How to Love Our Friends in Truth—Even When It Stings
“I have good news and bad news. God has called us to move back home.”
Our friend’s words stunned me. He told us God was leading him and his family, whom we had grown to see as our own family, to move back to his hometown.
My emotions moved like the sea line. One hour I fought sadness, another I struggled with loneliness, another moment fear surged through me, and yet another anger boiled in me. Though I initially directed my feelings at my friends, I later saw they were truly directed at God.
Why did you give us these close friends? I cried out to him. Why did you bring us together in such deep friendships only to tear them away from us two years later?
In the wake of that announcement, I’m not sure I loved my friends as well as I would have said I did.
Love Grows with Knowledge and Discernment
On earth, we will never reach a point of loving one another perfectly (because we are each still in our sinful flesh), yet we can always be growing in our love for one another.
The Thessalonians modelled this. In his first letter to them, Paul exclaimed his gratitude for their labor of love (1 Thess. 1:2–3), and in his second letter he declared that their love had grown ever greater (2 Thess. 1:3). Could someone say the same of your love for others? Has your love grown ever greater?
Perhaps we must first consider: How does our love grow? It grows in knowledge and discernment, which can only be produced from Scripture. As Paul wrote to the Philippians, “And I pray this: that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God” (Phil. 1:9–11).
Our love should be based on knowledge—our knowledge of how we were first loved by the Savior (1 John 4:19). It’s according to this love by which God covered us that we love others—with grace, selflessness, and truth. We love one another with knowledge of the truth, always seeking to encourage them in further holiness.
Is your love founded in this kind of knowledge and discernment? What does it look like to live this way?
Allowing God to Lead Them
A week after my dear friend told me they were moving, God led me to a passage in Acts:
While we were staying [in Caesarea] for many days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. And coming to us, he took Paul’s belt and bound his own feet and hands and said, ‘Thus says the Holy Spirit, “This is how the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.” When we heard this, we and the people there urged him not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” And since he would not be persuaded, we ceased and said, “Let the will of the Lord be done.” (Acts 21:9–14)
Like Paul’s companions, I had my own ideas for my friends. I wanted our children to grow up together, to have them lead me through the various seasons of parenthood, and spend years sharing meals in our homes. I wanted my will for my friends, not God’s.
But like Paul’s companions, I must proclaim, “Let the will of the Lord be done.” My life—their life—isn’t about me. It’s about God and his glory. In my limited human abilities, my wisdom is short-sighted by my humanity; I don’t have the sovereignty to craft the future. Yet God does, and he’s working all things together for their good and mine (Rom. 8:28–30), though it may not seem good at the moment.
We must entrust our friends to God, even when it’s not how we pictured it. This is yet another way we love our friends in knowledge and discernment—in recognizing our lack of wisdom, sovereignty, knowledge, and even love for our friends compared to our Heavenly Father. Like Paul’s friends, we can provide our thoughts and pushback, but in the end, we must hold out our hands and say, “Let the will of the Lord be done.”
Perhaps you have friends moving away like I did and must trust that God is leading them toward something better than what you envisioned for them. Or maybe you are watching a fellow parent make different parenting choices than you would, and you wish you were both heading in the same direction but must trust that God has given them wisdom for their own situation, just as he did for you.
Through Faithful Wounds
We can all remember the wounds of an enemy. We flip backward through the pages of our memory and recall a time when an adversary left us wounded, either with knife-like words, attacking our character behind our backs, or breaking our trust. Enemies wound us.
Proverbs, however, talks about another kind of wound. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend,” Solomon wrote, and “profuse are the kisses of an enemy” (Prov. 27:6). This isn’t some kind of mistake or riddle, but a beautiful truth about a godly friendship.
While friends do (and should) encourage and uplift us, they should also create edifying wounds. These wounds aren’t meant to break or destroy us but, through their pain, lead us to growth. Like a vinedresser cutting away the dead vines or the sculptor carving away imperfections, our friendships should sharpen us—but such sharpening isn’t always comfortable. Sin dies hard, especially when we become defensive of it, making the kind chisels from our friends a vicious carving away of who we think we are.
Receiving or holding the chisel hurts. Yet true love seeks to carefully reveal the truth to others in kindness. This means we don’t simply chip away the bad but seek to come alongside and make repairs where possible. For the friend facing sexual sin, we can be an accountability partner and reach out to them before and after dates. Or for a fellow mom struggling to keep her anger at bay, we can offer to give her a break by watching her kids or offer ways we’ve learned to keep our calm.
If you must pick up the chisel, remember the love of God. Remember with what grace and love he held you as he disciplined your heart. Use that same love as you seek to faithfully wound your friend with the truth. Be ready for their defensiveness, and if such defensiveness causes strife, remember that God is still glorified by your faithfulness to his Word.
When we feel the sharp, carving edge, we must remember the love our friend bears for us, and the kindness of God for providing us with such a friend who is brave enough to point out our sin and help us detangle from it. Don’t allow the pain of this faithful wound to drive you away from your friend, but instead bring you into deeper Christian fellowship.
More Painful, Yet More Glorifying
This kind of friendship sounds a lot more painful, doesn’t it? We would have less heartache if we could mold our friends to do our will, orchestrate their lives ourselves, and never need to tell them a difficult word. Yet that isn’t God’s way for us. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me,” Jesus said. “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matt. 16:24–26).
Loving our friends with knowledge and discernment is another way to pick up our crosses. We may forfeit the whole world and all its comforts, but we can trust that bringing glory to God is far more worth it.