Holy Friendships: Loving Everyone, Entrusting aFew

We live in a world where friendship can sometimes feel like a numbers game. We can have hundreds of social media connections, dozens of acquaintances, and countless people we interact with throughout the week. Yet, despite all these connections, genuine friendship—virtuous friendship—is something much rarer.

As Christians, we are called to love everyone. But that doesn't mean we are called to be equally close to everyone.

There is an important distinction between loving our neighbor and entrusting our heart. We can be kind, welcoming, generous, and charitable toward anyone we meet while still recognizing that only certain relationships are suited for deeper intimacy. Learning to navigate that distinction is an important part of growing in wisdom and virtue.

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What Makes a Friendship Holy?

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Friendship is a natural human good. We were not made to walk through life alone, and Scripture repeatedly shows us the importance of companionship, encouragement, and mutual support. But not all friendships have the same purpose or depth.

The ancient philosopher Aristotle recognized three basic kinds of friendship: friendships of utility, pleasure, and virtue.

A friendship of utility exists because two people benefit one another in some way. Think of business partners who work well together, coworkers who help each other succeed, or neighbors who exchange favors. A friendship of pleasure is based on the enjoyment we find in another person's company. We like the same activities, laugh at the same jokes, or simply enjoy spending time together.

Neither of these types of friendship is necessarily bad. In fact, most of our relationships will naturally contain elements of both. We can be grateful for the neighbor who lends us a hand or the friend who always makes us laugh.

But Aristotle considered friendship based on virtue to be the highest kind. In this friendship, we don't merely love someone because of what she can do for us or because we enjoy being around her. We love her for who she is and desire what is truly good for her.

This gives us a helpful way to think about holy friendship. A holy friendship is not necessarily one in which two people spend every conversation discussing prayer or theology. Rather, it is a friendship in which both people genuinely desire what is good for the other—and ultimately, what leads the other closer to God.

A holy friend can laugh with us, enjoy ordinary life with us, and share our interests. But she can also encourage us when we are discouraged, challenge us when we are making excuses, and remind us of what is true when we have lost sight of it.

Holy friendship is not about finding someone who always agrees with us. It is about finding someone who loves us enough to want our good.

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Love Everyone, Entrust a Few

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The life of Jesus gives us a beautiful example of how love can be both generous and personal. Jesus loved everyone. He welcomed strangers, healed the sick, showed compassion to crowds, forgave sinners, and even commanded us to love our enemies. Yet His perfect charity did not mean that every relationship had the same degree of intimacy.

We see this in the different circles of relationship throughout His earthly ministry. There were the crowds who followed Him, the larger group of disciples, and the Twelve Apostles. And within the Twelve, Peter, James, and John shared a particular closeness with Jesus, accompanying Him at moments such as the Transfiguration. Jesus also had a special friendship with Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. The Gospel of John even tells us plainly that Jesus loved them.

Jesus' example reminds us that loving everyone does not mean being equally intimate with everyone.

This is an important distinction in our own friendships. We should strive to be friendly, kind, welcoming, generous, and charitable toward the people God places in our lives. We can greet the new person at church, make conversation with a neighbor, encourage a struggling mother, or share a laugh with someone we encounter during the day. This is part of loving our neighbor.

But friendliness and intimacy are not the same thing.

Intimacy involves opening our hearts. It means allowing another person to see parts of us that we don't share with everyone. Our deepest struggles, wounds, fears, hopes, and joys require a certain degree of trust—and trust is built over time.

We don't have to tell everyone everything about ourselves in order to be authentic. We don't have to disclose our most personal struggles simply because someone asks. And we don't have to feel guilty for recognizing that a particular relationship isn't one in which we should share our deepest vulnerabilities.

This isn't uncharitable. It is prudence. Prudence helps us recognize that different relationships call for different levels of openness and trust. We don't have to tell everyone everything about ourselves in order to be authentic, nor should we feel guilty for recognizing that a particular relationship isn't one in which we should share our deepest vulnerabilities.

In fact, recognizing the difference between friendliness and intimacy allows us to love both more faithfully. We can offer genuine charity to everyone without expecting every relationship to become a close friendship, and we can give our deepest trust to those who have demonstrated that they can receive it well.

That trust is what allows a friendship to become something more than companionship. When we know that someone genuinely loves us and wants what is good for us, we can allow her to speak honestly into our lives—and we can be willing to hear it.

Related: On a Mission: Living Out The Great Commission as a Disciple of Jesus

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