Foundation of Friendship (Part 1)

You had to cancel that coffee date with your friend. 

You stick to the safe subjects when you talk, because bringing up “that” topic didn’t go so well last time. 

You wondering if your last text came across as too distant…or too snarky…or you realize you forgot to answer at all.

We’ve all been there. Friendship is hard. Busyness and tension pile up. So what do we do?
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What does it look like to maintain a gospel-centered friendship through thick and thin? Colossians 3:12-17 gives a clear picture of how to relate to one another. 

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

This seems impossible, doesn’t it? These are tall orders: be compassionate, humble, patient, forgiving, thankful. Maybe it would be easier if we could just pick a couple and not worry about the rest. Except...I don’t think that is how it works! So, how do we do this?

Remember, God doesn’t give us commands that are impossible to follow. Even before we read the list of things to put on, we are reminded that we are chosen, holy, and beloved. We know that we can practice these things in our daily lives because God has already chosen and loved us. We are holy because of what God has done for us. Many of these traits are also found in the “fruit of the Spirit” passage in Galatians 5. They are commands that we must follow, and the reason we can do this is because the Spirit produces them in us. The heart transformation that begins when we first believe will continue to shape us more and more each day. 

God’s Word commands us to put on these traits. God’s Spirit produces them in us. And God’s Son lived out these traits. As we read the gospels, we see Jesus demonstrate these qualities through his words and his actions. By studying the gospels, we can learn from him as we seek to be obedient. We won’t do this perfectly like Jesus did. And our friends will mess up too. That’s why forgiveness is one of the traits!

These commands are given to the believers in the Colossian church and they are written in the second person plural. In other words (for those who aren’t language nerds) Paul is saying ,“You all put on”. We are all expected to live out each of these traits. 

Before we look at how to practically implement these traits, it’s important to understand that these are not personality characteristics. Paul and the believers in Colossae did not have an Enneagram profile or a Meyers-Briggs personality test to figure out how to live in harmony with one another.  He doesn’t instruct us to learn each other’s “love language”. The New Testament believers didn’t have these tools and we don’t need them to know how to love others well. Reading and studying Scripture (both personally and together) shapes how we build relationships.  

 If we are shy, that is not an excuse to neglect compassion. If we are outgoing, we are still called to be humble and patient. We shouldn’t only pursue friendships with people who have similar personalities; we are meant to learn from one another. 

Notice that the thread that binds all these qualities together is love. Love for God and love for others makes each of these possible. Because we are united in him as his chosen ones, his love for us compels us to share that love with others. And in the end, he receives the glory and the thanks for all he does through our relationships with one another. 

So now that we’ve laid the foundation, we can get into what these look like in real life. This is where it gets practical…and personal.  We’ll build more on these principles in the next Anchored Hope post.

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