What is true friendship

1.What is true friendship?

True friendship does not grow inconsiderate towards one another

True friendship does not owe you happiness.

True friendship does not give you more room to show disrespect to one another.

True friendship does not make fun of one another by ridiculing one another.

Instead true friendship grows in their respect for one another.

Familiarity does not and should not breed contempt.

I Samuel 20:41-42 NKJV
As soon as the lad had gone, David arose from a  place toward the south, fell on his face to the ground, and bowed down three times. And they kissed one another; and they wept together, but David more so. Then Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, since we have both sworn in the name of the Lord , saying, ‘May the Lord be between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants, forever.’ ” So he arose and departed, and Jonathan went into the city.

2.Jonathan did not ridicule David.

Ridiculing and putting one another down will not foster intimacy.

Jonathan loved David as his own soul.

A friend that ridicules, will not lay down his life for you.

John 15:13 NKJV
Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.

Like a wine which grows rich in time so is their friendship towards one another.

Their friendship and respect grew deeper and not shallow.

They don't grow in disrespect for one another, but their respect for one another grow all the more.

I Samuel 18:1-4 NKJV
Now when he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Saul took him that day, and would not let him go home to his father’s house anymore. Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan took off the robe that was on him and gave it to David, with his armor, even to his sword and his bow and his belt.

3.It is an evil act to gain pleasure by ridiculing your brother.

How to love someone whom you enjoy making fun of ?

It is not fun to ridicule your brother but immaturity to the worst degree.

Matthew 5:21-22 NKJV
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’  But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire.

This is a wicked world that downplay everything.

A depraved world where true friendship is being scorn at.

Values like honor and respect to one another are treated like dirt in this wicked generation.

4.Same principle applies to spouse as well.

This goes the same for husband and wife.

Ephesians 5:28
New King James Version (NKJV)
28 So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself.

No! you don't love your wife by making fun of her and putting her down.

You love her! You don't make fun of one another!

Ephesians 5:33
New King James Version (NKJV)
33 Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Wife respect your husband!

Don't kept putting him down.

Don't bring in the culture of this world.

How is the vow for better or for worst going to fulfil if you continue hating one another.

If you don't hate one another, stop ridiculing one another.

Only the enemy of God ridicule His children.

Have we forgotten that a knife is use to cut. Just as ridicule is used to stab?

The message is very clear.

It is not funny!

Luke 22:63-65 NKJV
Now the men who held Jesus mocked Him and beat Him. And having blindfolded Him, they struck Him on the face and asked Him, saying, “Prophesy! Who is the one who struck You?” And many other things they blasphemously spoke against Him.

5.A fool

If some one calls you a fool and still regard you as a friend, you are indeed a fool if you regard them as a friend.

Proverbs 17:17 NKJV
A friend loves at all times, And a brother is born for adversity.

And blood is thicker than water.

He who mocks a friend is indeed a fool.

Likewise there is no greater fool than for a spouse to put down one another.

For a wise man loves his own body.

6.Do not be a worthless fellow.

A worthless man;a man that realise his worthlessness and insignificance, seek to belittle and ridicule those around him so as to elevate himself in the downfall of others. Flee from such people.

Worthless man are everywhere. There is no where one can run from such people.

There is always a haughty look on their face.

Their tongues are ever ready to spit venom on whoever they come across.

Psalm 10:7-15
Their mouths are full of cursing, lies, and threats. Trouble and evil are on the tips of their tongues. They lurk in ambush in the villages, waiting to murder innocent people. They are always searching for helpless victims. Like lions crouched in hiding, they wait to pounce on the helpless. Like hunters they capture the helpless and drag them away in nets. Their helpless victims are crushed; they fall beneath the strength of the wicked. The wicked think, “God isn’t watching us! He has closed his eyes and won’t even see what we do!” Arise, O  Lord ! Punish the wicked, O God! Do not ignore the helpless! Why do the wicked get away with despising God? They think, “God will never call us to account.” But you see the trouble and grief they cause. You take note of it and punish them. The helpless put their trust in you. You defend the orphans. Break the arms of these wicked, evil people! Go after them until the last one is destroyed.

Romans 3:14 NLT
“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”

~MacArthur
Rom. 3:14 curses. This is quoted from Ps. 10:7. It refers to wanting the worst for someone and publicly expressing that desire in caustic, derisive language.bitterness. The open, public expression of emotional hostility against one’s enemy (cf. Ps. 64:3–4).

~John W. Ritenbaugh
The proud person uses his tongue to put down and to play a game of one-upmanship. In a lot of banter, many remarks are rather on the cutting side. They may be funny, amusing put-downs of somebody's looks, opinions, habits, etc., but they are little bits of pride, maybe a lot of pride, showing through. Such a one is sneering at the other, putting him down. The other side of it is that, as he puts the other down, he elevates himself. The proud uses his tongue to make himself look good or come out on top, even if he has to lie or to distort to do so.

7.Excerpt from The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The first law which Jesus commends to his disciples is the one which forbids murder and entrusts their brother's welfare to their keeping. The brother's life is a divine ordinance, and God alone has power over life and death. There is no place for the murderer among the people of God. The judgement he passes on others falls on the murderer himself. In this context 'brother" means more than "fellow-Christian": for the follower of Jesus there can be no limit as to who is his neighbour, except as his Lord decides. He is forbidden to commit murder under pain of divine judgement. For him the brother's life is a boundary which he dare not pass. Even anger is enough to overstep the mark, still more the casual angry word ( Raca), and most of all the deliberate insult of our brother ("Thou fool").

Anger is always an attack on the brother's life, for it refuses to let him live and aims at his destruction. Jesus will not accept the common distinction between righteous indignation and unjustifiable anger.1 The disciple must be entirely innocent of anger, because anger is an offence against both God and his neighbour. Every idle word which we think so little of betrays our lack of respect for our neighbour, and shows that we place ourselves on a pinnacle above him and value our own lives higher than his. The angry word is a blow struck at our brother, a stab at his heart: it seeks to hit, to hurt and to destroy. A deliberate insult is even worse, for we are then openly disgracing our brother in the eyes of the world, and causing others to despise him. With our hearts burning with hatred, we seek to annihilate his moral and material existence. We are passing judgement on him, and that is murder. And the murderer will himself be judged. When a man gets angry with his brother and swears at him, when he publicly insults or slanders him, he is guilty of murder and forfeits his relation to God. He erects a barrier not only between himself and his brother, but also between himself and God. He no longer has access to him: his sacrifice, worship and prayer are not acceptable in his sight. For the Christian, worship cannot be divorced from the service of the brethren, as it was with the rabbis. If we despise our brother our worship is unreal, and it forfeits every divine promise. When we come before God with hearts full of contempt and unreconciled with our neighbours, we are, both individually and as a congregation, worshipping an idol. So long as we refuse to love and serve our brother and make him an object of contempt and let him harbour a grudge against me or the congregation, our worship and sacrifice will be unacceptable to God. Not just the fact that I am angry, but the fact that there is somebody who has been hurt, damaged and disgraced by me, who "has a cause against me," erects a barrier between me and God.

Ephesians 4:29-32 NKJV
Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.

Matthew 27:42
He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.

8.The City of God (Augustine of hippo)
Of the social life, which, though most desirable, is frequently disturbed by many distresses.

We give a much more unlimited approval to their idea that the life of the wise man must be social. For how could the city of God (concerning which we are already writing no less than the nineteenth book of this work) either take a beginning or be developed, or attain its proper destiny, if the life of the saints were not a social life? But who can enumerate all the great grievances with which human society abounds in the misery of this mortal state ? Who can weigh them ? Hear how one of their comic writers makes one of his characters express the common feelings of all men in this matter: “I am married; this is one misery. Children are born to me; they are additional cares.” What shall I say of the miseries of love which Terence also recounts—“slights, suspicions, quarrels, war to-day, peace to-morrow?” Is not human life full of such things ? Do they not often occur even in honourable friendships? On all hands we experience these slights, suspicions, quarrels, war, all of which are undoubted evils; while, on the other hand, peace is a doubtful good, because we do not know the heart of our friend, and though we did know it to-day, we should be as ignorant of what it might be to-morrow. Who ought to be, or who are more friendly than those who live in the same family? And yet who can rely even upon this friendship, seeing that secret treachery has often broken it up, and produced enmity as bitter as the amity was sweet, or seemed sweet by the most perfect dissimulation? It is on this account that the words of Cicero so move the heart of every one, and provoke a sigh: “There are no snares more dangerous than those which lurk under the guise of duty or the name of relationship. For the man who is your declared foe you can easily baffle by precaution; but this hidden, intestine, and domestic danger not merely exists, but overwhelms you before you can foresee and examine it.” It is also to this that allusion is made by the divine saying, “A man's foes are those of his own household,”—words which one cannot hear without pain; for though a man have sufficient fortitude to endure it with equanimity, and sufficient sagacity to baffle the malice of a pretended friend, yet if he himself is a good man, he cannot but be greatly pained at the discovery of the perfidy of wicked men, whether they have always been wicked and merely feigned goodness, or have fallen from a better to a malicious disposition. If, then, home, the natural refuge from the ills of life, is itself not safe, what shall we say of the city, which, as it is larger, is so much the more filled with lawsuits civil and criminal, and is never free from the fear, if sometimes from the actual outbreak, of disturbing and bloody insurrections and civil wars?

Matthew 24:12-14
New King James Version (NKJV)
12 And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. 13 But he who endures to the end shall be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.