Friendship: Christ-Centered
By: Ross Jelgerhuis
This is part 4 of 5 in the blog series “The 4 C’s of Biblical Friendship.” Each post reiterates the different sections of Ross’ talks on friendship given at the RPC Men’s Retreat earlier this spring. Thus, if at any point the grammar seems clunky, its because this was originally written to be presented orally. The 5 posts will include first an introduction, and then one post for each of the 4 C’s of Biblical Friendship.
Find part 1 ‘Introduction’ here
Find part 4 ‘Careful Candor’ here
The last post ended by asking: Where are we going to get the power to be the friends we need to be so we can have the friends we need to have?
Christ-Centered
Self-help books advise us to love ourselves first, they will say “self-love is the pre-requisite of loving others.” There is much truth in that statement. Jesus says “love your neighbor as yourself,” and most believe that “as yourself” is referring to a healthy level of self love. I also believe that the more settled we become with who we are (“self-love”), the more we are able to move towards others in humility to serve them rather than need them to “complete us” in some sort of way. However, there are 2 problems with “self-love is the pre-requisite of loving others.” First, how do we really attain “self-love?” On what basis are we able to love ourselves? Furthermore, “self-love is the pre-requisite of loving others” is incomplete. Jesus had very important instructions right before “love your neighbor as yourself.” He begins with “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). Thus, the solution of “self-love is the pre-requisite of loving others” is maybe the heart of the problem in our friendships. The Bible shows that friendships can’t be cultivated or fixed from within, but they need a deeper love, the love of Christ.
Anchor and Engine
Christ impacts our friendships in two ways, he is the anchor and the engine for our friendships (I am indebted to Rankin Wilbourne for the anchor/engine metaphor). First, the anchor. The night before Jesus died, in his “upper room discourse,” he was desperately trying to get across to his disciples the meaning of what he was about to do. One way he did this was with the conception of friendship. He says, “I no longer call you servants… but I call you friends,” then he commands them to love each other. As one pastor puts it, at this moment suddenly the whole history of the world can be understood in terms of friendship. God himself is a friendship – he is Father/Son/Spirit in eternal relationship. He then made us in his image in need of friendship. For example, it says that God “walked” with Adam in the garden. In that context the idea of “walking” together conveys the idea of deep friendship. Hence the creational statement “it is not good for man to be alone.” The tragedy of the fall, however, is that we turned from God, we betrayed the friendship. And what do most of your friends do when you betray them? They turn from you don’t they?
This is what makes Jesus’ words in John 15 so beautiful. He is essentially saying, “I am the true friend… I’m the one all friendships are based on.” He is the friend who loves at all times, the one who’s earnest counsel is sweeter than honey, who cleaves to you at ultimate cost to himself so that you will not be ruined. His wounds are wounds of love – he is saying “instead of inflicting them, I’m going to take them.” As one author says, “Jesus lost his friendship with God on the cross so that we could be friends with God.”
Many of our relationships struggle because we feel we have to earn the approval and affection of others, and are never quite sure we have done enough. We’re not funny enough, we don’t serve them enough, we’re not creative enough, etc etc. Our relationship with God, by contrast, is completely secure if we trust in Christ. We need to let our vertical friendship with God anchor our horizontal friendships on earth.
One way we can experience this is that Christ free’s us from crushing our friendships with messianic expectations. In Christ, we don’t need to try to have our friendships meet our deepest longings. In one way or another, we enter our friendships forgetting Christ and loading all our hopes and dreams into the here and now. Day after day, we can subtly and not so subtly ask our friends to deliver paradise to us. As Paul Tripp teaches, when we forget the gospel, we look to people to give us what only God can provide. This always leads to disappointment, frustration, criticism, and conflict. But because we don’t see our gospel amnesia, we are convinced that our friends are the problem and that they need to change, not us. We need to remember that God does not intend friendships to be an end in themselves, but a means to an end. Rather than being the container for our happiness, these beautiful yet messy relationships are a workroom for the Redeemer to do what he alone can do: sanctify us so we are progressively prepared for the paradise that is to come.
Christ is not only the anchor, but also the engine for our friendships. He empowers us to become better friends. In Christ, we are free to take risks (like candor) in our relationships because we know he holds us no matter what happens in our friendship. In Christ, we are free to receive criticism, because our identity is not in their approval. That doesn’t mean it will be easy, but it will be possible. The gospel also free’s us to trust God will provide friendships if we desire more – if he gave his son, how much more will he give all things, like friendship? And finally, the gospel aims our friendships for the glory of God, not our own glory. It frees us to serve our friends in a selfless way because Jesus has already won all the glory we would ever need for ourselves.
As a wise man once said, “make Jesus the friend your heart desires and you will have all the friends your heart needs.”
May God keep us anchored in his son so that we can continue moving towards and experiencing his good gift of friendship.