A person must settle the matter of friendship during the first few weeks of his Christian life. He must change all his friends. You must tell all your friends what has happened to you. You may still maintain some friendship with them, but this friendship cannot be intimate in any way. You must change all your friends. You must learn to be a brother in the church and replace your former friends with brothers in the church.
We do not want to go to the extreme. We do not hate our former friends, and we do not want to ignore them altogether. But now our contact with them must be on a different level. Learn to testify to them and bring the Lord to them. We should be with them for only five minutes, fifteen minutes, half an hour, or an hour. Do not continue to sit among them. Do not talk about worldly things with them. Learn to take your stand and try your best to bring them to the Lord and the church. Testify to them and preach the gospel to them. Try your best to make them brothers and sisters in the church. Do not make friends or have friendship outside the circle of brothers.
I can assure you that a believer with too many unbelieving friends will surely be a defeated Christian. Even if he does not sin, he will become worldly. If a person loves the Lord, serves Him, and is faithful to Him and is exercised in himself, he cannot possibly have many worldly friends. If a person has many frivolous friends, it proves that he is sick.
We should not have unclean lips, and we should not dwell among people of unclean lips. In the sight of God, it is wrong to have unclean lips. It is equally wrong and requires equal confession to dwell among people of unclean lips. It is wrong for us to sin, and it also is wrong to dwell among sinners. We need to ask God for grace so that we ourselves do not sin. We need His grace so that we do not cultivate intimate friendship with sinners. You would be angry at someone if he said that you were a thief. Neither would it be a compliment if he said that you were in the company of thieves or that you were a friend of thieves.
The first question a person should ask before the Lord is about himself. The second question he should ask is about his friends. Next to the person himself, a person is represented by his acquaintances. If he wants to remain strong, he must not be careless about his acquaintances and friendships. The minute he becomes careless about his friends, he is defeated. Never be careless in this matter. You must leave all your former friends behind. Learn to make friends with those who fellowship in the church. Your communication with them should be something in the Lord. You should replace all of your former communication with communication that is in the Lord.
By now you should see that friendship is something very special. It is a relationship which goes beyond social status. It is a relationship that is free from formality. When a communication goes beyond social status and formality, that is friendship. I once said that some fathers are friends to their sons, while other fathers remain fathers for life. I know that some mothers have never been friends to their daughters; the mothers are strictly mothers and the daughters are strictly daughters; they have never been friends to each other. There are many people who never become friends to those in their family; the husband remains strictly a husband, and the wife remains strictly a wife. Many supervisors in offices take a very lofty position, and their subordinates remain inferior to them. There is only an employer-employee relationship between them; they have never been friends to each other. Although some become friends, these are rare exceptions. Being a friend to someone means going beyond the normal relationship. It means to have an acquaintance that extends beyond the normal relationship.
Abraham was a friend of God. If he had behaved strictly as a man and God had behaved strictly as God, they would not have been friends. Abraham forgot his status, and God also set aside His status. Thus, Abraham could be a friend to God.
The Lord Jesus also became a friend to sinners. The Lord Jesus could not have become a friend to sinners if He had remained in His own position. He became a friend because He left that position. If He had not stepped from His position, He could only have been a Savior and not a friend to man. I hope you can see what a friend is. As sinners we could never be joined to the Lord. He is the Judge and we are the judged. He is the Savior and we are the saved. But the Lord laid aside everything to become a friend to sinners. This is why others called Him the Friend of sinners. This is how He leads them to accept Him as their Savior.
I believe that after a person has been in the Lord for a long time and has developed a deep relationship with Him, he will find some brothers in the church to be his friends. He can go beyond the normal relationship. The third Epistle of John is quite clear about this matter. In 3 John, John no longer seemed to be an apostle. He had become an elder instead.
I want to draw your attention to the fact that 3 John was written when John was very old. The letter was written about thirty years after Paul was martyred. At that time Peter also had passed away. Of the twelve apostles, John was the only one left. He wrote as “the elder to Gaius” (v. 1). He was indeed elderly. I like his third Epistle very much. Third John is different from the other Epistles. First John speaks of “fathers,” “young men,” and “young children.” It seems that John was still conscious of clear distinctions there. But in the last verse of 3 John, he had come to a different place; he was standing in a very special position. He was very old by then and could call a seventy-year-old man his son. He was very old, perhaps in his nineties. At such an old age, when he had so much knowledge and had traveled so far in his spiritual journey, he did not address his brothers and sisters as brothers and sisters. He did not use such terms as children, young men, or fathers. He simply said, “The friends greet you. Greet the friends by name.” Do you not sense a certain flavor here? In reading God’s Word, we have to touch its flavor and its spirit before we can comprehend the meaning behind the word. If we do not touch the flavor and the spirit, our reading will be fruitless. Here was a man who was so old that he had practically lost all his friends. Peter was dead and so was Paul, but John could still say, “The friends greet you. Greet the friends.” Here was a man with so much riches in him. We can say that he had arrived at the pinnacle of his riches. He had followed the Lord for many years and had touched many things. Now he was so old that he could pat the head of a sixty or seventy-year-old man and call him, “My child.” But he did not say this. Instead he said, “My friends.” I do not know whether you understand what I am trying to say. This has nothing to do with position; John was not speaking in his normal capacity. This kind of speaking uplifts a person. Just as the Lord was a friend to sinners and just as God became a friend to Abraham, John also treated all of God’s children, young and old, as his friends. This is altogether different from what we spoke about earlier in this chapter.
Some day some of our young ones may arrive at this stage, but today they must behave as brothers in the church. The matter of friendship occupies a very high place in the church. Some day, when we reach a high plane, we may become a friend to little children. We can be far above them, yet can honor them by calling them our friends. Before that day comes, the church must emphasize the relationship of brothers and sisters, not the relationship of friends.
It is interesting to note that the church pays attention to many things, but not friendship. This is because friendship is something that goes beyond the normal relationship. It is something that is beyond the ordinary, something that stands on special ground. Friendship is when a great man honors another man by being his friend. Such a man can be so great that he can call another person his friend. This is not something that any brother or sister can do. Those who are young in the Lord should learn to maintain their relationship as brothers and sisters in the Lord. I hope that you will separate yourself from your former friends and have communication and fellowship with the brothers and sisters in the church instead. If you do this, it will save you from many problems as you go on in your spiritual journey.