5 Lessons on Friendship From Jesus- With Rebecca McLaughlinSýnishorn

Utterly Unlike 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 their 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 seven 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. When Jesus calls His followers to love each other just like He loves them, He’s not just going against 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 recognize that Jesus issued His command to one-another love in the first instance to people who were one another’s friends.

If we are truly reaching out to build relationships with people unlike us, it will take real effort on our part. If we go solo, we likely won’t get far before we come crashing down. But if we have close friends to anchor us, we’ll find we can go and reach further. Like climbers after an ascent, we’ll need to ask our friends to reel us back down periodically for comfort and for rest. But then, we will be ready for another climb.

You see when we stop asking, “Who will love me?” it’s not because the answer to that question doesn’t matter. It matters greatly. If you are a Christian, you should feel the love of friends who know and love you deeply, as you know and love them. But if each of us moves outward with our love, we’ll find that there is more than enough love to go around.