Galatians 5 and Friendship

Galatians 5:22-23

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

I realize that the point of this text is not about friendship, but I think that the idea of faithfulness is more than just to God. Yes, faithfulness to God is the primary focus in this text, but I do not think that this exclude other kinds of faithfulness—faithfulness to one’s job, faithfulness to one’s family and faithfulness to one’s friends.

As Christians we should be the best kind of friends. We should be the ones that listen longer, love deeper and work harder at being friends than the world. But the sad fact is that many of my non-Christian friends are better friends than my Christian ones. Yes, this is sad, but it is true.

At the heart of friendship is faithfulness and loyalty. These are the biblical bed rocks for Christian friendship. If you do not think this is so, look back at the friendship of David and Jonathan. This friendship was so close that moderns look at it and think they must have been gay. Of course they were not, but they were close friends. This is the biblical picture of friendship. Why is it that the world is better at this then the Church? I am not completely sure, but my guess would be that the Church is full of people that want right doctrine to such an extent that they do not care how they treat others. They walk over their ‘friends’ as long as they feel fulfilled; as long as they are getting something out of the friendship. This is Worldly with a capital ‘w.’ We need to repent of our sins and step up and be friends; be loyal friends, be faithful friends and as a result be God glorifying friends.