The Bible Edge
Everyone needs an Edge, Believers can have the Bible Edge
Proverbs 18:24
A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
Yesterday the Bible Edge was to be friendly. Today, how can you know if someone is a true friend? The Bible has an edge for that…there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. In other words, an ex-friend was never a true friend in the first place. There are many that are friendly, there are few true, lifelong, in thick and thin, type friends.
Someone once said that you can always tell who your true friends are by being in trouble. For those who pretend to be your friend will always line up against you. Not that there are never times that friends are on different sides of an issue, not at all. But when a friend is in trouble, true friends run in while all the others are running out. Brothers are brothers through no choice of their own. There is something natural in the closeness of siblings. But a friend who has chosen to be a friend, they have done just that, they chose you as a friend.
David and Jonathan were such friends. Their hearts were knitted together in friendship. Even to the point of great testing their friendship stood. Jealousy could not separate them, family pride, riches, nor misgivings. They stayed friends throughout their story. If there are those in your life that are closer to you than your siblings, that friendship is to be valued above many others.
Socrates gave some good advice about friendship, he said: “Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.” Old, solid, true friends are like old shoes. They are comfortable and the easiest on the feet.
Friends though can be trying at times. Proverbs 27:6 tells us this: Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. In an age where the worldly pressure is to dump any who do not see things, believe things, or hold to the things just like you do, this thing of the wounds of a friend is an unapproved thought. But the world and all that is therein does not fully understand the Bible teachings of true friendship. The world may disapprove of the type of friendship the Bible teaches, but then again, the Bible disapproves of the type of friendship the world promotes.
In God’s Word there are 99 verses that mention the word “friend” and all its derivatives. Suffice it to say that God is for friendship. So much so that He sent His Son to earth not only to be our sacrifice for sins, but also to be our friend. He, after all, is truly the friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
William Howe, Ph.D.