Pursue God-honoring Friendships

In Mark Chapter 12, a man asked Jesus a fascinating question:

“Which commandment is the most important of all?”

Now Jesus could have easily retorted with something like “they’re all important,” which they are, but instead, Jesus answered,

“The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

Now in answering this man’s question, Jesus gave us a framework through which to rightly understand our loves and to rightly order our loyalties.

Every Christian’s highest allegiance is God. My number one goal in life is to love God. To pursue, honor and obey him with my whole being. That is the central aim of the Christian life.

And that vertical love informs my horizontal loves, and it directs how they ought to look.

This applies to every kind of relationship in our lives. But this morning I’d like to apply it specifically to Christian friendship:

If at the heart of being a Christian is my aim to love and honor the Lord with all of my being; then at the heart of my Christian friendships ought to be my aim for you, my friends, to love the Lord your God with all your being.

Because to truly love someone is to seek their greatest good. And there is nothing better that I could ever want for you than God. And vice versa. At the heart of christian friendship is our commitment to pursuing one another’s good, with God always at the center. 

Worldly friendships stand in stark contrast to this.

In fact, the world can never get friendship right, because it rejects the first and greatest love. The world refuses to love God as God. And when you reject God, it’s impossible to get your horizontal loves, like friendship, right. It is impossible to seek your neighbor’s greatest good while rejecting the very God who is their greatest good. 

When you reject God, there is no “good” left to pursue. All that’s really left in worldly friendship is mutually supporting one another’s self love. 

The world says “We can be friends, as long as you support me in my self love, and I’ll support you in your self love.”

It’s like a pact between two alcoholics, mutually supporting one another further and further into self destruction. 

That’s how we end up with “friendly” advice like:

“Don’t let anyone tell you how to live your life… Just do what makes you happy”

“You do you, man… I won’t judge… I’m just here to support you.”

Intentional or not, that kind of “friendship” is poison.

Supporting your friends while they rebel against the God to whom they owe their greatest love, and deepest allegiance is not “loving your neighbor.”

That’s how we got the “love is love” signs that you’ve probably seen on many lawns.

It’s redefining “loving your neighbor” to mean “supporting and celebrating your neighbor’s rebellion against God,” when scripture is clear that rebellion against God always leads to destruction. That is not real love. And it’s not real friendship.

 True friends seek our greatest good by committing to helping us love, honor and obey God above all things. And they do this even when it’s uncomfortable, or when it’s the last thing you want to hear. 

Proverbs 27 says, 

“Faithful are the wounds of a friend.”

Why? Because his commitment to your eternal good is deeper than to your comfort or approval. His aim is that you love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.

So My exhortation this morning is: pursue God-honoring friendships. 

Be the kind of friend who loves their friends enough to pursue their greatest good in God. And seek the kind of friends that will challenge you to love God first, and with all of your being.

And that reminds us of our need to confess our sins. 

Father, your word is clear that our most fundamental aim is to love you with every part of our being. We owe our complete love and our deepest allegiance to you. And yet we fail so often. We stray and pursue our own ends or the approval of others, instead of loving and honoring you. And we do the same thing in our friendships. Father, forgive us. We do not hide our sins but we confess all our sins to you in this moment of silence…

Father, your word is also clear that you are gracious and merciful and abounding in steadfast love. Thank you for giving us your Son, Jesus, who took our sins, and died in our place reconciling us to yourself. Help us now be assured of your complete mercy and forgiveness, we pray in Jesus name. Amen.