The Secret to Friendship: 4 Steps to Becoming a Better Biblical Friend

We spend a lot of time thinking about the kind of friends we want. Friends who get us. Friends who make time for us. Friends who check in, show up, celebrate our wins, and stick around when life gets hard. And when they don’t, it’s easy to walk away thinking, “Maybe I just need better friends.”
 
Those are good things to desire in a friendship. But what if we’re missing the point?
 
If you find yourself disappointed in your friendships, maybe it’s because you’ve been asking friendship to give you something God never intended it to give you. Maybe the problem isn’t simply the friends you have, but the expectations you’ve placed on them.
 
Scripture gives us a more uncomfortable—but ultimately more freeing—place to start when considering our friendships. Instead of asking, “Do I have the friends I need?” what if we asked, “Am I becoming the friend God has called me to be?”
 
Biblical friendship isn’t about getting the perfect friend group; it’s about becoming a faithful friend. 
 
So, what does that actually look like? Here are four steps toward becoming the kind of friend God desires us to be.

1. Set aside your worldly desires for friendship. 
True, biblical friendships are not about common interests or shared seasons of life. They are not about spending time with people who we “click with” or who “get us”. Those things are all certainly nice to have, and we can absolutely consider those marks of friendship, but they aren’t what make a biblical friendship.  

A friendship that operates under God’s design is one that points those involved in the relationship to God himself. Instead of making the relationship about the people involved, it becomes about how we can point one another to the ultimate friend, our Creator and Savior, who knows and loves us intimately, far more intimately and deeply than any of us can ever love one another.  

This means setting down our desires for what we want in a friend and bearing the responsibility and honor of being who God calls us to be for one another. It means showing up for one another, even when it’s costly, even when we don’t feel like it. It means saying the hard things our friends need to hear, even though we know it may hurt them for a moment. It means caring enough to pray, to reach out, to step in when a need arises. It means being present in the hard times, in the uncomfortable times. It means reaching towards them when they have hurt us, as Christ has done for us. Sometimes, it means celebrating God’s goodness and faithfulness in our lives together. Sometimes it means encouraging them to step out in faithful obedience and being a cheerleader or a coach or an assistant. There’s not a perfect, clearcut definition of what it looks like. It’s wisdom exercised in everyday life; we observe what our friends need, and we assist them in looking to the God who provides for their every need, whether that need is physical, financial, emotional, spiritual, or mental.
 
Being a biblical friend means taking our eyes off of ourselves and placing them on those around us, seeking opportunities to experience the goodness of the Gospel together.  

(Gal 6:2, Prov 27:17, Eph 4:15, Heb 10:24-25)

2. Consider where and how to intentionally invest your time in friendships. 
As finite creatures, we are limited in what we can give. We are not meant to meet every need of every person in our circles of influence. God has placed us in the lives of those around us to imitate Him and to point them to Him. So as we look to those around us and consider how we can be the best friend to those in our circles, we must make intentional decisions about how we are going to invest.

Time is a limited commodity, but so is emotional capacity, and quite frankly, mental capacity to remember personal details about others. Spreading ourselves so thin that we can’t remember the important details, or that we are mentally somewhere else when we are present with people isn’t serving anyone well. Sometimes the best way we can love people is to intentionally pick people who we are going to invest in. This can be different levels of investment for different relationships. Maybe a small few people you share the intimate details of your life with, while a somewhat larger circle you spend time reading/praying together, and a select few others you disciple. What you are able to give and to whom and how many is going to differ for every person. What doesn’t differ is that we only have so much to give and we aren’t meant to give all to all. It’s important to consider who God is leading you to invest in.  

Once you make that decision, move towards those people. And you don’t need to feel guilty if/when it means you will have to step back/not move towards others. The Lord will place people in their lives who can step into that role.  

Don’t be afraid to re-evaluate as life seasons change. Sometimes, most of the time actually, friendships change. They ebb and flow through different seasons of life and different life circumstances. This is ok. Don’t feel like if you make a mental commitment to a person that you’re committed forever. When we pursue biblical friendships, we pursue them with open hands, seeking to serve one another as long as God would use us, and being willing to let that go if/when the time comes.  

(Eph 5:15-16, Mark 3:13-14, 2 Tim 2:2, Ecc 3:1)

3. Love the Lord more than you love your friendship. By doing this, you will best love your friend. 
One of the hardest things about being a biblical friend is doing what is right by them. That’s what it means to love them. Often times, this means saying true things they need to hear, even when we know it’s going to hurt. In the same way that a surgeon intentionally wounds his patient in order to bring long-term healing, we must be willing to inflict necessary pain on our friends in order that they could find true healing.  

This means loving the Lord more than you love your friendship. Loving the Lord, being obedient to his call to love your friend, has to be priority number one in a biblical friendship. If it’s not, you will prioritize “tickling your friends ears” with the words they want to hear instead of the words they need to hear. That’s not biblical friendship that points them to Christ; that’s worldly friendship that feeds their flesh.  

Loving the Lord more than your friendship means not allowing it to stay surface level, but pushing through awkwardness, being willing to ask deep, intrusive questions in order that you can uncover ways to point one another to Christ. If we stay on the surface, it’s hard to really do much heart work.  

Loving the Lord first in our friendship requires pushing past our self-consciousness, past our fears of losing the friendship or losing the approval of others. It means being faithful to God’s call in that relationship, regardless of the outcome.  

(Gal 1:10, Prov 27:6, Matt 22:37-39, Col 3:16)

4. Receive the same intentionality back from others. One of the most perplexing paradoxes of the Gospel is the reality that the more we give, the more we get. It doesn’t make sense to our brains, but it’s true. The more we give in a friendship, the more we will find that we are benefitting from the relationship. Inherent in this truth is the fact that we must receive the gift of friendship. Yes, we first give, but if there’s not someone to receive these acts of friendship, then we really haven’t given anything. And so it is that we are givers in friendship, but also, we are called to receive in friendship.
 
This doesn’t mean just receiving the parts we want to receive, the parties and phone calls and common interests. It means receiving all of the same things that you’ve been called to give to your friend. Because just as you have been called to be that person for them, they have been called to be that person for you. Friendship is an act of humility, of submission. We submit to one another, trusting that each person is doing their best to love us as Christ has loved them.
 
Of course, we are still sinners living in a fallen world. None of us will do this perfectly. That’s why we extend grace to one another. We assume positive intent, we extend grace, we have the hard conversations when necessary so that we are able to imitate Christ to one another and thereby imitate Christ to those who witness our friendships in life.  
 
Friendship is a beautiful gift given to us by our Creator who created us for community. It is not an end in and of itself, but rather, it is meant to point us to Him and to glorify Him ultimately. And so, we submit ourselves to the calling of being a biblical friend, of receiving biblical friends, to His honor and glory.

(Acts 20:35, James 5:16, Romans 12:10, 1 Peter 4:8-10, Col 3:23-24)