No Greater Love by Rebecca McLaughlin
The one that came to my mind was the story of
Abraham sitting in his tent when 3 people just came walking past. Many would
say this was the Lord himself along with 2 angels. The message he had to bring was not an easy one
- God had looked down from heaven and seen the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah. He
wanted to prepare Abraham for the judgment that had to come on their
wickedness. He was pre-warning Abraham. Why did he do this? Abraham's nephew
Lot lived there and Abraham needed to know. Although they had parted there was
still a deep love in his heart. Imagine this was the nephew he had brought with
him from the family home in Ur all those years ago. He had looked after him,
set him up in life and now he was living in such opposition to all that Abraham
intended but more importantly that God desired. Abraham was God's friend and he
needed to know what was about to happen. So began the pleading and bargaining
with God to save his nephew.
As I thought of this story it reminded me of the
compassion we need to speak to others who are lost in sin today. Our Pastor
said something very true - people don't actually realise their
lostness or if they do they turn their back on God purposely. It is easy to
live in a bubble not thinking of others but when was the last time you shed
tears over someone you knew who does not know the love of God for them? What a
challenge just from reading one sentence in a book!
There is a "happy ending" to the story
of Abraham. When judgment fell on the city Lot was spared along with his 3
daughters but he lost his wife because she looked back, she longed to be back
in the place of pleasure. And all because one man prayed and asked God to save
him. An encouragement to us all - keep on praying because God answers prayer!
As Rebecca says "I thoroughly believe that God directs my life, but rarely does he let me see the script. God gives us friends who help us up when we have hit the ground."
This book explores the biblical terrain in which all Christian friendships set up camp. To navigate our friendships well, we need to map out where green pastures lie and chart the cracks and crevices - from the fear of closeness that can hold us back from forging real friendships to co-dependency, which turns a friendship in upon itself.
Friend is an elastic term. It stretches out one arm to grab acquaintances, while with the other it grasps onto those who know our darkest secrets and most vulnerable dreams.
Think of the friendship between David and his much older brother-in-law Jonathan, After David's famous victory over Goliath, we're told that "the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." (1 Samuel 18 verse 1). Later after Jonathan's death David laments "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women." (2 Samuel 1 verse 26)
Instead of anchoring on this Old Testament relationship Rebecca's hope in this book is to anchor our understanding of friendship on Jesus himself, and the examples of deep Christian friendship that we find in the New Testament.
As we sit at Jesus' feet we must be ready to have our assumptions about self-serving friendship shaken up. While having dinner at a Pharisee's house, Jesus gave his host some feedback on his future guest lists "When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbours, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you." (Luke 14 verses 12 - 14) Our aim if we are Christians must not be to form a club of peers who scratch our backs as we scratch theirs. We must be reaching out to welcome those in need. But Jesus also modeled deep investment in a few relationships and the premise of this book is that the startling claim that Jesus made the night he was betrayed is true: "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." (John 15 verse 13)
For Christians friendship is no optional extra life feature we might get talked into by eager salesman. It's vital to our flourishing.
Friendship at its best is just as powerful as
any other love. But like each one of God's amazing gifts to us, it's
life-giving if we embrace it well and soul-sucking if we don't.
Friendship can fuel and shape us in delightful,
God exalting ways, or it can hurl us headlong into sin.
Friendship can revive us when we're left for
dead, or it can grind us down into the dust.
Friendship can project us forward in our following
of Christ or it can drag us back.
Rebecca makes it clear that if you are not a Christian her hope is that this book will help you grow in friendship. But she also hopes that the reader will see how friendship is a pointer in an even greater love: the love that Jesus showed to you when he laid down his life 2000 years ago. If Christianity is true, then any joy, delight and comfort we might find in friends is just an echo of that greater love. While other friends will never ultimately satisfy, the one Friend who has loved us to the point of an excruciating death is also ready and equipped to walk us through our own death into everlasting life - if we will only let him take our hand.
If the reader is a Christian Rebecca hopes the book will help them grow more durable, missional, challenging, comforting, life-giving friendships. If Jesus is right that there is no greater love than to lay down our lives for our friends, we need to learn this love as if our life depends on it. We need to form deep friendships, so that we can fight the battles Jesus calls us to with comrades by our sides. We need them there to brace us for the onslaught, stoke our joy, and celebrate the victories along the way. But we also need our friends, so that when we slump down under the weight of all our frailty and failure, there will be someone there to ask us, 'Are you crying?' and we will have the courage to say 'yes'.
For most of us, our record of relationships is just as carefully curated as our resume. You could easily bang out a resume of friendship failure. The friend you lost. The friend you tried to gain but never got. The friend who ghosted you. The friend you wanted to be close to but who kept you at arm's length. The friend you trusted with your secrets, but who shared them out like donuts.
Perhaps, through all this failure, you have learned to manage life without the kind of friends who know our weaknesses and fears. You've learned the hard way that it's safer not to trust. Perhaps, despite some disappointments, you have had enough success at friendship that you've carried on. Or maybe all this talk of friendship love feels alien - like people getting all worked up about a sport you've never played. Perhaps the notion of a tragic friendship loss sounds like we're back in middle school. Those of us who still care deeply about friendship can feel a little sheepish. But the devaluing of friendship love is not how things have always been.
"Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue." C S Lewis
"Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods" Aristotle, Greek philosopher. Aristotle famously put friendship in 3 categories: friendships of pleasure, of utility, and of virtue.
In today's terms, we might see the first as friendships, built around shared interests; the second as networking and the third as friendships we invest in a deeper sense - ones in which each person seeks the other's good and recognises the goodness in the other as they seek to grow in goodness side by side. Many in our society today have friends of pleasure or utility; fewer have friends of virtue.
Noticing the gap between what ancient authors wrote and how his British contemporaries thought, Lewis described a common perception of friendship as "something quite marginal; not a main course in life's banquet; a diversion; something that fills up the clinks of one's time" How has this devaluation of the currency of friendship come about? "The first and most obvious answer" Lewis suggests, "is that few value friendship because few experience it." What does friendship look like at its best?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a poem entitled "The Friend" which was inspired by his best friend. He describes the unique nature of friendship compared to other loves:
not from the heavy soil of earth
but from the heart's free choosing
and from the spirit's free longing
needing no oath or legal sanction
is the friend given to the friend
There's something about freedom that gives friendship its uniquely vital quality. But friendship isn't just a place of freedom. It is also a domain of comfort, refreshment, safety and delight. Bonhoeffer goes on:
Like a clear, fresh wellspring
where the spirit cleanses itself from the day's dust,
where it cools itself after blazing heat
and steels itself in the hour of fatigue
Like a fortress, where the spirit returns
after confusion and danger
finding refuge, comfort and strength
such is the friend to the friend
Bonhoeffer profoundly treasured friendship love. But he was no fresh faced idealist. He wrote "Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and if we are fortunate, with ourselves.
Our resume of failure may seem like compelling evidence we shouldn't try again with friendship love. But if Bonhoeffer is right, it could be our best starting point. And when we look at Jesus' famous words on friendship love, we'll find that they're delivered when he knew he was about to be betrayed, denied, abandoned by his closest friends.
Judas, one of Jesus' 12 chosen apostles, had just walked out into the night when Jesus turned to his remaining followers and gave them these astounding marching orders:
"A new commandment I give you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13 verses 34 and 35)
Love had been the pounding heart of Jesus' ethical teaching - love of God, love of neighbour, even love of enemies. So, how was this commandment new? The newness of his words is anchored in what Jesus was about to do. On that dark night, he called his followers to plunge themselves deeper into love than they had ever gone, because their love for one another was to be just like his love for them. This love was set up as the hallmark of discipleship.
Earlier that evening, Jesus had given them a model of self-sacrificing love. He'd stripped down to a towel around his waist and taken on the slave-associated role of washing his disciples' feet. He'd told them they should do the same for one another (John 13 verses 1 - 15) His followers were likely still in shock. But this was just the prelude. They were soon to witness quite how far his love would go. When Jesus told his friends that they must love each other just like he loved them, he knew he was mere hours from the cross. He also knew that very night they would let him down.
Peter was by any measure one of Jesus' closest friends. When Jesus took a subset of disciples with him, Peter was always one of the three. Peter was, therefore, especially distressed when Jesus said that he was going somewhere his disciples could not yet follow. Peter replied "Lord why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you." (John 13 verse 37) Jesus responded, "Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times." (verse 38) Jesus was right. That night, with Jesus' call to love still ringing in his ears, Peter denied three times he even knew his Lord.
Peter's claim that he would "lay down his life" for Jesus, and Jesus' devastating prophecy to the contrary, are hanging in the air when Jesus uses the language of life laid down the second time:
"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." (John 15 verses 12 and 13)
Jesus summons his divine authority to give us this commandment. He is the one who has the right to order us; he made us, and our every breath depends on him. What's more, he has the might to order us: he is the one who can stop storms by speaking to the wind and sea (Mark 4 verse 41). If even storms obey him, how much more must we weak creatures bend to Jesus' commandments? But Jesus in this moment doesn't summon us to do his bidding on the grounds that he created us, or on the grounds that he could force us to comply. No. He commands his followers (both then and now) on the authority of his hell-breaking love. His rule over his followers is not just "loving rule", as if it could have taken on a different adjective. It is their rule of love itself: love written in his blood. So, what does Jesus mean when he applies this rule to friendship?
In the New Testament, the Greek word most frequently translated "friend" is philos. Jesus' words account for 18 of its 29 instances. He uses the term most often in his teachings. But Jesus also uses philos to describe his own relationships: calling his disciples "my friends"and quoting critics calling him "a friend of tax collectors and sinners". In the Gospels, philos usually describes connection between peers; for instance, when King Herod and the Roman governor Pilate become friends in the process of condemning Jesus (Luke 23 verse 12). But against our modern expectations, philos could also be used to describe hierarchical relationships; for instance when those trying to get Jesus crucified tell Pilate he's no friend of Caesar's if he doesnt' find Jesus guilty (John 19 verse 12).
Then Jesus says "You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." (John 15 verses 14 and 15)
In Jesus' sacrificial love we see a radical reversal. The one who is our rightful master lays his life down for those who by all rights should be his servants. Jesus is the master, patron, teacher and yet he came "not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10 verse 45) But this revolutionary flipping of the patron-client bond is not all that Jesus has in mind. John's gospel also gives us evidence that Jesus shared in friendship with his followers in another more familiar sense.
In John 11 Mary and Martha of Bethany call for Jesus because their brother, Lazarus is sick. Jesus waits until Lazarus is dead before he sets off. Then he says to his disciples "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him." (John 11 verse 11). Jesus doesn't say "my friend" but "our friend". This indicates that Jesus did not only use philos in the patron client sense when he applied it to his own relationships. While Lazarus could be his philos in that sense, he wouldn't have that patron-client bond with Jesus' other followers. It also suggests that philos was a term used by his followers to capture their relationships with one another. Lazarus' friendship with Jesus' itinerant disciples evidently ran deep. Thomas responds to the news of Lazarus' death by saying to the others, "Let us also go, that we may die with him" (John 11 verse 16). So, how does all this context help us understand what Jesus' words on friendship love might mean for us?
Jesus' disciples did not choose to follow him because they thought they'd fit in with his other friends. Rather, Jesus chose them. Their life together was contingent on relationship with him, not first and foremost with each other. There's zero chance that Matthew the tax collector and Simon the Zealot would have selected one another on a friend connection app, or that Mary Magdalene, from whom Jesus had cast out 7 demons, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, who had left King Herod's court to travel around with Jesus, would have been close friends in any other context (Luke 8 verses 1 - 3) When Jesus calls his followers to love each other just like he loves them, he's not just going with the grain of natural friendship. He is calling people who might never have gone near each other into sacrificial love relationships. Likewise we should be ready to form Christian friendships with those utterly unlike us. And while sacrificial love is most associated in our minds with marriage and parenting, we need to recognise that Jesus issues his command to one another love in the first instance to people who were one another's friends.
Friendship is a vehicle of the gospel. Not just because in friendship we speak gospel truth to one another, nor even just because we seek to speak the truth of the gospel to friends who don't yet follow Jesus. Friendship is a vehicle for the gospel in the sense that its cross-shaped: formed for life laid down in love for others, just as Jesus laid down his own life for us. While Christian friendship can encompass more occasional connections, and the regular encouragement of seeing friends we mostly only see at church, it must not be confined to such relationships. We must be ready for the blood and sweat and tears that come with every heart arresting love. But friendship is not designed to replicate the other kinds of human bond, but to complement them.
According to the scriptures, the love we can experience in marriage, parent-child relationships and friendship each shine lights on different aspects of God's love. The best love we could ever find in Christian marriage mimics how Christ loves his church (Ephesians 5 verse 2). The most devoted parent-child love gives us a glimpse of how the Father loves the Son - a love that Jesus tells us is extended to his followers (John 15 verse 9). Likewise, the sweetest, sacrificial friendship love resembles how our Saviour loves all those who put their trust in him ((John 15 verses 12 and 13).
In modern western culture, we are primed to think of friendship as a nice to have, while sexual and romantic love and parent-child love are vital to our thriving. But Jesus flips this script. Instead of telling his disciples that they must get married and have children, Jesus tells his followers that they must love each other even to the point of death. When Jesus said there was no greater love than laying down one's life for one's friends he wasn't being hyperbolic or naive. Instead, he was inscribing the good news of his unfathomable love for us onto Christian friendship with indelible ink.
Before he left the table, Jesus rammed the point home one last time "These things I command you, so that you will love one another." (John 15 verse 17) Jesus' disciples were sent out with the message of his grace, self-sacrificing love for sinners. They were to shout it from the rooftops. But they were also to embody it in how they loved each other. If we are followers of Jesus, one way we will demonstrate our love for him is by our love for one another. But Jesus never said this would be easy.
After dinner, Jesus led his disciples to the garden of Gethsemane, where he told most of them to sit and wait. But then, despite, what he had just predicted about Peter's failure he picked Peter, James and John to watch with him, while he went further on to pray. These three had been with Jesus when he raised a 12 year old girl from the dead, and when he was revealed in his glory on a mountaintop. They were apparently his inner ring. And yet, when Jesus came back from pleading with his Father for the cup to pass from him, he found them fast asleep. Hours earlier, Peter had claimed that he would die with Jesus. Now Jesus asks him, "Couldn't you not watch with me one hour" (Matthew 26 verse 40) This cycle happened two more times. These were friends for whom Jesus was about to lay down his life. Yet they couldn't even stay awake one hour with him "The spirit indeed is willing", Jesus observed "but the flesh is weak" (verse 41). Then Judas came.
Judas had given those commissioned to arrest Jesus a sign, "The one I kiss is the man; seize him." (Matthew 26 verse 48) So, he came to Jesus saying, "Greetings, Rabbi" and he kissed him (verse 49). Jesus answered "Friend, do what you came to do" (verse 50). Strikingly the word that Jesus uses is not philos but hetairos, which communicates a less intimate form of friendship more like a comrade or companion. Judas had spent a lot of time with Jesus. But he hadn't given him his heart. This is a picture of false friendship. Even before he sold Jesus out, Judas had been stealing from the common money bag (John 12 verse 6)
Just like Jesus commanded his first followers to love one another like he loved them, so he commands his followers today to emulate that love. It's a love prepared to die for one's friends, despite their failure. It's a love that lives vulnerably even toward those false friends who may be finally exposed as only wanting to be with us for what they can get. It's a love that does not easily give up on friends who let us down, because the greatest friend of sinners has not given up on us.
Just as Jesus had predicted, Peter denied he knew his Lord 3 times. When Peter realised what he'd done, he wept bitterly (Matthew 26 verse 75). Doubtless Peter thought this was the end for his relationship with Jesus. But Jesus had another plan. In one of their post-resurrection meetings, Jesus asked Peter a painful question "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" (John 21 verse 15). Peter had thought that he was better than his comrades. When Jesus had predicted that each one of his disciples would fall away, Peter had replied, "even though they all fall away, I will not" (Mark 14 verse 29).
Now Peter simply responded to Jesus' question "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." Instead of pointing back to Peter's failure, Jesus pointed forward to his role "Feed my lambs" (John 21 verse 15). Then Jesus asked a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter replied "Yes, Lord; you know that I love you." And Jesus said to him, "Tend my sheep" (verse 16). As if to match the number of times Peter had denied him, Jesus asked a third time "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was grieved because Jesus said to him the third time, "Do you love me?" But this time instead of thinking he knew better than his Lord, Peter recognised that Jesus knew him better than he knew himself: "Lord you know everything" Peter replied "you know that I love you." Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep" (verse 17).
In this remarkable exchange, we see the power of forgiveness. Jesus knew that Peter was a sinner from the first, and when we risk deep friendship with each other, we will find ourselves confronted with each other's sin. But Jesus' words of friendship love were spoken in full knowledge of Peter's denial and the cowardice of the other disciples, who fled when Jesus was arrested. We could imagine Jesus wiping the slate clean and picking up another 12 apostles, after he had risen from the dead. But while Judas permanently breaks the bond, we find that Jesus sticks with all the others who had left him. Jesus' confidence in resurrection life enabled him to lay his own life down for his most undeserving friends. If we are friends of Jesus now, that same resurrection life flows through our veins and calls us to self-sacrificing love for one another. No one has greater love than Jesus. But we can emulate that love as we relate to one another. We must.
CHAPTER 2
Healthy Christian friendship grows on the trellis of Christian family love, so we need to get that scaffolding in place before we can explore the friendship vine.
One day, Jesus was teaching when his mother and brothers showed up. If anyone had the right to interrupt Jesus, you'd think it would be his mother. But instead of saying, "Family first: I'm out of here" Jesus asks "Who is my mother and who are my brothers?" Then pointing to his followers, Jesus declares "Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother" (Matthew 12 verses 48 - 40). For Christians, family does come first. But it's the family of faith not of biology.
Jesus had a high view of marriage and even his disciples were shocked (Matthew 19 verses 1 - 11). What's more, his welcoming of children and infants radically raised their value in the context of a Greco-Roman culture in which children were seen as possessions and babies were often abandoned (Matthew 19 verses 13 - 14, Luke 18 verses 14 - 17). Jesus is the reason for our valuing of marriage as a permanent, equal and exclusive bond between a husband and a wife - and for our valuing of babies as persons in their own right. But Jesus didn't elevate the nuclear family above all else. The family he valued most was the family of his followers.
Right after Jesus validated little kids, a rich young ruler asked him "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" (Luke 18 verse 18). Jesus pointed him to God's commandment. Then he told the man to give all he had to the poor and come and follow him. The man left sad. Jesus observed that it's harder for a rich man to enter God's kingdom than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Peter gushed, "We have left our homes and followed you." Jesus responded "Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time and in the age to come eternal life."
The biological family is a precious gift from God. But it's a gift that calcifies when cut off from the family of church. If we must choose between family and faithfulness to Jesus, we must choose Jesus. If following Jesus means we get rejected by our parents, remain single when we longed to marry, or miss out on having children, Jesus promises us much more in Christian family than we might have lost. For those who put their trust in Jesus, family does not come first. Jesus comes first. Our love for anyone and anything must stem from our first love for him.
Earlier in Luke, Jesus voices the priority of loving him above all others in offensive terms. "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 1 verse 26) The call is not literally to hate our families. Jesus insists on the unbreakable bond of marriage and the valuing of children. He calls the Pharisees hypocrites for breaking the fifth commandment by failing to provide for their parents (Mark 7 verses 9 - 13). But we must nonetheless feel the force of Jesus' hyperbole; any love we have for human family should be as nothing when compared to how we love him. Does this mean we cast family by the wayside as worthless? No. When we put love of Jesus first, we'll find we love our biological families more. Our love for them will be profoundly shaped by our love for him and when we live as if the local church is our true family, our biological families will benefit.
Our first identity as followers of Jesus is not biological. It's theological.
In the New Testament, the Greek word adelphoi is used over 200 times to refer to siblings in Christ. It is inclusive and can be translated "brothers" or "brothers and sisters". Sibling language is also applied to individuals. Example - in Romans Paul refers to "out sister Phoebe" and "our brother Quartus".
For the New Testament first readers "marriage took a back seat priority-wise to another more important family relationship - the bond between blood brothers and sisters." If forced to choose between their siblings and their spouse, they would be expected to choose their siblings. For them, brother-sister language was not sentimental fluff, it was quite serious.
Parent-child relationships were also fostered in the church. Paul greets "Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well" (Romans 16 verse 13). Conversely, he calls Timothy "my beloved and faithful child in the Lord." (1 Corinthians 4 verse 17) and Onesimus "my child" (Philemon 10). The message in a host of texts is clear: the church is family.
In the New Testament cultures the needs of the whole group were primary. The people listening to Jesus would have been shocked by his call to trade in their first loyalty to their family of origin and sign up with the family of church.
We feel resistant to the church-as-family idea not only because it cuts against our individualism, but also because it's been abused. Just like a biological family church family can be a setting for emotional and physical abuse. Just like in biological families, abuse in church families has all too often been sinfully enabled and covered up. Too many cults and churches have been formed around impressive personalities and forced their members to relinquish ties with family to give their full allegiance to their leaders. None of this is biblical. Indeed, the apostle Paul specifically refuses to become the focus of the loyalty of followers of Jesus. "Was Paul crucified for you?" he asks the Corinthian Christians "Were you baptized in the name of Paul?" (1 Corinthians 1 verse 13).
The only leader who deserves our total loyalty is the Master who was crucified for us and we must recognise the capacity of any other human leader to sin. This means we must diversify the power in our churches and prioritize character over charisma in leaders. But just as all the evidence that biological families can be unhealthy and abusive doesn't lead us to give up on biological families, so examples of unhealthy churches should not lead us to give up on church as family
In Acts, after recording 3000 people joined the church when God poured out his Spirit on his followers, Luke paints a stunning picture of the family behaviour - Acts 2 verse 44 - 46. 3000 people can't live in 1 house But these first Christians did their best to share, and they were clearly in and out of one another's homes.
Our church should be the place where we first turn when we need help - and it should be the place where we first look for needs that we can meet. This paradigm of church as family must impact how we think about our Sunday gatherings, how we relate to marriage, how we engage in parenting and how we pursue friendship. All these bonds belong and flourish in the family of church. Severed from its source, they risk become warped, shriveled or bloated in unhealthy ways.
According to the bible, singleness is just as valuable as marriage. Paul writes as if it's even better (1 Corinthians 7 verse 7). But in the modern Western church, we've acted as if long-term singleness is either pitiable or selfish. Current Christian norms too often marginalize or even stigmatize singleness. Singleness ought to be a rich and valued vehicle for discipleship. But we have treated it as a state that feels at unenviable and at worst unlivable.
If marriage is the only refuge from loneliness for Christians, we are missing Jesus' call on all of us to be together in his mission.
Every week, new people stumble into church alone. They may not yet be Christians or they may be Christians looking for church family.
If the church is family, we're not eroding family if spouses sometimes sit apart. We're building it. It's possible that someone new won't want to sit with you or me. But if they've come to church to be alone, they've come to the wrong place - like going to a restaurant with no appetite. We come to be together, not to have our private moment with the Lord At some point, we will come to church with the deep need to grieve and not to talk. If so, let's grieve with others in companionable silence. But let's not leave each other lonely. Most people haven't come to church to be ignored, and many people don't come back to church because they tried it and they've felt alone. Everyone should feel the welcome of the church embodied in the individuals who seek them out.
Like army ants, which swarm 200,000 strong and form nests for their young with their own bodies, church should be an edifice of flesh and blood - built up as members cling to one another in formation to protect the vulnerable.
"Let each of us please his neighbour for his good, to build him up" Paul argues. "For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, 'The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me'". (Romans 15 verses 2 and 3) Paul does not say that this is easy. In fact, he prays "May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." (Romans 15 verses 5 and 6) We'll need endurance and encouragement from God to turn ourselves to one another's good. But we who have been welcomed by our Saviour must extend that kind of welcome too. Paul concludes "Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God." Jesus welcomed us in all our sin and weakness. He didn't just pull up a chair so we could sit; he picked up a cross so we could live. Let's stretch and inconvenience ourselves on Sunday mornings to accommodate and welcome one another!
There's something so attractive about the sense of being chosen - picked out from the crowd - and there's a vital sense in which each local church should operate as chosen family. The problem is, we're not the ones who choose. Instead of picking one another out, we're stuck with Jesus' selections. This means church isn't like a chosen family of like-minded friends. Church family involves commitment to the people least like us - including those we may not even like.
As with our families of origin, this doesn't mean we should be forced into relationship with people who've abused us. There are times when boundaries must be put in place within the body of believers to allow one person to be kept away from someone else. There are also times when members of a church must fall under church discipline for unrepentant sin. In cases like these, trusted leadership should care for and protect the injured party. Paul's point is not that every person in the church should be the one to welcome every other person. But everyone should be involved in the welcoming work of the church - just as everyone should be involved in helping those in needs. We Christians are a family and we must welcome those who join our gatherings as siblings.
Just as Christian biological family belongs in the broader family of church, so Christian friendship lives and thrives within the broader network of community. Just as biological family at its best strengthens the broader family of church, so Christian friendship at its best drives each of us to give ourselves more fully to the family of church.
CHAPTER 3
We must reclaim the language and the physical expression of deep friendship love, and we don't need to requisition language of romantic love to talk about the passionate connection we might feel with friends - if we love being with them, go on about how wonderful they are, delight to wrap our arms around them, share our secrets with them, laugh loudly at their jokes, and miss them when they're not around. We'll see that there is ample precedent for full-blooded non-romantic, deeply rooted friendship love in the New Testament.
The author of John's gospel never shares his name. Instead he calls himself, "the disciple Jesus loved". The first time this title appears is shortly before Jesus' command of love, when he had just predicted his betrayal at the hands of one of the apostles - John 13 verse 23 - 25.
Two chapters earlier, 2 of Jesus' female disciples, Mary and Martha, send Jesus a message Lord he whom you love is ill." They're not talking about John, but about their brother Lazarus. In this instance, the verb translated "love" is phileo, not agapao - the verb John tends to use when he calls himself the disciple Jesus loved. But John uses agapao to describe Jesus' love for Lazarus 2 verses later: "Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus" (John 11 verse 5). John's intention when he calls himself, "the disciple Jesus loved" cannot be to signal an exclusive or romantic love. Lazarus too was the one Jesus loved - and so are Mary and Martha, whose love-imbued relationships with Jesus are the focus of John 11 verses 17 -37 and 12 verse 1 - 8. In brushstroke after brushstroke of John's gospel, we see Jesus' relationships with friends he loves so much he'll lay his life down for them.
The language of love in Jesus' relationships is not confined to his close friends When Mark reports Jesus' encounter with the rich young man, he gives this detail "Jesus, looking at him, loved him" (Mark 10 verse 21). Like Jesus, we must act in love toward all those who come within our orbit: neighbour, colleague, stranger, friends, even enemy. But like Jesus, we must also share ongoing love with individuals with whom we spend extended time. we see this modeled helpfully by the apostle Paul.
Paul starts his letter to Philemon with a string of epithets He calls his coauthor "Timothy our brother" and addresses the letter to "Philemon our beloved fellow work and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house." (Philemon 1 and 2). All these titles speak to warmth and intimacy. But Paul's most effusive language is reserved for the primary subject of the letter: Onesimus, who once lived as a bondservant in Philemon's household.
Paul's purpose in writing this letter was to send Onesimus back to Philemon "no longer as a bondservant, but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother - specially to me, but how much more to you." (Philemon 16). Paul expects Philemon to receive Onesimus not as member of his household staff, but as a brother whom he loves. Paul shares his deep affection for Onesimus: "I appeal to you for my child, Onesimus" he writes "whose father I became in my imprisonment" (verse 10).
The point of calling Onesimus "my child" is not to highlight a difference of age but to present Onesimus as Paul's heir: a status someone living under slavery could not achieve. Then Paul goes even further in his commendation: "I am sending him back to you, sending my very heart" (verse 12). The Greek word translated here literally means bowels or intestines, which were seen as a place of deep emotion. Paul uses the same word later when he writes "Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ" (verse 20). Onesimus is Paul's very heart and Paul calls Philemon to receive Onesimus as he would receive Paul himself (verse 17).
Paul opened up his checkbook for Onesimus: "If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything" Paul wrote "charge that to my account" (Philemon 18). We should honour, protect and provide for our friends. We should be unashamed to gush about how great they are and how much we love them. We should be prepared to back our words up with our finances. But unlike married love, this deep friendship love does not belong to just one other person.
Paul's letter to the Romans ends with a laundry list of greetings. First, he commends the woman who likely delivered the letter: "Our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Cenchreae" (Romans 16 verse 1). Paul also calls her "a patron of many and of myself as well" (verse 2). The word translated "patron" is often translated as leader or ruler. Paul holds Phoebe in the highest respect and tells the Christians in Rome to "welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need" (verse 2).
Paul then moves to a couple named Prisca (or Priscilla) and Aquila of whom he says they "risked their necks for my life" (verse 4). This is a concrete instance of the "no greater love" that Jesus described to his disciples. Prisca and Aquila were willing to lay down their lives for Paul. But their commitment to him does not come from hours playing golf together. It springs from their shared mission they are "fellow workers in Christ Jesus" (Romans 16 verse 3). In Acts 18 we get a glimpse of their relationship. They met in Corinth and worked together practically as tentmakers (Acts 18 verse 3). Next they set sail for Syria together, following Jesus' continuing call to mission (verse 18) Priscilla and Aquila were Paul's co-labourers in every sense. They were friends of virtue.
Next up in Romans is Epaenetus, whom Paul calls "my beloved" (Romans 16 verse 5). Paul had zero problem expressing his love for the men with whom he had a close relationship. Epaenetus was Paul's beloved. But he was not the only man for whom Paul felt such affection. Paul also calls Ampliatus, "my beloved in the Lord" and sends greetings to "my beloved Stachys" (Romans 16 verses 8 and 9).
Paul doesn't use the specific language of friendship in his greetings but John does. He addresses his third recorded letter to "the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth" (3 John 1) and then after calling Gaius "beloved" 3 more times, he concludes "I had much to write to you, but I would rather not write with pen and ink. I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face. Peace be to you. The friends greet you. Greet the friends each by name" (3 John 13 - 15). While "brother" is a much more typical New Testament term for fellow believers, this ending indicatesthat first-century Christians would also have described the members of their local church as friends.
If we are following the apostles' playbook, we should be expressing love to Christian friends. We should be unashamed to say we miss them when they're gone, as Paul did when he wrote to Timothy "As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy" (2 Timothy 1 verse 4). We should be ready to admit that losing them would break our heart, as Paul did when he told the Philippians that if Epaphroditus had died, he would have felt "sorrow upon sorrow." (Philippians 2 verse 27). We are not trespassing on romance when we use such terms. We're following the Scriptures. What''s more we should be ready to express our friendship love with physical affection.
The author of John describes himself leaning against Jesus as they reclined at dinner (John 13 verse 25). Literally John was reclining on Jesus' chest or (in more archaic terms) bosom. In the standard ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, the same language describes the lose connection between a husband and a wife. But this language was not specifically sexual At the beginning of John's gospel, the same expression describes the Son's intimacy with the Father: "No one has ever seen God; the only God who is at the Fathers side, he has made him known" (John 1 verse 18). We also see it in Luke's gospel when Jesus tells a story about a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus. Both died. The rich man went to Hades, and the poor man was carried by angels to Abraham's side" (Luke 16 verse 220. Reclining on someone's chest communicates intimacy and confers status. In our terms, it might translate as saying "You're my intimate friend and right-hand man."
When Jesus said to his disciples "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another" (John 13 verse 34), the author of John was likely still lying in Jesus' arms. One way in which we can resemble Jesus in our love for one another is by showing physical affection to our friends.
Poignantly alongside Jesus' closeness with the author of John, the other gospel evidence we have of Jesus' physical intimacy with his disciples comes at the moment of Judas betrayal. Luke records Jesus' painful question: "Judas would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?" (Luke 22 verse 48) Judas kissing Jesus as a sign of their friendship even as it became the signal of betrayal. But this did not invalidate the kiss of fellowship for Christians.
In Acts, we see the elders of the church in Ephesus embracing Paul, kissing him, and weeping over him as he departs, and they know they will never see his face again (Acts 20 verse 37). But this is not a one-off flurry of affection. 3 times, Paul urges believers to "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (Romans 16 verse 16; 1 Corinthians 16 verse 20; 2 Corinthians 13 verse 12) and once, "Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss" (1 Thessalonians 5 verse 26). Likewise, Peter writes, "Greet one another with the kiss of love" (1 Peter 5 verse 14). Physical expressions of affection between Christians should be part and parcel of our life together.
Of course, in different cultures, different kinds of physical affection will be best received. We need to be attentive to our culture and the comfort of the other person as we think about our physical connection But we should not let romantic love rob friendship of its physical expression. When we put our arms around our friends, we're telling them we love them in a tangible, biblical way. And yet, in the same epistles where we witness Paul's deep friend affection for the gospel partners whom he loves, we see another powerful dynamic at the heart of Christian friendship love: the willingness to send our friends away, if Jesus wills it so.
In Paul's letter to Philemon, we hear Paul sending Onesimus - his very heart - away from him. Unlike the bond of marriage, friendship love is open to the possibility that we might need to send the friends, who are our very heart, away if they are called to follow Jesus in another place. We welcome friends with open arms and hold them with an open hand. The grief of parting, when it comes is real. The elders of the church at Ephesus wept openly and hugged and kissed their brother Paul when he was sent away from them.
The flexibility of friendship should not lead us to draw back from it or to have an easy come, easy go mentality. rather, we should treasure what we have.
We are first and foremost fellow soldiers and we'll go where we're deployed. But far from cramping our connection, this first allegiance to our Lord, who has the right to move us any time, stands at our connection's core. We're comrades in arms.
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