What are Friends For?

“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another.” John 15:12-17

Someone once said, “What are friends for if you can’t use them?” Friendship, like many other things, is a paradox - it’s both the strongest thing in the world and the most fragile; wild horses can’t separate (true) friends, but little things can. Usually it’s the smallest of things which separate friends; it should be big things which break up friendships but it’s not.

Friends are worth fighting for, even in difficult times; true friends are very rare and very hard to find. True friends are worth dying for (John 15:13). Jesus, of course, offers the ultimate example of friendship, dying in His friends’ place while they were totally unworthy of friendship.