God is good to extend the blessings and benefits of friendship so it is not just a one-to-one relationship but one that broadens until two families and two circles of relationship have been joined together and fused by a shared love.

There are few blessings in life better than a good friendship. Though most of us count a wide range of people as our friends, most of us have two or three we count especially close and especially trusted. While I was sitting at John MacArthur’s memorial service and hearing his friends tell of their love for him (and his for them), I began to ponder some of the unexpected blessings that have come with both having friends and being a friend. Here are just three that came to mind.

A friend’s spouse. It is unusual for a couple to click perfectly with another couple, though certainly it’s possible. In my experience, it is typical for either the husbands to click and then draw their wives into the friendship or the wives to click and then draw in their husbands. But either way, one unexpected blessing of having friends is developing a friendship with my friends’ wives. These are women I relate to in a way that feels almost brotherly-to-sisterly, a friendship that has Christ in common but also a shared love for another person. A wife will often have a special love and appreciation for her husband’s friends because she sees how they make him a better man. And that friend will often have a special love and appreciation for her because he hears so often of her husband’s love and affection for her. While Christians rightly guard their relationships with members of the opposite sex, the relationship fostered with a friend’s spouse can be especially close and delightful, mediated as it is through a person who is especially loved by both.

Read More