Two Types of Friends

By Tim Connaughton

There are two types of close friends.  There is the one type of close friend that accepts you just as you are, and understands you, and readily comes to your defense every time.  And there is another type of close friend who offends you - the type of close friend who tells you that you are wrong, who doesn’t shrink back from holding you to a standard - whether or not you appreciate it in the moment!  

I am sure that we have all had these two types of friends in our lives at some point or another, but it highlights a far more serious matter in our relationship with Jesus.  We have to be very careful of reducing Jesus down to being just “our best friend,” or the one who “has our back.”  Why is this dangerous?  Don’t we want to consider Jesus to be closer than any other person in our life?  Yes, we absolutely want Him to be closer than any other relationship in our life - so long as we don’t make the same error that the folks in Mark chapter 6 (v. 3) made:

            "'Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?'

And they took offense at him."

It is hard to believe that there is anything that can stand in the Lord’s way. In this section of scripture He had just come from healing, calling disciples, teaching multitudes, commanding the wind and waves, setting the demon possessed free, and even restoring a girl to life. (Mark ch. 1-5) But here, in this setting, in His hometown, where He was so well known, this is the tragic verdict: 

"And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief.

And he went about among the villages teaching."   V. 5-6a

We must be careful about our willingness to only have Jesus around as long as He doesn't point out the lame and diseased parts of our life. Here we are warned so clearly concerning our tendency to embrace the Lord when He’s familiar and even does something for us (they remembered Him as their carpenter) - but then to reject Him when He begins to illuminate the spiritual problems in our life. It is good to have Jesus near, but only if He is allowed to be Lord.