Spiritual Friendship: Learning to Be Friends with God and One Another

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Spiritual Friendship

are called to imitate (John 15:13; 1 Pet 2:21; 1 Cor 11:1; Eph 5:1; 1 Thess 1:6). If we take Jesus’ pyramid of prioritized friendships as an example, what might a modified version look like today?

Figure 3: A Simplified Pyramid of Prioritized Friendship

Figure 3, “a simplified pyramid of prioritized friendship,” provides one model of a modified version of Jesus’ relational priorities for his disciples today. First, the top of the pyramid is friendship with the Father, the Spirit and the resurrected Jesus. 9 It is our personal friendship with Jesus of Nazareth that opens the door to friendship with our Father and the Spirit. For evangelicals, friendship with Jesus is a first

9 For more on being Jesus’ friend see Oliver O’Donovan, Entering into Rest , Ethics as Theology 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 153−62.