While I was preparing last year’s series on liturgy, a paragraph in Abraham Kuyper’s Our Worship caught my attention for an entirely different reason. Kuyper writes:
It is not until individual believers gather together around one table and eat of the same bread and drink from the same cup that they enjoy the unity of the mystical body of the Lord. . . . Whoever partakes of the Lord’s Supper together with people who are neither family members nor friends, confesses by this act that he belongs to the same fellowship, and this very idea of fellowship points to Christ. You do not join them, nor do they join you, but Christ is the one who unites the hearts of all and who, through the sacrament, gives expression to the unity of his mystical body.1
Here Kuyper reemphasizes the point made in my last article: among all our liturgical activities, the table fellowship of the assembly of believers offers the clearest foretaste of the coming kingdom of heaven. But he does more. Kuyper also reads relationships among believers as flowing out naturally from the union that each individually enjoys with Christ. This is radically countercultural. Here I want to try to understand how and why.
The word “individual” means that you or I, as distinct persons before God, cannot be divided into smaller constituent parts. I am indivisible, as are you. But it also works in reverse: you and I cannot merge and become one person. There are only three experiences in this world which come close to bridging that fundamental interpersonal gap, giving us access to the inner life of another human being. The first and most obvious union is the physical relationship of marriage, in which the two become one flesh (Gen. 1:24). But there is a second kind of union, no less real than its bodily counterpart: the power of speech, through which my inner thoughts and ideas find expression through my mouth and enter into the ears and mind of another.2 And there is a third kind of union, known only to the child of God: the mystical operation of the Spirit when we approach the Lord’s table and Christ feeds us with his body and blood (John 6:52–59).3
None of these experiences of interpersonal intimacy are ultimate. They are given to us as pictures and foretastes of a heavenly reality which gathers them all together: the marriage supper of the Lamb, who is the Word made flesh (John 1; Eph. 5; Rev. 21). That union with Christ and one another will be more joyous than marriage, more profound than speech, and more satisfying than any earthly meal. But for now, if we wish to understand earthly relationships with fellow believers, we must begin with reference to the future fulfillment toward which they point.
Friendships Are United in Christ
Union with Christ is the key doctrine of the Christian life.4 It is certainly a key doctrine of the Heidelberg Catechism, which begins with the assertion that we are not our own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death, to our Savior. And if we are united with him, we are necessarily united with one another. This union—not only with Jesus but also with our brothers and sisters—is at profound odds with our natural state, “passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another” (Titus 3:3, English Standard Version). Although converted, we still require a process of gradual instruction and preparation for the spiritual intimacy we will someday enjoy forever. Marriage, friendship, and the Lord’s Supper are temporary institutions that serve just such a purpose.
Moreover, the first two kinds of earthly interpersonal relationships make sense only in light of the third. Marriage and friendship find their highest expression only within the visible communion of Christ. Marriage ceremonies, after all, traditionally take place in the church. And Paul’s command to the Corinthians not to be “unequally yoked” with unbelievers certainly refers to interpersonal associations beyond marriage as well (2 Cor. 6:14). Friendship, though less ceremonious than marriage, is no less at home in the assembly of believers; even the word “companion” means “the one with whom you break bread.” The institutional church is the native ground of Christian marriage and Christian friendship.
This is not to say that we should expect to develop equally deep and intimate relationships with every fellow church member. Congregations that attempt to promote such an environment tend to go off the rails alarmingly. The freedom of the church lies precisely in the fact that it does not require mutual feeling as a ground for membership. The church does not demand liking, only love. Nevertheless, among the members of the body of Christ to whom we find ourselves united, a select few closer relationships ought naturally to develop.
Such friendships will not develop, however, unless we know how to cultivate them. Rev. William Boekestein recently introduced this topic to the pages of The Outlook in an all-too-short article.5 Pressing further into the ideas he raised is my reason for writing.
Friendships Are Rooted in the Church
Unfortunately, discussions of Christian friendship frequently come up against two major obstacles. The first is the tendency to frame discussions of interpersonal relationships primarily in terms of dating, romance, and marriage. Countless Christian authors have rightly argued that the hyper-sexualization of Western culture is eroding the institutions of marriage and the family. What fewer have noted is the collateral damage of this hyper-sexualization, which undercuts the possibility of deep and intimate friendships that are not romantic or sexual in nature. C. S. Lewis predicted the disastrous consequences of a post-Freudian worldview upon Christian friendship in 1960, and time has proven him tragically correct.6 Our society is starved for friendships which, although non-sexual, are no less real, physical, intimate, or life-giving than marriage. This is a powerful opportunity for a strong Reformed and Christian witness in the area of friendship.
The second obstacle, more subtle, is that a therapeutic lens of self-fulfillment may dull and distort our view of friendship.7 Like romance, friendship becomes a casual pastime to which we resort for personal benefit. Having buddies to play games and eat pizza with on a Friday night may be useful for combating loneliness. Having a few hundred or even a few thousand social media connections can boost self-esteem. Yet if friendship is no more than this, we have settled for much too little. Lewis suggested that friendships were under-appreciated in his day because authentic examples were so rare.8 And as long as Christians are publishing relationship advice that sounds much the same as secular pop-psychology books, it seems that the church must continue to struggle for glimpses of the deep and genuine interpersonal relationships to which the Scriptures so clearly call us. Christian friendship does not exist merely for your pleasure; it exists for the flourishing of the church.
Friendships Are Sustained by the Word
Human appetites are beautiful things. Although the Scriptures speak of appetites gone awry, they also celebrate passionate desires for what is truly good and beautiful. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matt. 5:6). “Rejoice in the wife of your youth . . . be intoxicated always in her love” (Prov. 5:18–19). Just as marriage and the Lord’s Supper exist to satisfy particular physical and spiritual appetites, there is a specific appetite that characterizes Christian friendship. This appetite, I submit to you, is for the word. The Word of God, together with the lesser human words that echo, expound, and interpret it, is the vital force that sustains Christian friendship.
Popular culture is accustomed to using the word “platonic” to describe non-sexual relationships. Today, this often implies a degradation. In the time of Plato (who never used the word himself), it implied an exaltation. This pagan philosopher comprehended something of the dignity and majesty of pure friendship founded upon the truth of the spoken word.9 Lewis pictured romantic lovers as staring into one another’s eyes, but he pictured friends standing shoulder to shoulder, contemplating an object of shared affection.10 For believing friends, the ultimate objects of love are Christ, his church, and the glorious truth of the gospel. That common vision fills friendship with boundless joy.
Words of life permeate Christian friendship. On rare occasions, they may come in the form of spoken vows, not unlike the promises of marriage; David and Jonathan present at least one biblically sanctioned example of a covenanted friendship (1 Sam. 18:3). But even friendships which are less official are nevertheless characterized by earnest and intimate conversation about wise living on earth in preparation for joyful living in heaven. “The sweetness of a friend comes from his earnest counsel” (Prov. 27:9). This is anything but small talk. It is talk too large for this world to contain.
For here is the crown jewel in the case for a reevaluation of Christian friendship. The Scriptures announce the abolishment of marriage in the coming kingdom. They say nothing about the abolishment of friendship. Jesus, speaking to his disciples—a motley crew of friends, but friends nonetheless—stated, “I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table” (Luke 22:29). Christian friendship thus prepares us for an otherworldly kind of fellowship which will go on for all eternity in the presence of our greatest Friend and Savior. As Lewis says, our friends “are, like all beauties, derived from Him, and then, in a good Friendship, increased by Him through the Friendship itself, so that it is His instrument for creating as well as for revealing. At this feast it is He who has spread the board and it is He who has chosen the guests.”11
The Lamb’s wedding supper is coming. For now, we have only the hors d’oeuvres. May we make good use of the time to become acquainted with some of our everlasting tablemates.
1. Abraham Kuyper, Our Worship, ed. Harry Boonstra (1911; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 269.
2. If the comparison between speech and marriage sounds overstated, consider that words like “intercourse” and “conversation” were understood as synonyms for much of the history of the English language, referring both to sexual intimacy and to the intimacy of language (see the Oxford English Dictionary). Think of Horatius Bonar’s line from the hymn “Fill Thou My Life”: “In intercourse at hearth or board/With my beloved ones” (blue Psalter Hymnal 449). The editors of the Trinity Psalter Hymnal found it prudent to change this word to “fellowship.” But the similarity remains and is backed up by the Scriptures as well as secular philosophers: the spoken word and the physical act both contain the power of creation and procreation. Although their purposes and contexts differ, they involve similar ethical demands and commitments. See Plato, Phaedrus, trans. W. C. Helmbold and W. G. Rabinowitz (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1956), 71; Augustine’s discourse De Magistro (On the Teacher); Richard Weaver, The Ethics of Rhetoric (Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 1953), 26; and Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word, trans. Joyce Main Hanks (1981; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 53–68. Is this connection not related to the Christian church’s historic insistence that the spoken vows of marriage must precede physical intimacy?
3. In the historic Reformed view, the Lord’s Supper is not just a sign but a seal of a spiritual reality as real as the physical elements: “as surely as I receive . . . the bread and cup of the Lord . . . so surely he nourishes and refreshes my soul for eternal life with his crucified body and poured-out blood.” Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 28, Question & Answer 75.
4. Ken G. Smith, interview by Michael R. Kearney, in Christian Renewal, October 26, 2018, 28.
5. Rev. William Boekestein, “Eight Ways for Men to Make the Friends They Won’t Admit They Need,” The Outlook 69, no. 5 (September/ October 2019): 24–25.
6. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (1960; repr., Orlando: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1991), 60. See Rut Etheridge III, God Breathed: Connecting through Scripture to God, Others, the Natural World, and Yourself (Pittsburgh: Crown & Covenant Publications, 2019), 278.
7. See Ronald C. Arnett, “Self-Fulfillment and Interpersonal Communication?,” Journal of Communication & Religion 1, no. 1 (1978): 23–28; “Therapeutic Communication: A Moral Cul de Sac,” in The Dilemma of Anabaptist Piety: Strengthening or Straining the Bonds of Community?, edited by Stephen L. Longenecker (Bridgewater, VA: Penobscot Press, 1997), 149–59.
8. Lewis, Four Loves, 58.
9. Again, see the Phaedrus for an extended discourse on this topic.
10. Lewis, Four Loves, 61.
11. Lewis, 90.
Michael R. Kearney is a graduate student and research assistant in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. He is a member of Covenant Fellowship Reformed Presbyterian Church (RPCNA) in Wilkinsburg, PA.