5 Lessons on Friendship From Jesus- With Rebecca McLaughlinSýnishorn

Vital to Flourishing

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 neighbors, 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.” 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, the startling claim that Jesus made the night He was betrayed is true: “Greater love has no one than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.”

For Christians, I will argue that friendship is no optional extra life feature we might get talked into by an eager salesman. It’s vital to our flourishing. Friendship at its best is just as powerful as any other love. And 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.