Joy in Faithful Friends | Philippians 2:19-30
Do you have any real friends? I’m not talking about Instagram followers, golf buddies, or people who hit the like button when you post a vacation pic. I mean ride or die friends. The 2am friends. The ones who show up when your world falls apart. Here’s the tragedy: we are the loneliest people in history. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness an epidemic. Let that sink in. According to their research, being lonely has the same health effect as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness is deadlier than obesity and increases your risk of early death by nearly 30%. It’s not just older adults. Nearly 1 out of 2 Americans says they are lonely. Gen Z, the most digitally connected generation in history is also the loneliest generation ever. A recent survey found that 61% of young adults report feeling “serious loneliness” on a regular basis. Think about that: while we scroll, text, snap, and stream, people are starving for actual human connection. We’ve got more tools to connect than any people in history, yet we are more isolated than ever. Why? Because you can’t algorithm your way into intimacy. You can’t Netflix-binge your way into belonging. You don’t drift into friendship, you build it, invest in it, fight for it. (If you want to have friends, you got to be friendly.) The good news: there is a joy that comes from having faithful friends. Keller: A friend is someone who “lets you in and never lets you down.” People who walk in, when everyone else walks out, they pray with you and carry the weight with you. That’s what Paul is showing us in Philippians 2 through Timothy and Epaphroditus: friends who are “real, tested, and faithful.”
There are many themes in the book of Philippians, but big themes is the church having unity for the sake of the gospel. For us to “stand firm, standing side by side for the sake of the gospel.” In chapter 2, Paul has told us how to have this kind of unity by “doing nothing from selfish ambition or conceit…not just looking out for our own interests, but the interest of others.” He gives us the ultimate example of that in the person of Jesus and now he is going to give us personal examples of two of his faithful friends. Faithful friends fuel our faith and help advance the gospel. We need faithful friends, and we need to be a faithful friend. In these verses, we see three important relationships we need to have and what a faithful friend looks like. A faithful friend intentionally invests, genuinely cares and sacrificially serves.