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Scripture Reading: James 4:4; 2 Cor. 6:14-18; Psa. 1; 1 Cor. 15:33
One thing special about the Bible is that it does not say much about friendship among God’s children. This does not mean that the word friend is never used in the Bible. The word is used numerous times in the Old Testament; we find it in Genesis and especially in Proverbs. In the New Testament we find the word in Matthew and Luke. But the friendship spoken of in the Bible primarily refers to friendship outside of Christ; the Bible does not say much about making friends with those who are in the Lord. If I remember correctly, the word friends is spoken of twice in Acts in relation to Christians. In the first instance, some among the Asiarch leaders were Paul’s friends. They entreated Paul not to venture into the theater (19:31). In the second instance, Julius treated Paul kindly and allowed him to go to his friends to receive care (27:3). In addition to these two verses, 3 John 14 says, “The friends greet you. Greet the friends by name.” As far as I know, these are the only three places in Acts and the Epistles that speak about the subject. This shows us that the Bible does not say much about the matter of friendship.
The Bible does not emphasize friendship but instead emphasizes our relationship as brothers and sisters. It emphasizes the relationship of the brothers and sisters in the Lord. This is the basic and primary relationship. The Bible puts much more emphasis on this than on friendship.
What does friendship mean? An old man can be a friend to a young man. There can be friendship between husbands and wives. Fathers and sons can be friends with each other, and brothers and sisters also can be friends. Being a friend to someone means loving and communicating with that one; this is the only relationship that counts in a friendship. Among the different kinds of human relationships, there are blood relationships. This kind of relationship exists only between relatives. Friendship, however, is different from such relationships; it is sealed in mutual love. Friendship disregards all other relationships and binds two persons together through love. Friendship often exists between husband and wife, father and son, mother and daughter, or teacher and student. Friendship can develop between people of similar age, similar social standing, or similar era.
Friendship is an important relationship for a person who has not believed in the Lord Jesus. Before a person accepts the Lord as Savior, he does not share any spiritual relationship in the Lord. This is why friendship is the most important relationship in the world to him. But among us, friendship is no longer the most important thing. Friendship is rarely mentioned in the New Testament. Our emphasis is on the relationship that exists between us as brothers and sisters in the Lord. Our relationship as friends in the Lord is much less significant. Friendship is not important among God’s children.
Before we believe in the Lord, we do not have a spiritual relationship. We only have father and son, mother and daughter, teacher and student, and master and servant relationships. This is why friendship is an important matter to those who have not believed in the Lord. Two persons can be father and son to each other, but they can still have differences in standing. The same can be said of a mother and a daughter, a husband and a wife, and a master and his servant. Everyone can have his or her own standing. Blood relationships, however, are limited in number. Most persons can have between three and five blood relationships; those who have eight and ten such relationships are considered unusual. Other than these relationships, all other contacts are with friends.
Man cannot be satisfied with family relationships alone. He cannot be satisfied with the teacher-student relationship or any other social relationship alone. Man needs friendship. Friendship is based on love, not on the blood relationship. Many of our human relationships are inherited from birth; only friendship is by personal choice. This is why friendship is a most important matter to an unbeliever. Everyone has friends. A person can have three, five, eight, or ten friends. He can have dozens or hundreds of friends if he is sociable enough. He can enjoy companionship, love, and fellowship among these friends. Friendship indeed occupies an important place in an unbeliever’s life.
If an unbeliever does not have any friends, he must not be a very likable person. He may be somewhat abnormal or have a sick personality; he may be very hard to get along with; or perhaps his untrustworthiness or peculiarities have discouraged others from making friends with him. Under normal circumstances, a man always has friends.
God, however, has ordained that we terminate our friendships after we have believed in the Lord Jesus.
James spoke of friendship of the world (James 4:4). The world here means “worldly people.” “The friendship of the world is enmity with God.” Please remember that the love for the Father is not in us if we love the world (1 John 2:15). To be a friend of worldly people is to be an enemy of God.
A new believer must be very clear that as soon as he becomes a Christian, he has to replace all of his friends. If you have just accepted the Lord, you must replace your friends. This is the same as changing one’s attire and everything else when one believes in the Lord. Friends also need to be changed. One has to have an entirely different set of friends. I know what I am talking about. A new believer will live a poor and shallow spiritual life if he does not change his friends. A person should terminate all of his old friendships as soon as he believes in the Lord. It is wonderful to note that when God’s love comes in, man’s love departs. When the Lord’s life comes into us, the world can no longer be a friend to us.
But our Lord did not say that we have to hate the world in order to love God. This does not mean that we have to ignore the world or that we can no longer greet our friends on the street. Rather, it means that whoever befriends the world is at enmity with God. We do not have to treat the world as our enemy, but our deep friendship and our devotion to fellowship with it must be terminated. We may still love our friends, but now our goal should be to save them. We may still treat them as friends, but our goal should be like that of Cornelius — to bring them the gospel. Cornelius invited two groups of people when Peter came to his house: his relatives and his intimate friends (Acts 10:24). He knew that God wanted him to invite Peter, and he invited his relatives and intimate friends as well to listen to the gospel. This is the goal of our continued acquaintance; it is not to maintain our former ties. A man cannot stop knowing a person whom he has known already. A friend is still a friend. One cannot cut off his relationship with those who have been acquainted with him for years. Dealing with our friendship means that we have a turn in the Lord. It means that all former relationships cease. From this point forward, we still talk to our friends when we see them. We still discuss things with them if we have problems. But we have a new life, while they do not have such a life. Our relationship should not ignore this change in life. A person becomes a friend by first becoming acquainted with another, then by loving him, and finally by socializing with him. If we continue such a relationship with our friends after we are saved, we are at enmity with God, and spontaneously we will not be able to go on in a proper way.
In running a race, the lighter the weight one has on his body, the better it is. The more one deals with sins, the lighter his weight will be. The more recompenses one makes, the lighter his burdens will be. The more friends you leave behind, the less weight you will have. If you add a few friends to yourself, you will find yourself being pressed down. I have seen many brothers and sisters who have been held down by their friends. They cannot be absolute to God’s way; it is hard for them to be good Christians. An unbeliever’s standard of morality and conduct will always be that of an unbeliever’s. They may not drag you down, but they will surely not lift you up.
Second Corinthians 6:14 says, “Do not become dissimilarly yoked with unbelievers.” Many people think that this is a word for marriage. I agree that being dissimilarly yoked does imply marriage, but it also describes all other relationships between believers and unbelievers.
“Do not become dissimilarly yoked with unbelievers.” This is a general statement. What does it mean? We have to go on to see the following questions: “For what partnership do righteousness and lawlessness have? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness? And what concord does Christ have with Belial? Or what part does a believer have with an unbeliever? And what agreement does the temple of God have with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, even as God said, ‘I will dwell among them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they will be My people.’ Therefore ‘come out from their midst and be separated, says the Lord, and do not touch what is unclean; and I will welcome you’; ‘and I will be a Father to you, and you will be sons and daughters to Me, says the Lord Almighty’” (2 Cor. 6:14-18). All of these questions issue from the first statement: “Do not become dissimilarly yoked with unbelievers.” This is a positive statement. It is the basic premise. After this basic premise, five questions follow. These questions show us that believers and unbelievers are not compatible with one another and cannot be similarly yoked.
I hope you will realize that although we live in the same society as those in the world today, we cannot build up an intimate relationship with them, whether it be with respect to a business venture, general friendship, or marital union. If an unbeliever and a believer are together, sooner or later they will end up with trouble. Believers have their standard, and unbelievers have theirs. Believers have their ideologies, and unbelievers have theirs. Believers have their views, and unbelievers have theirs. If the two are put together, the result will not be blessing, but sorrow. The two hold different views, opinions, ethical standards, and moral judgments. Everything is different. One pulls one way, while the other pulls the opposite way. Putting both under the same yoke would simply break the yoke. The believer either has to go along with the unbeliever or break the yoke.
I wish all new believers would realize that when believers and unbelievers are put together, the believers always suffer. We should never think that we can pull the unbelievers in our direction. If we want to pull them in our direction, we do not have to do it by making friends with them. I can tell you that I have tried to pull my old friends in my direction, but I did not try to maintain my old friendship with them. We can win our old friends over to our side without trying to maintain our old friendships with them. If we try to maintain our friendships, they will probably win us over to their side.
C. H. Spurgeon once gave a good illustration. A young lady came to him and told him that she wanted to make friends with an unbeliever. She said that she wanted to bring him to the Lord and then become engaged to him. Mr. Spurgeon asked the young lady to climb up on a high table. She did as he asked. By then Mr. Spurgeon was already quite an old man. He told the young lady to hold his hand and try her best to pull him up. She tried very hard but could not do it. Mr. Spurgeon then said, “Now let me pull you down,” and with one jerk, she was down on the ground. He said, “It is easy to be pulled down but hard to pull someone up.” This answered the girl’s question. Please remember that pulling someone up is always hard. It is very difficult to pull an unbeliever up, but it is easy for him to pull you down. Many people have been pulled down by unbelievers. Many brothers and sisters are pulled down by their friends because they have not dealt with the problem of friendships.
New believers should tell all their friends that they have believed in the Lord Jesus. They must open their mouth to testify and confess that they have received the Lord. Whenever they see their friends again, they must bring the Lord to them. I had many friends when I was in school. After believing in the Lord, I would take out my Bible, sit down with them, and talk about the Lord whenever I saw them. My conduct before I was a Christian was very poor. At the least I had learned to gamble and I enjoyed going to the theater. I was easily dragged into these things by my friends. But after I believed in the Lord, I would take out my Bible whenever I sat down with them. After I became known for doing this, my friends began to leave me alone. This was good for me because they stopped including me in their activities. Had I not done that, it would have been unavoidable for me to be dragged away. We would rather not be welcomed by our friends than be pulled away by them. It is best to keep a mild friendship with them, but do not pursue intimate friendship. Be polite and courteous. Do not lose your friends, but do not become deeply involved with them. We belong to the Lord, and we should always bring the Lord to them.
If you serve the Lord faithfully and bring the Lord to your friends in this way, sooner or later they will either turn to the Lord or forsake you. These are the only two possibilities. There is hardly a third possible outcome. They will either follow you and take the same way, or they no longer will bother you. This will work to a new believer’s advantage; it will save him much trouble. A person will be dragged away by an unbeliever if the two bear the same yoke, because he has to disobey the Lord in order to maintain his close friendship with the world.
First, “For what partnership do righteousness and lawlessness have?” You have believed in the Lord and you know what righteousness is. You must deal with your former unrighteousnesses. You must deal with whatever you owe to others. But unbelievers, even the most moral ones, do not know what righteousness means. The two are diametrically the opposite of each other. Righteousness and unrighteousness have no partnership with each other. We cannot take advantage of others in even the smallest way. Perhaps some people like to take advantage of others. In the past you might have thought that this was smart, but now you realize that this is unrighteousness. How can righteousness have partnership with unrighteousness? Your views are basically different now. Thus, righteousness can have no partnership with unrighteousness.
Second, “What fellowship does light have with darkness?” You have been enlightened, and now you see. The other person is in darkness and cannot see. A child of God, who has made some progress on his spiritual journey already and who has some depth in the Lord, will find it difficult even to fellowship with a fleshly Christian who lives in darkness. How much more difficult would it be for him to commune with one who is totally in darkness and sees nothing? At least you have been enlightened by God. Here is a basic contradiction: Light has no fellowship with darkness. Unbelievers can do many things. Their philosophies, ethical standards, and outlook on life are different from those of believers. Believers are in the light, while unbelievers are in darkness. How can they fellowship and commune with one another? They are basically different in nature.
Third, “And what concord does Christ have with Belial?” Belial refers to Satan and contemptible things. Satan is surely contemptible. We belong to the Lord, while unbelievers belong to Belial. We are honorable (1 Pet. 2:9), and they are cheap. We were bought with a high price, with the blood of the Son of God, not with corruptible gold and silver. We have our Christian standing, our dignity as believers. There are many things which we cannot do. I can bargain with a rickshaw-coolie within a reasonable limit. But it would be wrong for me to bargain beyond that limit. We are Christians, and we cannot go beyond certain limits. We cannot bargain too much with others. We must not lose our Christian dignity. We are worth more than the few cents that we bargain for. We cannot lower ourselves to the level of the street hawkers. We have to maintain our Christian standing and our Christian dignity.
Some people belong to Belial. They may do many things. They may take advantage of others or make gain for themselves. But we cannot do the same things. We have our Christian honor and status. How can these two kinds of people be in harmony with one another? One is pulling to one side, and the other is pulling to the opposite side. The two cannot be yoked together. Putting them under one yoke will not work. The yoke will surely break.
Please remember that many people are not that honorable. They are, in fact, rather ignoble. Christians, however, are noble people. The two are totally different; they cannot be yoked together. After one becomes a Christian, he cannot develop strong friendship with unbelievers, because he is incompatible with them.
Fourth, “Or what part does a believer have with an unbeliever?” This is a repetition of the question prior to it. This is another comparison. You have faith, and the other person does not have faith. You know God in faith, but the other person does not believe in God and does not know Him. You find faith in your life, but the other person does not have faith in his life. You trust in God, while he has no trust. You look to God, while he looks to himself. You say that everything is in God’s hand, but he says that everything is in his own hand. The two are basically different. We often cannot communicate even with nominal Christians; we cannot fellowship with them. They say that they are Christians, but they have no faith. There is a problem here. Not only is the conduct of the two persons different, but one has faith while the other does not. The conduct is different because the measure of faith is different. With this difference, it is hard to have any communication at all. A believer has nothing to do with an unbeliever. A believer spontaneously trusts in God in many things; it is as natural as breathing. But this is hard to an unbeliever. He would say that the believer is superstitious, backward, or foolish. There is no way for us to make friends with unbelievers. They will pull us down, and the pull will be very strong.
Fifth, “What agreement does the temple of God have with idols?” What is the temple of God? What is an idol? I think this refers to the sanctification of the body. Following this, it says that we are the temple of the living God. In the book of 1 Corinthians, the believers’ bodies are considered the temple of God. One group of people were idol worshippers, while the other group of people said, “Our bodies are the temple of God. We cannot defile the temple of God.” What we do with our friends is related very much to our body. Drinking, smoking, and other activities all affect the body; they touch the body. But the body is the temple of God. One should not destroy this temple or defile it. We must preserve our body as we preserve God’s temple. The living God dwells in us, and we must not destroy this temple. We are the temple of God, while they are the temple of idols. They are related to idols, visible or invisible. They do not care for the holiness of the body, but we do. Do you see the difference here? How can the two be yoked together?
We can never be friends with unbelievers. There is only one result if we befriend them — we are dragged down with them. We should never think that we are strong and steadfast and that it is all right for us to make a few unbelieving friends. Let me say that we have been Christians for many years, but we are still fearful of making friends with unbelievers. A relationship with them invariably brings loss to us. We should contact them only for the sake of bringing them to a meeting or testifying to them. Apart from this, all other contact is dangerous. Once we are in their midst, we will have to sacrifice our standard. It will be hard for us to maintain our Christian standard when we are among them.
First Corinthians 15:33 says, “Do not be deceived: Evil companionships corrupt good morals.” Having evil companionships means to have improper friends. It is better to translate “evil companionships” as “improper fellowship” or “improper communication.” The result of such evil companionship is the corruption of good morals. Corrupt means “decay,” as the decay of wood by worms. Evil companionship decays good morals.
The expression good morals in a milder sense can be rendered “good manners.” Good morals is a stronger expression. The original meaning of the word lies somewhere between these two words. The word moral is too strong, while the word manner is too light. It is probably somewhere in between. I think it is better to translate the word as “appearance.” This is milder than the word moral but stronger than the word manner. We can say that improper communication corrupts good appearance. You may be very godly before God, but after you meet an unbeliever who jokes, you begin to laugh. There are some jokes we should not laugh at. But many times we feel that we do not need to be so stifled when we are among them; we feel that if we loosen up a little, they will welcome us more. But this is improper communication, and it corrupts good appearance.
Improper communication and good appearance are opposites. One is good, while the other is bad. The bad will corrupt the good. We must avoid this corruption. Since the Lord’s life is within us, we should spend time to cultivate good habits and learn to be restricted in the Lord. We must learn day by day to be godly, careful, regimented, and restricted persons.
Please remember that one contact with unbelievers and one improper communication with them will waste much time. This is a great loss. Each time you communicate with unbelievers, you may need three or five days before you will be recovered to your proper standing, because unbelievers can affect your appearance, habits, and moral conduct before men. This is surely not profitable.
Psalm 1:1-2 says, “Blessed is the man / Who does not walk / In the counsel of the wicked, / Nor stand on the path of sinners, / Nor sit in the company of mockers. / Rather his delight is in the law of Jehovah, / And in His law he meditates by day and by night.”
Unbelievers have much counsel to offer. It is most pitiful for God’s children to seek counsel from unbelievers when they have problems. Many children of God ask unbelievers what they should do when they encounter problems. Even when they give you counsel, you cannot do what they counsel you to do. I have many unbelieving friends who offer me advice concerning many things even though I have not asked for it. If you listen to them, you will realize that all their thoughts concern how they may profit themselves. They do not ask whether a matter is right or wrong or whether it is God’s will. They have only one motive — personal profit. Can we do something that is purely for our own profit? Some of their counsel not only is for their own profit but even causes loss to others. Some profit does not come at the expense of others, and some does. How can a believer walk in the counsel of an unbeliever?
If you become too intimate with an unbeliever, it will be hard for you to turn his counsel down. As a result, you will be carried away. If you seek counsel from five friends together, it will be hard to reject their suggestion and say no to them, because they are your friends. They have a unified, a unanimous, proposal, and it is good for you. If you talk with them, it means that you are seeking counsel from them. But their advice only comes from their mind. You should not follow this advice.
Moreover, there are many places where you cannot go. Sinners have their own path and their own places. They do not come to church if they want to gamble. They have their own places and their own path. Today, if you communicate with unbelievers, you are taking their path even if you say you are not one of them. This is hard. An unbeliever may want to go to a place that you should not go to. Even if you say that you will not go inside, you are still on the same path. Although you may say good-by and part with them at the door, you have already gone the same way. “Blessed is the man / Who does not walk / In the counsel of the wicked, / Nor stand on the path of sinners.” God does not want us to be in their places, and He does not want us to even stand on their path. God wants us to be fully separated from them. We cannot befriend them. Once we befriend them, we will stand on their path or at least touch their places.
“Nor sit in the company of mockers.” Almost all unbelievers are mockers. I have seldom found a brother whose friends did not joke with him or make fun of the Lord’s name. I met many unbelievers during the first few years of my Christian life who joked about the Lord’s name whenever I saw them. They blasphemed the name of the Lord. If you sit among unbelievers, they will ridicule you, and the Lord’s name will be blasphemed. They may not mention the Lord’s name before you join them; they may not have the intention to blaspheme the Lord’s name. But your presence gives them the opportunity to talk about Jesus and Christianity. They will carry on with their jokes. If you do not want to sit in the company of mockers or listen to their mocking, you must not communicate or fellowship with them or befriend them in any way.
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.
