Women Friendship - Part 21

Friendship Isn’t Easy

Sometimes it’s tough to be a friend. But a real friend does not shy away from the abrasiveness that comes from rubbing iron against iron, as the proverb describes it. Though it may grate on our nerves, we have to take a risk and hope that our friend of today will still be our friend tomorrow.

Jesus shows us the ultimate commitment of friendship when he says, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Have you ever risked your life for a friend? Are you enough of a friend to anyone that you would dare to risk injury or death for them? These are hard questions, but such questions are the ultimate measure of friendship. Jesus met the test; he went the distance for his friends.

Another person who went the distance for his friend was Jonathan. His friendship with David is one of the most outstanding and moving stories in all of Scripture, perhaps in all of literature. We are introduced to Jonathan’s great friendship to David in 1 Samuel 19. In that chapter the jealous king Saul issues the order to kill David. But Jonathan defies the order. Not only this, he finds David and warns him of Saul’s plot. This puts Jonathan into a position of family disloyalty, but he manages to convince Saul to countermand his order.

In chapter 20 we find out that Jonathan loves David “as he loved himself.” He risks his very life to be David’s friend, because when Saul finds out that Jonathan would be happy to let David become king, he tries to kill Jonathan with a spear, just as he frequently did with David.

Jonathan’s commitment to David was such that he defied and betrayed his own father. In Hebrew culture, this was unthinkable. Jonathan was faced with a tragic choice: to remain a faithful son to his treacherous and ungodly father and thus ensure David’s death, or to remain a faithful friend to David, the “man after God’s own heart,” and thus end the reign of his own family. It was a hard decision, but he chose the latter.

Jonathan got up from the table in fierce anger; that second day of the month he did not eat, because he was grieved at his father’s shameful treatment of David. In the morning Jonathan went out to the field for his meeting with David. . . . Then they kissed each other and wept together—but David wept the most. Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, for we have sworn friendship with each other in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord is witness between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants forever’” (1 Samuel 20:34-35, 41-42, NIV).

Later, when Jonathan was killed in battle with the Philistines, David lamented his passing: “I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women” (2 Samuel 1:26, NIV).

Few are the people blessed enough to know a committed friendship such as Jonathan’s. David calls Jonathan his brother, reminiscent of the verses from Proverbs. Jonathan was closer to David than a brother. He was closer than a wife. Such analogies speak deeply of commitment, for the fundamental bond between brother and brother, or husband and wife, is commitment. Commitment is the word that unlocks the real meaning of friendship.