The desire for friendship is very powerful in our lives. No one wants to go through life alone. We all want to have friends with whom we can share our triumphs, disappointments, and hurts. But we must develop those friendships in keeping with God’s clear instructions. To do otherwise invites nothing but disaster in our Christian walk.

The first step in doing this is to make sure we understand the levels of friendship. Obviously there is a difference between the friend I see every once in a while and the friend I ask to be the best man or maid of honor at my wedding.

Have you evaluated your friendships lately? Are they productive? Are they appropriate? Do they build you and your friends up or do they created problems for you as a Christian?

For the sake of this article, let�s think of friendship as falling into five categories. There is nothing mystical or special about the categorization. It�s simply a way of differentiating levels of friendship. They are:

- Bus Friends
- Work Friends
- Common Interest Friends
- Christian Friends
- Intimate Friends

The distinctions between these are fairly straight forward.

The Bus Friend

The bus friend is a person you may see on the bus or train everyday on the way to and from work. You talk, usually about surface things, nothing incredibly serious. You may know if they are married, where they work and whether or not they have children. You may even know the names of their children. Your conversations generally have no great depth to them.

The Work Friend

The work friend may be someone at work or in the work environment. If it were not for the job, you probably would not have any dealings with them. Basically, a work friend is one step up from the bus friend. In this relationship, we may talk about problems on the job, the impact those problems are having and other somewhat personal subjects. But the primary tie in the relationship is the job. It�s often said that bringing your personal life into the work environment is a bad idea. It�s true. The average person on the job is not interested in your personal struggles and problems. They just want you to do your job.

Common Interest Friends

Then there are common interest friends, people who have the same interest as you. This interest could be a sports team, a club, an interest you discovered you each share, or other such things. Usually the relationship is limited to the common interest. Discussions tend to focus on the common interest. Personal problems are generally not discussed and I would not look to the common interest friend for emotional, moral, or spiritual support.

Christian Friends

The idea of Christian friends begins to move us into a more personal and intimate area. Friendships based on a shared relationship with Jesus Christ are, ideally, significantly different in nature than the previous relationships. They are a bit more personal. Of course, this friendship assumes a certain amount of maturity in the Christian friend.

These friendships have several characteristics in common. First, the friendship is based on a relationship with Jesus Christ. This may seem somewhat obvious, but many of us have close friendships with people who do not know Jesus Christ as savior and lord.

Second, with a Christian friendship you have an assurance that you are morally and ethically safe with the individual, that there will generally be no need to struggle between the friendship and compromising your Christian values. Again, this assumes a measure of maturity on the part of our friend. Many of us will establish a �Christian Friend� type relationship with a person who is not a Christian. As a result we are buffeted with jokes, images, and behavior that we either have to ignore or worse, compromise and participate in. Since we are their friend, the unsaved will tell us the latest dirty joke, or talk about their latest conquest, or give us the latest rumors about someone.

While you may not share intimate details of your life, they at least know enough about you and your life to pray meaningfully for you. They know enough about you to be ready to offer advice if asked. And their advice will be consistent with their best understanding of Scripture and how it applies in our lives.

The Intimate Friend

And then there is the Gold Standard of friendship � the Intimate Friend. It would seem that we only get one or two of these at any time in our life. We probably couldn�t handle more than that. By the way, just to make sure we�re on the same page, as used here, the word intimate has nothing to do with sex.

An intimate friend becomes so over a period of time since you have to have spent a significant amount of time with this person. It may have started as a common interest friendship and gone from there. But over a period of time, you come to know the person well, and you trust this person to have your best interest at heart. You trust this person to keep a confidence � that is, you can tell them anything and you are one hundred percent certain you will not hear it being repeated by anyone else, ever. And you are confident that this person, to the best of their ability, will seek to move you toward God and not away from Him, no matter the cost. As a result, you can be certain they will tell you that which you need to hear, not just what you want to hear.

The mistake we often make is move friendships to an inappropriate level either too soon, or with the wrong person. We should always limit our friendship to the appropriate level. This level should be based on at least two things.

First, what are their standards? One command we are given over and over again is to avoid getting mixed up with those who have a lower standard than us (2 Cor 6:14). The further an individual is from that standard, the less intimate our relationship should be with them. At work, it could be that we only discuss work. If I am a member of a sports team, then I will generally limit the discussion to the team activities and interests. If we go past this, we immediately run into the risk of compromise to maintain the relationship.

The level of the friendship should also be based on the behavior of the individual. Proverbs (22:24- 25) says there is the clear risk that you will pick up their poor behavior if you hang around a hot head or a person who has poor control of their behavior. Again, the appropriate level of friendship is determined by the other person�s behavior.

James 4:4 makes it very clear that close friendship with the unsaved, or the Christian who insists on being disobedient to God, is basically aligning me with that person against God. And you should never have to choose between your friend and God. If you should have to choose, and have to do so on a regular basis, this person should not be an intimate friend.

The Value of Intimate Friendship

There are a couple or three characteristics of an intimate friendship which make it so valuable. First, each person in the relationship benefits from the relationship (Proverbs 27:17). I should grow in Christ as a result of the intimate friendship. The friend should be able to challenge me morally, ethically, and spiritually. He should provide me not just with a sounding board, but Godly advice where he can. This, of course, implies that my friend is knowledgeable of the Word and is able to handle it accurately. This is always a good qualification for friendship.

Second, the friend considers the Truth as more important than simply getting along. In other words, he values fidelity to God�s standard and stating that standard as more important than trying to please me. And this is essential. In order to be my friend, he has to be willing to place my friendship second to the clear teachings of the Bible (Prove 27:6). My enemy will tell me things I want to hear in hopes that I will destroy myself or help him get ahead, even at my expense. My friend, even if it costs him my friendship, will tell me the things I need to hear for my well-being.

And this brings us to the last characteristic of an intimate friend. The friend is more interested in his friend�s well-being than in his own (Proverbs 18:24). When we look at the friendship of David and Jonathan, we can see that Jonathan was more interested in the well-being of David than pleasing his father or being king. As a result, his father became very upset with him (1 Sam 20:30).

We all want friends and we want to be considered a friend of someone. But we must always make sure our friendships will move us toward Godly objectives, never away from them through compromise or disobedience.

Posted by Melvin Jones on Thursday, March 10th, 2005 at 9:19 pm.