can think of someone you could phone up and ask for $1,000 because you needed it straight away, chances are you are thinking of a friend. It works the other way too. A friend is a person you could see yourself going out on a limb for. Can you think of someone you’ve put yourself out for in the last six months? Obviously we can’t be everywhere and there are more needs than we have the capacity to cope with or do something for. But if there is no-one outside immediate family that you would put yourself out for, then this verse—a friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity— is a sharp reminder for us.

Friends use words well

When we turn to the subject of how friends use words to express their friendship, a new landscape of teaching opens in front of us. The nature and power of words, and their capacity for doing both good and evil, is a profound biblical theme. Proverbs has much to say about it.

Friends are willing to say the hard word—“Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy” (27:6), and to give serious advice: “Oil and perfume make the heart glad, and the sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel” (27:9).

In fact, not only do friends speak to each other in a particular way, but if you learn to be this sort of speaker you will attract all sorts of friends to yourself:

He who loves purity of heart, and whose speech is gracious, will have the king as his friend. (22:11)

When I think of the people that I really count as friends, it is not necessarily those who I’ve known for years, or I find it easy to have casual conversation with. It is those people who have said words to me that I needed to hear. Sometimes they have been uncomfortable words, painful words, words that shocked me into the realization that I had been a complete fool.

At other times, words are of very great comfort: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver” (25:11). I have some very dear friends that never fail to tell me that something I have done has been of great encouragement to them. Whenever I feel in need of consolation, I can ring them up and never be disappointed. A good wife or husband will do this for you (as my wife does for me). If you are married, do you make a habit of speaking words of friendly comfort to your spouse? If not, be aware that …

A continual dripping on a rainy day and a quarrelsome wife are alike. (27:15)

And:

“It is better to live in a corner of the housetop than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife.” (21:9)

And this applies just as much to men as it does to women, although I suspect that men are more likely to be unfriendly by not speaking, and hiding behind a newspaper. Nevertheless, your husband or wife can be a very dear friend as well as a lover:

His mouth is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable. This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem. (Song of Solomon 5:16)

The movie Fargo has a lovely final scene which captures the friendly encouragement of  a wife to her husband. The husband is a painter who has entered a stamp design competition:

Norm: They announced it.
Marge: They announced it?
Norm: Yah.
Marge: So?
Norm: Three-cent stamp.
Marge: Your mallard?
Norm: Yah.
Marge: Oh, that’s terrific.
Norm: It’s just the three-cent.
Marge: It’s terrific.
Norm: Hautmans’ blue-winged teal got the twenty-nine cent. People don’t much use the three-cent.
Marge: Oh, for Pete’s sake, of course they do. Whenever they raise the postage, people need the little stamps.
Norm: Yah?
Marge: When they’re stuck with a bunch of the old ones.
Norm: Yah, I guess.
Marge: It’s terrific. I’m so proud of you, Norm. Heck, Norm, you know, we’re doin’ pretty good.
Norm: I love you, Margie.
Marge: I love you, Norm.

Beyond Proverbs: friendship with God

It is good to have friends in high places. There is no greater friend than God, and there is no higher place than heaven. Remember that Proverbs itself points us to God and forces us to think about our friendship with God by saying that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”.

Friendship with God is no light and easy thing. It excludes some other friendships:

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (Jas 4:4)

Or in a similar vein:

The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant. (Ps 25:14)

It is very important, then, to be a friend of God, and it is possible to be a friend of God. There is a very strong hint that this is exactly what it was like in the garden of Eden, just before sin entered the world:

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. (Gen 3:8)

The friendship that Adam and Eve enjoyed with God before their sin was like that of Moses: “The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Exod 33:11).

James makes the comment that Abraham was known as a friend of God “and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’—and he was called a friend of God” (Jas 2:23; cf. 2 Chr 20:17, Isa 41:8).

The final thing to say is that we become friends with God through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. “God demonstrates his love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). The word the Bible uses to describe that is ‘reconciliation’. Once we were enemies of God, hating him because of our sin; now we are his friends only through the death of Jesus. Jesus is the true friend that the book of Proverbs describes. He is the greatest friend, who laid down his life for his friends. If we are going to show true friendship to others, we will want to introduce them to the Lord Jesus.

We started with a quote; perhaps we should also finish with one:

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)