Jesus calls out the difference between Mary and Martha in an instructive fashion. He tells Martha not to worry about such things but to follow the example of her sister Mary (Lk. 10:41–42).²⁸ Mary exemplifies for her sister what it looks like to keep one’s focus on Jesus. Jesus helps Martha to see this by pointing to Mary’s example. Many pastors have rightly called their people to live like Mary, but too often they fail to appreciate that we are all like Martha in that we need to follow the example of a Mary. If we are careful enough to slow down, avoid the distractions, and see our fellow Christians sitting at the feet of Jesus, our love for God too will be kindled.

6. Jesus and the Disciples: Holistic Godward Friendship

Of the biblical characters that have the power to teach Christians about friendship, the most exemplary friend in the Bible is Jesus. Jesus’ relationship with the Father demonstrates the perfect, paradigmatic friendship; his close relationship with the disciples has put true Christian friendship on display for Christians throughout history. In John 15:14–17, Jesus says to his disciples, “You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you… This is my command: Love each other.”

Jesus’ words to his disciples demonstrate that Jesus has been a friend to his disciples all along. He has taught and loved them in such a way as to lead them to his Father in heaven. Jesus shows what it means to love others unto God by how he loves his disciples, but that he calls them his friends reveals his intentional gift of sharing his humanity with the disciples in a way that no other Christians will experience this side of heaven. Implicit in the conditional element of Jesus’ initial declaration—“if you do what I command”—is the fact that to be a friend of Jesus requires obedience, for he is God. In a similar way, being a true Christian friend requires faithfulness and service to God, the expression of love for God in action. To be a friend with the living God requires a genuine life of faith and obedience.

Jesus’ friendship with the disciples provides two chief lessons for the Christian. First, Jesus displays varying degrees of intimacy and closeness between him and his friends. As with all people, Jesus shows how every person develops an inner circle of friends or closest companions. The innermost circle is set within a larger group of concentric circles. For Jesus, this inner circle consists of Peter, James, John, his mother Mary and possibly Mary Magdalene. The next circle consists in the twelve disciples whom Jesus brings along from their initial calling onward. The third level consists in the people represented in various episodes within the Gospels. Think of people like John the Baptist, Lazarus, or Zacchaeus. The fourth circle might include portions of the crowds that came to listen to Jesus’ teaching and to observe his miracles. While Jesus is a friend to people in every circle in that he loves them so that they will respond with love for God, his relationship to the disciples and his inner circle bears the most fruit.

The second lesson is how Jesus calls his disciples into friendship first by telling them to follow him. This call is something unique. The disciples consider Jesus the Lord, but during their time with him they did not fully understand that their “friend” is actually God incarnate. Unfortunately, because of the finitude, sinfulness, and immaturity of the disciples, it took until after Jesus’ death and resurrection for them to recognize Jesus’ divinity and therefore to love him as God. At one level, of course, the friendship between Jesus and his disciples cannot be perfectly reciprocal: they are his “friends,” he insists, only if they do whatever he commands them (14:15; 15:14), and the reverse cannot be true. At another level, Jesus is the best possible friend, such that while the disciples do their best to love Jesus, it is Jesus’ example of how to be a friend that offers the deepest insight into friendship. Through the many lessons Jesus teaches the disciples and the many encounters by which they grow closer to each other, Jesus shows what it means to do all things to foster the love of God above all else and love of neighbor as the second greatest commandment.

Jesus’ friendliness to others and his friendship with the disciples form the finest examples of how to be a friend. However, the insights gained from considering Jesus’ life and other biblical examples of friends and friendship are complemented by combining them with practical considerations pertaining to friendship in today’s world. For this reason, the remainder of this piece applies insights from classical, Christian, and biblical teaching on friendship to the different kinds of friendship experienced by young people today.

III. Rehearsing Friendship

While each of Olivia’s friendships is an important contribution to her well being and walk with the Lord, they are also strikingly different from one another. The way she relates to her teachers and employers, for example, will be different than the way she relates to other students. However, even among her peers, each of her relationships is unique. Each of her peer-to-peer friendships has a role to play in her relationship with God. The same is true of the friends in your life.

In the final section of this essay, we will offer some brief reflections on four kinds of relational contexts for flourishing friendship. These discussions are not meant to be the final word on such relationships. They are instead signposts to help us navigate the fast changing social and cultural norms in a Christ-honoring way and in full awareness of the importance of friendship for all human beings in the world today.

Friendships with People Like Us: Fighting the Temptation to Idolatry

People tend to develop friendships with others most like themselves whether the similarity consists in culture, values, interests, desires, ethnicity, vocations, or beliefs. The familiarity resident in the similarities two friends share is often quite pleasant and fulfilling. However, the comfort that familiarity affords can subtly mislead a person away from God. When the point of commonality becomes something other than Christian unity oriented toward loving God, temptation may trigger sin, for the sinful human habit is to elevate above the Creator temporal goods that are more immediately satisfying. For example, sometimes our shared joy for sport or entertainment overshadows our shared love for God.

It is important that people who enjoy similar activities enjoy the shared activity while not letting it overwhelm and crowd out their calling to love each other unto God. The comfort a person can experience in sharing similarities comes with the advantage that these relationships are easy to initiate and maintain. Yet such a relationship also bears the potential downside of distracting both people from their search for happiness in eternal life with God, which they ought to be seeking as individuals and as friends. The distraction consists in mistaking the comfort and joy of the present for the final, usually in a subconscious way. We are lulled into being satisfied with the way things are now rather than living rightly as pilgrims on the way to a better place. Even though we may love our family portrait, it will remain an incomplete picture without the life that comes with knowing God.

On the face of it, many of our most rewarding relationships with people like us occur without any agreement in the area of beliefs. Our experience and time together form a bond that appears unbreakable. But this perception is more impressionistic than realistic, for it fails to recognize that these relationships have achieved their fullness and do not offer a lasting source of happiness. We love and enjoy that friend, but what does it amount to? Where does it lead us? We may “live, laugh, and love,” a phrase fashionable in American home decor, but without faith, hope, and love in God, death will surely get the last laugh. This is not to reduce this life to nothing, but to put it into perspective: “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever” (Isa. 40:8; cf., Ps. 90:4; 2 Pet. 3:8–9). Although we may more naturally build rapport with people like us in ways unrelated to our beliefs, the relationships with the greatest potential are with people who share, or come to share, our desire for eternal life with God. In short, two are indeed better than one, but two are best only when they are together oriented toward God.

Olivia has some friends with shared interests and others with shared beliefs. Despite Camila moving across town, she and Olivia remain friends because they often have Spanish classes together and attend the Latin American heritage affinity group weekly. Their friendship centers around shared experiences. Camila is not a Christian, and sometimes when she’s going through a tough week Olivia struggles to know how to be a good friend to her without being able to bring up the beliefs and practices of her Christian faith as an encouragement. They have formed a close bond with which many of us can relate, but Olivia is forced to approach Camila without her entire self, because she has a hard time deciding how to bring her Christian identity to bear on the relationship. Either she shares her faith and the hope it bears, but risks upsetting her friend, or she eschews her faith and gives her friend encouraging words that don’t represent what she believes is the heart of the matter.