Some thoughts on friendship Andrew Barry

Philip Griffin05/02/2009 04:03 AM

I wonder if part of the reason as to why there are whole ‘tribes’of people in our cities who don’t know a Bible based Christian is because we aren’t very good at making friends with people who are different from us.  We tend to struggle to make friends with the homeless, those who have limited social skills or who are new to Australian culture, and those who do things differently from us or who like different things.  I think I fall down in this too often.

Thanks Philip.  I’m interested in what you say about tribes of people in Sydney. 

I think immigrants can find it very hard to meet Christians, but I’m not sure about the homeless.  Almost every city dwelling homeless person I have spoken to seems to have some contact with christian people.  But those in ‘ghettos’ and temporary housing (ie. trailer parks - which we do have in Sydney) seem much more inaccessible.

On a different aspect of this topic.  We had a very interesting discussion at our Bible Study last week about how Christ’s death could be described as both:

      a. Dying for his friends. (John 15:13)
      b. Dying for those who were his enemies. (Romans 5:10)

Hold these two together and questions remain.  I think the answer to these questions adds such a richness to our understanding of the atonement.

      1. Did Christ die for his enemies or his friends?  In what way are we at the same time his friends and his enemies?
      2. What is the greatest kind of love - love for enemies or love for friends?  Remember that Christ says it is the latter (John 15:13) but also remember what he says about enemies (Matthew 5:43-48).

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Paul is one of the Staff Editors at Matthias Media. He is married to Cathy and has three fantastic kids. He loves student ministry, reading, writing music and playing the saxophone, and is looking forward to meeting Jesus face to face.

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