CBC Classes

CBC Classes

August 17, 2024

Role: Friend

Speaker: Mike McLay Series: Men's Breakfast: Godly Excellence in a Man's Roles

Mike McLay taught us about a man’s role as “Friend.” 

The perfect model of friendship is the perfect eternal love and companionship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Christ’s death to save us was the ultimate act of friendship.  

Before we can be true friends with others, we must have friendship with God.  We cannot be friends with the world (James 4:4-5), because friendship with the world is hostility to God.  We must obey Him to have friendship with Him.  

Friendship between people is “a reciprocal relationship between two followers of Christ who share a bond of mutual affection for each other through companionship and/or marriage.”   A friendship is lived out by:  

  • Liking and understanding each other, and sharing interests 
  • Spending time together
  • Helping and protecting each other
  • Being there even in adversity (Proverbs 17:17)

By observing the friendship within the Trinity, considering Christ's friendship with us in saving us, and by studying His word, we can learn what we need for excellence in our role as "friend.":    

  • Love one another, as God loved us, and be prepared to “lay down our lives for our friend” (John 15:12-17) which may not include dying, but it does include laying aside our own priorities to meet our friends’ needs.  
  • Demonstrate the attributes of Phillipians 2:1-8 and Colossians 3:12-17.  
  • Do not gossip (Proverbs 17:9), and don’t even listen to gossip (Proverbs 20:19), because gossiping creates division and destroys trust among friends.  
  • “Just be there” in person with our friend when needed, even in silence, just as Job’s friends sat with him for seven days without words being exchanged.  
  • Social media “friendship” is a pale imitation of true face to face friendship.  
  • Lovingly confront our friends when we see then straying from the truth, as Paul confronted Peter.  (Galatians 2:11-13).  We should likewise accept and welcome such correction from our friends when we are wrong.  
  • Reflect Christ in our lives,  so that we can say to our friends (including those we mentor), as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.” 
  • We should know when to depart from a friend who becomes openly hostile to the truth, to protect ourselves because “bad company corrupts good morals” (1 Corinthians 15:33) and to help them to understand their need for change.  

other Messages in this series