This article is an excerpt from week two of the "Gospel Culture" Bible study by Ray Ortlund and Sam Allberry.
Gospel doctrine creates gospel culture, and one way we see that relational reality is when we share the welcome of Jesus with each other—no matter what unseemly past or present anyone brings to the table.
Friendship began within God. It was not our invention. The triune God has eternal friendship and community within His being—Father, Son, and Spirit. He created us in His image, with hearts to know Him and be known by Him (Genesis 1:26). He pursues friendship with us (Exodus 33:11). And Jesus stepped out from within the blazing love of the triune God, came down into this world, and declared friendship with us as a present, ongoing reality (John 15:12-17).
“This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants anymore, because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. “This is what I command you: Love one another.
John 15:12-17 (CSB)
Do you want to know what the gospel culture of friendship looks like? Look at Jesus. He befriended us. He accepted us as we are. And His warmth toward people like us was used as evidence against Him! The religious people pointed at Jesus and said, “a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (Luke 7:34). That’s what religion does. The purpose of religion is to divide people into two neat categories: the good people and the bad people.
The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!
Luke 7:34 (CSB)
We have to fight against this religious perspective, as it continues to threaten our church communities today. For whatever reason, even church people don’t always show themselves to be friends. They often keep an arm’s distance from others they deem to be “bad” (as the religious in Jesus’s day considered tax collectors). In an attempt to be “right” religiously, we fail the test of gospel culture relationally.
Therefore welcome one another, just as Christ also welcomed you, to the glory of God.
Romans 15:7 (CSB)
Jesus loves at all times. He sticks closer than a brother. And all true friendship follows in the footsteps of Jesus. That means churches, of all places, should never stop talking about friendship. Real friendship is a glorious gospel reality bringing the beauty of Jesus into a broken world. In the early days of Christianity, the apostle John sent greetings from one church to another like this: “Peace be to you. The friends greet you. Greet the friends, each by name” (3 John 15).
The Example of David and Johnathan
One of the most notable friendships recorded in Scripture is that of David and Jonathan. First Samuel 17 gives us the context of how their great friendship began. David had just killed Goliath. We can imagine David walking up out of that valley, dragging the big head of Goliath by the hair. The whole army was celebrating like Super Bowl champions. And Jonathan, the king’s son, no mean warrior himself, was standing there watching David. He saw in David a courageous faith in God that took risks. And his heart leapt.
David was someone who made other people think, “If that’s what trusting God looks like, I want it!” Jonathan wanted a friend like David—a guy with bold faith who was willing to take risks for the glory of God. David inspired Jonathan to a deeper level of faith.
. . . Jonathan was bound to David in close friendship, and loved him as much as he loved himself.
1 Samuel 18:1b (CSB)
The soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David. Jonathan so identified with David, he so committed to David, he so gave himself to David, that his heart was bound, it was knit, it held fast to David.
Being knit together with a friend in Christ goes way beyond friendliness. It means we long for Christian community as a natural part of life. If our friend isn’t there at church, we feel it. If we don’t connect with our friend often enough, we feel it, because our heart is knit to another
Joined Together with Jesus
Jonathan and David’s friendship was extraordinary—and Jesus’s friendship to us is even greater. He feels the way Jonathan felt about David, and exponentially more, about us all.
On the night He was betrayed, Jesus wasn’t thinking, “This relationship is starting to cost me. I’m outta here!” Instead, He loved His disciples “to the end” (John 13:1), and He assured us His friendship will forever continue and stay true: “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3). In other words, our friendship with Jesus will continue on into eternity.
The New Testament says that we are joined together with Jesus, bound up and knit together with Him, as He is the head of the Christian body of believers. This is the glorious friendship we’ve all been caught up into, by His grace. And the gospel doctrine of divine friendship creates a gospel culture of human friendships that make Jesus more real to us.