Friendship - What Does Scripture Say?

We weren't made to go through life alone.

It doesn't take reading very much of Scripture to this pretty clear. The model of Jesus, and of many others in Scripture is one of living life with others - in community. If deep friendship with one another.

But, for some reason, we've bought into the lie of our culture that we can do it on our own. That we don't need anyone to get through anything. And it's gotten us in trouble.

So, maybe we need to begin by taking a look at what Scripture says about friendship. If we weren't created to go through life alone, then Scripture should have plenty to teach us about what friendship and walking together through life looks like.

As I began to look at this topic and study what Scripture says about it, I realized it could be, and probably should be, a lifelong study. There are some common themes on friendship I discovered that I want to share as I believe they highlight the foundation of what I'm talking about here.

I've wrestled with how to put this into a post and I'm going to break a lot of the "rules" out there for what a post should look like with this one. And I'm doing so because I want you to go to Scripture and look at it and read it for yourself - read the context and ask God to help you understand what He is saying.

In future posts, I'll talk more about these things with with more stories and the practical side of things. But, I think the foundation Scripture lays out needs to be set out clearly as I begin this.

So, what does Scripture say about friendship?

• Friends love at all times - Proverbs 17:17
• Friends can be trusted, even when they speak hard truth to us - Proverbs 27:6
• Friends stick close - Proverbs 18:24
• Friends help one another up when they fall - Ecclesiastes 4:10
• Friends offer comfort in sorrow - John 11:33-36, Job 2:11
• Friends keep confidences - Proverbs 11:13
• Friends are people chosen carefully - Proverbs 12:26
• Friends sacrifice for one another - John 15:13
• Friends offer heartfelt advice and are pleasant to be around - Proverbs 27:9
• Friends celebrate with one another - Luke 15:9
• Friends care for each other's needs - Acts 27:3
• Friends love one another - 1 John 4:7

This is far from an exhaustive list - much of it from what Proverbs says about friendship. If you were to look further at just what the book of Proverbs says, you would also see a lot of warnings about what friendship isn't.

But I intentionally chose to focus on what friends are and what they do, because I find that more difficult to describe. My life experience tells me a lot of what friends aren't, but what friends are, for some reason, seems to be harder to define and describe for me.

Scripture does also include some examples of friendship in action. That will be the subject of my next post.