What Are Friends For?
Our summer men’s group has been reading and discussing Matt Smethurst’s Tim Keller on the Christian Life. As I reflected on the chapter about friendships, I saw a pattern.
God’s love was not merely an objective reality for mankind. From the seed of his agape (unconditional, self-sacrificial) love, he always summons us in three directions: Out, Up, and Down. Never In. All three work together and constantly move back and forth:
© Matt Taylor
The Out-Up-Down pattern binds Christian relationships in a unique way:
God summons us Up in a level-up kind of way through the relationships among the ekklesia. Through those leaders over us, his creates in us a cognitive dissonance where the mere presence and Word-speak among the body of Christ draws our attention vertically. Many believers might consider this Sunday-centered experience as the center of their Christian life. But this is why Upward, alone, cannot be our only focus.
God always sends us Out on mission into the world. This is actually our purpose (Ephesians 2:10). This occurs through the roles he’s given us (Christian, parent, child, boss, employee, ministry leader, etc.). When we only stay Upward, we tend to feel a kind of plateau in our faith journey. We form certain bonds through mission differently than the Upward sphere. God creates communitas through mission. Communitas is that flavor of community that He forms when a group of people share a mission together. If you’ve ever been on a sports team or a short-term mission trip and experienced this magnified bond within a short time frame, that’s communitas.
But God also calls us DOWN. He roots the gospel in our soul’s soil over time through the context of the Christian community (differently than the relationships of the Sunday gathering context). These friendships are the ones where we can be more vulnerable about our struggles to follow Jesus. They are people who provide safety, and with whom we feel truly seen and heard. But these close relationships don’t let us stay where we are at. They summon us to deeper belief and conformity to Christ. They nudge you to find your identity as a fellow believer in a community and, as Lewis notes, keep the focus continually turning outward from the friends themselves.
This image isn’t perfect (just some visual ideating).
But one thing I know for sure: Each of these relationships get our eyes off ourselves—our pride. They kill the Me Monster, that Mayor Humdinger constantly crying, “What about Me?!”
One might say, “But don’t each of these (Up-Down-Out) impact me?” Of course they do.
But here is the irony. God new-creation’d you to provide purpose through community: to serve in the trenches of the world alongside others, to nourish one another, and to commit to leveling up as apart of others. The irony is these three kinds of relationships, not merely make your life about IN. No, God designed much blessing to your own life through these three “eyes-out” frames.
