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

Resources for Application

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or for life. Despite many wrong ideas about same-sex friendships today, Christian leaders must learn how to encourage, nurture, and bless these spiritual friendships within the church. 16 Third, Figure 3 suggests all believers need an inner circle of trustworthy friends. This group includes Dunbar’s categories of “close friends” (five to seven people) and “best friends” (twelve to fifteen people). Returning to Don Davis’ oikos principle, we recall that these special relationships are gifts from God in need of wise stewardship. These relationships are worthy of our time, energy, and resources. Aelred’s teaching encourages us that investing in these relationships develops our friendship skills, skills that then nurture and deepen our friendship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Finally, we need to accept that friendships with Gospel coworkers, with believers, and with all peoples will be limited by our own finitude and by human fallenness. While it is not possible to be friends with everyone, we can still choose to be friendly to all. The people we meet on the bus or at a grocery store can be treated as potential friends. With Oliver O’Donovan, we choose to pursue an attitude of friendliness so as to say: I am not your friend, nor you mine, nor in this life are we ever likely to become friends; yet in God’s eternity, and even in this life if it should so transpire, a friendship between us will be no bad thing. 17

16 Michael K. Severe, “Annotated Bibliography: Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Issues in Educational Ministry,” Christian Education Journal 18, no. 2 (2021): 308–12. 17 O’Donovan, Entering into Rest , 145.