In Search of Perfect Friendship

February 1, 2023 | Yoska Guta TD ‘25

image description: hand reaching out in sky

After coming to the States at the age of 4, I moved around several times and attended a total of five different schools. Right before I switched to my third school, my mother sat me down for a conversation on the importance of making friends. She had noticed that it wasn’t exactly a priority for me before. I don’t remember much about this conversation, but I do remember her briefly listing the qualities of a good friend—kindness, patience, honesty, loyalty, and the like—qualities she emphasized I should have, and not just look for in others. 

On my first day at that new school, I met a girl in my science class. She was the smart, welcoming girl everyone loved. I didn’t quite know if she had all the other traits my mother described, but I figured if I had them, then there was no reason why this friendship wouldn’t work. And it did, for a little while at least. We would eat lunch together and partner up for class activities. She would save me a spot in line and I’d bring her an extra snack bar. As far as I could tell, these were the early stages of what would one day become a lifelong friendship. But one morning, I arrived at school expecting to find my friend, only to realize that somewhere between saying good-bye last afternoon and seeing each other that morning, she had decided we weren’t friends anymore. I couldn’t figure out why. 

Although this is just a minor example of a failed friendship, I believe each of us can identify similar experiences in our own lives. Maybe someone we considered a close companion let us down or even betrayed our trust. And while we may all try, again and again, to find that perfect friendship, this brokenness tends to follow us into every relationship. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think our fallouts with others are due to the flaws of a select few individuals. Rather, this constant failure is due to a deep insufficiency that runs rampant within each of us. One that prevents us from being, and finding that whole and perfect friend that we all seek. 

But this was not always the case. 

Christianity's narrative about humanity's origins describes a time when we lived in perfect harmony. This is outlined in the first book of the Old Testament, specifically in Genesis 1:26 where God creates Adam, giving him purpose and instruction on how to live. Adam receives dominion over the Garden, responsibility to name and care for everything around him, and one commandment: to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet God, noticing Adam’s loneliness, says “It is not good that the man should be alone,” and declares that “[He] will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18, ESV). Even though the animals, like Adam, were a part of creation, they were not the kind of companion he needed (Genesis 2:21, ESV). When God finally creates Eve and unites her with Adam, there is harmony in the Garden and between them. They were naked and unashamed, an illustration that indicates that they were completely pure, lacking any hidden malice or deceit.     

Interestingly enough, the very first people to get friendship right were also the very first people to mess it up. Not even a chapter after Adam and Eve’s union, this display of perfect harmony is lost when they eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil— the one thing God asked them not to do. As a result of their disobedience, shame and accusation emerge, causing them to hide from God, and turn against each other. But, the hostility we see between Adam and Eve did not emerge in isolation from their hostility with God. When Adam sinned, he broke God’s trust—and in fracturing his friendship with God, he also ruined his friendship with Eve. From that moment on, despite every effort we make, humans have found themselves both in enmity with God and strife with each other. 

In this same manner, the Christian believes that the insufficiency and tensions we see in our friendships today are a consequence of humanity's loss of friendship with God. Since that moment in the Garden, humans have continued to break God’s heart and betray His trust. And as we build on this fractured foundation, many of us, much like the girl in my 4th grade class, end up hurting and letting one another down too. But no matter how hard we try, or how many times we apologize, we cannot create that original, perfect environment again. Yet, the Christian finds hope in what Jesus can do and has done for the brokenness we see. 

Christ lived perfectly. And because He did, God chooses to forgive our brokenness and forget the ways in which we have fallen short in our friendship towards Him. In Christ, He grants us a true second chance. What is more, He invites us into a new friendship where we can be in perfect harmony again. But this harmony is maintained not by what we do, but by what He does: continuously covering our failures by His grace and mercy. In this new friendship, we are able to once again enjoy the privilege of knowing a truly good friend. The best kind of friend a person could imagine. One who perfectly embodies each of those traits my mother told me about and more.

Our greatest encouragement is that He did not sit disinterested, expecting us to grovel our way back to Him, one good deed at a time. Rather, He became like us: taking on flesh and blood, and dwelling among the very people who betrayed Him. He then died for us, absorbing the penalty we deserved. This is what Jesus is referring to when He tells His disciples that “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13, ESV). Jesus is calling them (and us) friends. He does not call us traitors or liars or murderers or even sinners—not because we don’t deserve those titles, but because that’s what love does. In this love, the betrayed looks at the betrayer and says I call you friend. We see this heart in Romans 5:7-8 too: “For one will scarcely die for a righteous person–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (ESV).

Do we love like this, though? I’d argue mostly not, and reasonably so. For many people, what may be gained in receiving this kind of love does not nearly compare to what may be lost in giving it. The thought of loving in this way fills us with anxiety and fear, possibly because we recognize a brokenness in others that almost guarantees our disappointment. But interestingly enough, Christ, though seeing that same reflection of brokenness in us, still extended this love to us. A love that was bookended by sacrifice and death. One that continually gave itself up for us, committedly willing our good, especially when it came at a high cost. 

Yet, He did not extend this love for us to simply receive it, but to also reciprocate it. Jesus outlines what this reciprocation looks like, in John 15:12, saying “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (ESV). He further emphasizes this commandment by qualifying it as the condition of friendship with Him (John 15:14, ESV). And then again, in verse 17, Jesus says “These things I command you, so that you will love one another” (ESV). Three times in the span of just six verses, He explicitly establishes a link between friendship with God and friendship with others: we are His friends if we do what He commands, and He commands that we love each other as He loves us.

When God created Adam in the Garden, He also saw it fit to bless Him with a companion suited just for Him. And in this blessing, God established perfect friendship between Him, Adam, and Eve. Unfortunately, this harmony was forfeited because of their disobedience, and since that moment, humans have struggled to recover what was lost. But just like in the Garden, we see in the Gospel that God, through Christ, redeems both our friendship with Him and lovingly extends that redemption to our friendships with one another. Reconciliation between us and God is not intended to just be a means to an end–better friendship with others. But, the latter will always follow the former for anyone who is in true friendship with God. For it was never God’s will that man should be alone.