These days I have been working on the three Epistles of John. The last one does say, “The friends greet you” (3 John 14). And the Lord Jesus did say, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep” (John 11:11). There was a kind of friendship. But that friendship was a spiritual friendship; it was not based on natural affection. What I mean is this: natural affection should be kept aside. This is typified by the word not to put honey in the meal offering (Lev. 2:11). Natural affection is not that evil, like leaven; it is something sweet. Well, there must be no honey in the Lord’s work, no honey in the church leadership. The relationships should be pure; the fellowship should be genuine, in the spirit.
We must avoid honey, natural affection, especially in the church responsibility. Once our family comes in, there is a real impureness. This doesn’t mean that our wives and children shouldn’t come into the Lord’s interest. They should. But the line should be drawn. Some sisters may come to your home to help with the cooking in some instance, but you must draw a line. If you don’t draw a line, you will have trouble. Sometimes such relationships can lead into sinful things like fornication. Draw a line.
In human society there are always some who are fond of helping others. Since you are a leader, they would especially like to help you. Since you are a leading one in this kind of work in society, if they are allowed to help you, they feel honored. Don’t take advantage of their offers to help. Do not allow this kind of thing to come in. It comes in mostly through the family.
I hope my word is clear to you all. It involves a lot of things. You have to understand it in a very clear-cut way. You have to be a surgeon. In doing surgery, you must be discerning in order to know which part to keep and which part to cut off. It is not that we reject all the brothers and sisters from coming to contact us. We need to have contact with the saints. In a positive sense, the elders should be those who are open to others, who easily contact others, and who are easily approachable. If you are not this way, you cannot effectively carry out your responsibility. Yet there is a peril. You must draw a line, allowing the relationship to go only so far. I can testify that many times the saints would have liked to have further contact with us, but we stopped it. If we had wanted to, we could have gone further. Then, however, they and we would both have fallen into a relationship which would not have been healthy to our spiritual life nor to the church life nor to the work.
Suppose one of you brothers comes to fellowship with me. That is fine. But after many times of fellowshipping together, there will be the peril that the two families might get involved. His wife will come in, and so will my wife. Here is the peril. That is why we must draw the line. We can only go so far to have fellowship in the spirit; if we go further, we fall into natural affection.
The churches have been in the same localities for a long time. The longer we stay in the same place, the easier it is for all of us to become involved with certain families and to develop a natural affection for them. Even if you have saints staying with you, you have to draw a line. Do not let that hospitality bring in a kind of natural affection. Regardless of how long the guests are there with you, keep a distance. Otherwise, whatever you do for the Lord will be damaged by your natural affection. The only thing to be built up is the spiritual fellowship. There should be no natural affection, no friendship. We who are co-workers should be intimate brothers, yet still not friends.
All these years I have never built up a friendship with anyone. You might consider me a cold person. I may be; I don’t know. Yet I do realize that the Lord has been preserving me from trouble. When I look into the past, I thank Him. If I had developed some friendships, I surely would have gotten into trouble and would have suffered because of it.