Quite often, a substantial part of our 21st paradigm of discipleship and living out the great commission of Christ revolves around three pieces: foundation courses with ongoing classroom training, evangelism, and accountability with submission, to help overcome temptation.
These are true, good, and beautiful. Training courses equip and bless the body of Christ. Being intentional in evangelism helps many find hope in Jesus through dark times. Accountability saves us from falling into pits of addiction and despair. Without a doubt, these are theologically accurate, experientially powerful, and practically necessary.
But without the secret sauce of ongoing and multi-faceted friendship, none of our programs and practices can accomplish the kind of discipleship Christ had in mind. Jesus left us in no doubt that gospel friendships are the secret sauce to fruitful discipleship.
Just before Jesus embraced the cross, he first embraced his disciples as his friends.
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you”. (John 15:12-15)
At the cusp of the cross, Jesus elevates three years of discipleship into a glorious embrace of pure friendship.
This is absolutely incredible.
This rings even more true in a world where human beings are more socially connected than ever before, but are more relationally impoverished than ever before.
Just before Jesus embraced the cross, he first embraced his disciples as his friends.
The relentless flood of online engagement is sadly emptying our capacity to hold deep soul connections. This is why discipleship must include friendship.
Friendship Involves Greater Sacrifice than Family
It is interesting that Jesus used the paradigm of friendship to illustrate sacrificial love. He did not use family, marriage, or brotherhood.
There is a biological or relational obligation in every other human relationship. A mother is biologically wired to nurture and care for her little one. A husband is united with his wife through the covenant of marriage. Bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood are powerful. These human relationships flourish out of some sense of biological or familial obligation.
But friendship flourishes in the utter absence of any such obligation. True friendship is fanned by pure sacrifice, not any compulsion.
None of the religious discourses that human civilization has ever known has placed such a high emphasis on deep relational intimacy as a basis for discipleship.
Jesus is inviting us to see that the secret sauce of discipleship is friendship.
Two Errors of Friendship in Discipleship
Too often, we see discipleship only as an academic exercise to acquire knowledge. We reduce discipleship to completing a curriculum.
This tends to de-emphasise friendship, perhaps even making us sceptical of it. It is easier to learn new content than it is to be sacrificial and vulnerable in friendship.
In this paradigm of learning without friendship, our faith becomes disconnected from day-to-day living. It misses the richness that walking closely with another person brings to the journey.
This is the error of ‘truth’ without love.
But there is also the opposite error of ‘love’ without truth.
We are all also prone to trying to build a superficial, less than biblical, ‘keep things light’ model of friendship. This is afraid to venture into dark and vulnerable spaces.
This is why Jesus describing redemption in the vocabulary of friendship is so rich and profound.
It is important we recognize and avoid two equal and opposite tendencies. We either isolate ourselves from engaging with people or hide our true selves by surrounding ourselves with people.
True discipleship happens we walk as true friends with broken individuals, together learning to grow in authenticity and vulnerability.
This is never easy. Walking with weak, selfish, broken people is hard work. Not the least because leaders are also at some level, weak, selfish, and broken.
This is precisely what Jesus invites us to experience: broken people are instrumental in healing broken people. Both together enjoying the redemptive friendship of Christ.
How I Stumbled in Discipleship and Friendship
My journey with friendships has not been easy. In my eagerness to ‘disciple’ I have often not really spent time listening to people’s stories. I have forgotten that the Holy Spirit is the primary discipler.
True discipleship happens we walk as true friends with broken individuals, together learning to grow in authenticity and vulnerability.
On the other hand, afraid of getting ‘too close,’ and in my eagerness to receive approval, I have shied away from difficult conversations. I have kept things ‘friendly’ and used the idea of ‘being on a journey’ as an excuse to truly dig deeper.
The truth is that this journey is messy. But God is writing his story over us even through these difficult relationships.
In the first flush of a warm, meaningful friendship, we are naturally happy and excited. But we soon realise there is more to the person than what meets the eye.
We soon find things we do not like or things that irritate us.
It is at this very stage that we have an important choice to make. Do we allow God to break us, and take us through the chaos into something beautiful? Or do we break this equation and search for greener pastures?
If we choose the latter, we will discover that the friendless cycle repeats over and over again.
We Need Multi-faceted Friendship
But if we press in and grow our friendships, even seemingly difficult ones, we will be blessed in two ways.
First, we display Christ to the world by our persevering love for one another. Love one another as I have loved you, Jesus commanded us. “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another”. (John 13:35)
Second, God often disciples us through friendships. What if God has specifically put specific people in your path to work on and fully redeem specific areas of your life?
We all need not just one, but many such friendships to be the man or woman Christ has redeemed us to be.
At the church that I help pastor, we believe that people need three specific kinds of care to experience holistic growth.
Pastoral care: One-on-one time with a pastor or leader who helps you process the gospel and equips you with tools to remember the gospel for yourself. We recommend this to be typically once in 4-6 weeks.
Friendship care: Shared experiences with the community learning to enjoy the good things that God has given us (Phil. 4:8). Friends who explore scriptures together, have stimulating conversations, challenge each other to grow, and fight for each other (sometimes even with each other).
Missional care: People in your life who help you make sense of your calling and your service to this world. People who help you see how your work fits into the larger story of God. People who help you rise above your self-preoccupation and propel you into acts of service that reveal the gospel to this world, both in word and deed.
All of this will be dynamic. The people who are your friends in this season may play the role of a pastor in another, and vice versa. But the point is, true disciples need to provide/receive holistic care in all three areas.
Ultimately, we are all utterly dependent on the Holy Spirit for our friendships to flourish.
As we see the Holy Spirit being poured out and miracles take place in the book of Acts, we often forget the miracle of how people from different cultures, nations and ethnic origins begin to love and serve one another radically (Acts 2:42-47).
If Jesus commanded us to love one another as he loved us, the Holy Spirit delights in empowering us in living this out. You can lean on him, as you persevere in your friendships.
