Are you a Friend like Jonathan?

After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. 1 Samuel 18:1

This verse appears in Scripture just after David killed Goliath and just before his rather meteoric rise to prominence in Israel. It also marks the point from which Jonathan enjoyed a deep friendship with David, while Saul entertained jealousy and paranoia that opened him up to fits of madness, increased his vulnerability to being politically manipulated, and distracted him from being the godly leader he was anointed to be. Why the difference? David’s spirit tended to put God’s interests before his own, as did Jonathan’s, so they were “one in spirit” while Saul definitely was not.

Gore Vidal once wrote, “Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.” That sounds shocking, but is it really so foreign to us? It’s so easy to measure our success or our worth against another’s, but this is Saul-thinking, not Jonathan-thinking. Jonathan could have viewed every success of David’s as a threat to his family, himself, and his future. Instead, he was free to rejoice when God worked blessing through his friend instead of himself because his spirit put God’s interests ahead of his own. Saul-thinking lacks security in the Father’s love, so it competes with others to find an alternative security. When I hear it in me, it’s time to find out why my spirit is out of whack and why I’m not “one in spirit” with others.

There is a great model of friendship that looks like a stone doorway. God is the threshold. The uprights of the doorway are time spent together and effort invested in the friendship. Finally, the arch of the doorway is formed from love, loyalty, encouragement, sharing, sacrifice, fun, and challenge. David and Jonathan are a wonderful illustration of this kind of friendship. Let’s become a community marked by deep friendships built solidly on this model. Can we build relationships that are “one in spirit” because we put God above our own interests? Can we invest in those relationships with the same level of love with which we love ourselves?

Submitted by Joel Ladd, Director of Student Development