A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
Hardship is, to put it tautologically, the unpleasant part of life. It’s the part where you or I run headfirst into a brick wall, bounce off, and have to ask, ‘Will I climb over? Will I turn back?’ When we get to that point, having somebody beside us, a friend or a brother, is a source of strength. Friendship and brotherhood, in all its facets, is something modern society has a little trouble understanding, to be honest; there’s a reason C.S. Lewis spoke of those who mixed up romantic-sexual love and friendship’s love. So what is the nature of a friend?
A friend is one who stands alongside. It is not a transaction, though it gives to both parties and requires giving by both. It is not a leaching, though the benefit may well be uneven, if tallied, at least in man’s eyes. It is not romance. That last, in particular, we see modernity fail to understand. How many times have people looked at the friendship of Sam and Frodo in The Lord of the Rings and asserted it must be homosexual-romantic? Yet though deep friendship shares some elements of romance- trust, affection, mutual knowledge, and persistence- it is basically different, lacking the sexual element, lacking the bond of two in one flesh (Matt. 19:5). It is two flesh alongside, not two becoming one, not two pretending to become one.
In this world full of slipperiness, uncertainty, and treachery, we have a hunger for something to hold on to, for somebody to trust. A friend, a brother, he can be this; a friend, a sister, she can be this. Yet such relationships do not arise from nothing, nor do they survive without sustenance. Friendship is built from care for another in conjunction with growing relationship, with interaction and learning and working alongside; it is maintained by all this and by concerted righteousness, concerted care for the other under God.
Such relationships are found first closest to home. In siblings, brothers and sisters, we find our first models of friendships, relationships so close that they pass friendship, so that we call the greatest of friendships ‘brotherhood.’ These relationships, in reality, are sometimes (more often than we would wish) hideously broken, riven apart by a history of slights and rancor, of sins that break from two directions: going outward, because the sinner refuses to repent in full, to do more than ‘regret’ without intent to change; coming from without, because the one sinned against cannot find how to reconcile, perhaps from his own sin, perhaps because the first sinner will not allow it.
Still, family, even in its sin-marred state, is historically among the greatest strengths given to mankind. It is in the loyalty of family and in loyalty thereto that men have done deeds beyond any mere self-ambition could have motivated. It is to save the souls of their children that fathers and mothers have died in the flame; it is to provide and witness to their siblings that brothers and sisters have suffered torture at the hand of the wicked, intentional or incidental. When hardship comes, brothers and sisters, by the grace of God, can be those who hold us against the storm, who bear a part of its brunt, who lift us back to our feet as its second wave arrives. There is a reason that those who hate God’s order for the world will turn against the family as their greatest foe (see: any totalitarian ideology- the command for the state to usurp education is the last plank of the Communist Manifesto).
For the Christian, too, there is another place to look for such relationship. We have the church of God, our brothers and sisters in Christ (Eph. 6:18; 1 Thess. 3:2). We are too often alienated from the body of the church in practice, but by His blessing we must see and seek the potential of the body, potential for those who are of one body in Him (Rom. 12:4-5) to be to each other new life and strength, eyes and hands and feet for the blind, the maimed, the lame. In the dysfunction endemic to modernity, of course, this is a tall ask, particularly if we seek the full reality and not merely performative emptiness, ritualistic friendliness without true friendship. Yet, in the grace of God, it is possible.
Finally, though, we have the friend and brother who has undergone our suffering and, as we could not, has triumphed in our place: Christ, the first-fruit of salvation (1 Cor. 15:20). Christ is the first among God’s children, God as we are not but man as we are, so that we are co-heirs with Him (Rom. 8:17). This is no small things; more, He has not abandoned us, as mannish friends may from sin or finitude. No, Christ our brother, our friend, our Redeemer, stands to interceded in heaven, to interpose against the wrath of God and declare to His Father (our Father (Is. 64:8)) that by His blood that wrath has already been born, that justice is the giving to us of the bliss due to Him (Rom. 6:5). Thus:
“What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear! What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer.”
God bless
Written by Colson Potter
Quote from ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus,’ by J.M. Scriven.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
