Today's Bible Reading: PROVERBS 17:1-19:29
Proverbs 17:17
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
Friends can be fabulous or frustrating. They can be faithful or fleeting. They may bring happiness or hurt, pleasure or pain. Friends are important in our social dynamic. They can help us through times of sadness and sorrow or be the source of our suffering and shame. Solomon helps us to decode our friendship relationships by describing essential elements of a true friendship.
Solomon outlines two things about a real friend. First, He details what a true friend does. He loves. Then, He declares when He does it. He loves “at all times”. A friend loves. This love is unconditional. It is not contingent on the reciprocal love by the friend. It doesn’t find its basis on what may be gained in the relationship. It is not an “I love you if” kind if friendship. It is also no founded on what is given in the friendship. It is not an “I love you because” relationship. This kind of friendship is not constrained by anything or conditioned on anything. It is an “I love you no matter what” kind of friendship.
This is the kind of love that we experience in our relationship with Jesus. His love for us is divine unconditional “agape” love. He loves us. He doesn’t love us because we are good, because "None is righteous, no not one” ( Rom 3:10). He doesn’t love us because we do good, because “there is none who does good no even one” (Ps 14:3). He just loves us, period. He is our true friend.
Further, a real friendship doesn’t sway with the situation or shift with the circumstances. A true friend “loves at all times”. When difficulties, distress or despair arise, this kind of friend remains loyal. This friend doesn’t depart when a disagreement dampers the relationship. They are not like a flock of geese that appear in good weather and depart when the weather turns. They are not just around in happy times and then absent in the hard times. They stick around though thick and thin. Their love stays through the most terrible of storms. They don’t abandon the friendship in adversity. They remain. They stay. That is what true friends do.
Jesus stays. He doesn’t ditch us when we disobey. He doesn’t dismiss us when difficulty defeats us. Our rebellion doesn’t remove His friendship. He remains through our rough patches. He loves at all times. Paul asks, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” (Rom 8:35). Then He answers the question, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39). Jesus loves you “at all times”.
Today thank the Lord for friends that have loved you at all times. Thank Him by name for those friends that have stuck with you throughout your triumphs and tragedies. Thank Him that Jesus is the “real” proverbial friend that loves you no matter what. Ask the Lord to help you be this kind of friend to those in your sphere of influence that they might experience a friend that loves them at all times. Be that friend.
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