Few realities in human life are as captivating, fulfilling, and elusive as friendship. Most of us have tasted its deep and dynamic potential for good at some point along our journeys, and yet most of us can also testify to having neglected friendship, maybe for years. Maybe for decades. As Drew Hunter observes, “Friendship is, for many of us, one of the most important but least thought about aspects of life” (Made for Friendship, 23). How much time do you spend thinking about your friendships?

Many of us give our friendships less attention than they deserve, and we suffer for it. The absence of good friends slowly starves everything else we do. A husband without good friends will be a worse husband. A mother without good friends will be a worse mother. A pastor, a doctor, a teacher, and an engineer will all be less effective at their callings without the support and camaraderie of friends. And this thread weaves quietly through Scripture. How many saints can you think of who do something worth imitating while friendless?

To be sure, Jesus stormed the grave by himself. It had to be so. And yet even he spent most of his life and ministry with a handful of guys. And as the cross drew near, he said to them, “No longer do I call you servants . . . but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). He may have died alone, but he lived among brothers, because friendship is an essential part of being fully human.

Unnecessary and Vital Love

That being said, friendship is an unusual relationship because it’s not essential to existence. It’s why friendship is so often neglected — and, ironically, why it holds so much power and potential.

C.S. Lewis writes, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival” (Four Loves, 90). We spend tens of hours a week on work because we would die without food and shelter. Friendship isn’t feeding the kids or paying the mortgage. But it can make parenting richer and more bearable, and make a home feel a lot more like home.

We may be able to live — to eat, drink, work, sleep, and survive — without friends, but what kind of life would that be? The truly good life, we all know by experience, is a shared life. Lewis goes on,

Our ancestors regarded Friendship as something that raised us almost above humanity. This love, free from instinct, free from all duties but those which love has freely assumed, almost wholly free from jealousy, and free without qualification from the need to be needed, is eminently spiritual. It is the sort of love one can imagine between angels. (98)

“We may be able to eat, drink, work, sleep, and survive without friends, but what kind of life would that be?”

Unnecessary and angelic — this describes the mysterious reality of friendship. It raises, or even removes, the ceiling on all our other experiences. Most of what we love to do, we love to do all the more with friends. Those who find meaningful friendship experience a nearly super-human life. Why? Because they get to see more of God, and because they get so much more done, together.

Personal Windows into God

How does Christian friendship raise us above the unremarkable rhythms of our humanity? First, by intimately introducing us to more of God’s creativity and supremacy. Those who see him together will see more of him. Lewis captures this capacity of friendship when he writes,

Friendship exhibits a glorious “nearness by resemblance” to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. . . . The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have. (79)

The beauty and worth of God cannot be exhausted by one pair of eyes, by one finite mind and heart. Therefore, two really can see more than one. The more we share of him, the more we have of him. Surely, this is one reason why God plans to redeem people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, right (Revelation 7:9). Because whatever makes each of them unique prepares them to notice and treasure dimensions of Christ that millions of others might miss.

So it is in friendship. As we gaze at God together, over months and years and longer, walking through joys and sorrows, victories and losses, blessings and adversity, we get to see him through each other’s eyes. Worship is communal and contagious. Every human life has the potential to be a unique window into the divine. Because that’s who God is — Father, Son, and Spirit forever adoring and glorifying one another.

Courage in Flesh and Blood

As friendships help us see more of God, though, they also unleash us to live more radically for God. What good have any of us done in the world without the help or encouragement of friends? As you take yourself back through anything you’ve accomplished in life and ministry, and then allow yourself to look around for a minute, what do you see? For many of us, we see faces. The most defining moments of our lives have been most defined not by addresses, degrees, or promotions, but by people — often, by friends.

Hunter highlights the unusual and spiritual productivity of friendship:

One of the greatest gifts we can offer our friends is sheer encouragement. As we listen and light up to their ideas, we stir their souls into action. We lift their hearts and spur them on. Much of what is truly good in the world is the fruit of friendship. (71)

Why did Jesus send the disciples out in twos (Mark 6:7)? Perhaps he was concerned for their safety on the road (a kind of grown-up buddy-system). It seems far more likely to me that he wanted them each to have built-in, by-their-side courage to keep going when ministry got hard. He knew they would do far more good as twelve pairs than they would on twenty-four different paths. He knew they would conquer sin and Satan together in ways they couldn’t alone.

Friendship Isn’t About Friendship

These two insights about friendship — that friends helps us see more of God and that they free us to do more for his glory — explain what makes friendship precious. And what makes it possible. Good friendships, after all, aren’t about friendship, which means we won’t experience them by focusing on them. Again, Lewis, wisely observes,

Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly every about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some interest. (78)

“Good friendships aren’t about friendship, which means we won’t experience them by focusing on them.”

Lovers often find one another looking for love. Friends find one another while chasing something else. They providentially collide while striving after God, while studying his word, while loving their families, while meeting needs in the church, while discipling younger believers, while pursuing the lost. “The very condition of having Friends,” Lewis continues, “is that we should want something else besides Friends. . . . Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers” (85).

If you want to experience real friendship, go hard after God, take bigger risks to glorify him with your life, and then look around to see who’s running with you.

Few things in life are as painful as watching a loved one drift away from Jesus. It may start as a seemingly small departure, nothing to be alarmed about. But one day you realize — and it takes your breath away to realize it — your loved one’s soul has been drifting away. He or she travels further and further away into unbelief and unrepentant sin.

The beginning of James 5:19 happens before your very eyes: “My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth . . .” Here we find the afflictive prepositional phrase — the one that keeps you up at night, sheds your tears, and breaks your heart: “if anyone among you wanders.”

Once he stood beside you as a brother born for the day of adversity. Once she would stay up all night praying with you. Once he even led you to the Lord Jesus. But now what is he? What is she? Shrinking back, lukewarm, rocky soil? Are they going out from us because somehow, someway, they were never truly of us?

The fearful soul that tires and faints,And walks the ways of God no more,Is but esteemed almost a saint,And makes his own destruction sure. (“The Almost Christian”)

Is Isaac Watts right? Are they proving themselves “almost saints”? Are they making their own destruction sure? You feel so helpless as you see them off in the distance. On some days, you may wish to have already been away from the body and at home with the Lord before seeing what your eyes now see. Hope deferred has made your heart sick.

Do you know someone who is wandering away from Jesus? God has a word for you, for us, in the concluding verses of James as he talks to the church of wanderers.

How to Bring Wanderers Back

The foremost thought for everyone who feels the relevance of this topic — you can still hear his voice, see her face, and recall better days — is, How do we bring them back? This is what we want to know — what we need to know. On the face of it, James doesn’t offer much help. Stare with me for clues:

My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back . . . (James 5:19)

Between the wandering and the returning, we have “and.” That’s it. We’re tempted to say, “Brother James, unquestionably you are a master of pith, but please, we need more details! How?”

I now realize that I have underestimated James to question him thus. Perhaps he would answer me, “Brother Greg, did you read my letter? I’ve been attempting this the whole time.” The last two verses are not a clumsy ending to the epistle, but a summary of a main purpose for writing: to bring back sinners from wandering away.

How were some of his recipients wandering? Weren’t so many wandering away from a gospel ethic? James addresses those wandering not foremost through bad thinking, but bad living. Not false doctrine, but false discipleship had led them astray.

Throughout his letter, James introduces us to such characters as Mr. Tossed To-and-Fro, Mr. Quick to Anger, Dr. Loose Tongue, Professor Dead Faith, Lady Soul Adulteress, and Lord Fattened for Slaughter. He points out the City of Useless Religion, the Town of Hearers Only, and the Land of Cozy with the World. He invites us to observe the Church of Faith Absolutely Alone, with its twin elders, Pastor You Sit Here and Pastor You Sit There.

But how exactly does James try to bring wanderers back? I want to commend three steps that attempt to capture his approach. To do so, I’ll draw from his imagery in 5:20. James uses path imagery, writing of an “erring way” or “wandering road” (translated as simply “wandering” in the ESV). A wayward road is in view.

1. Show them their road.

No one is a worse judge of sin than the sinner caught in it. Wanderers can be the last to know they are wandering. James rebukes, admonishes, and instructs to show his readers where they really stand. He shows them their road.

For example, “If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless” (James 1:26). They assume they are good with God, religious; reality disagrees. So we, like him, implore wanderers, “My brother, my sister, do not be deceived!” We too hold up the mirror of God’s word (1:23) to show the sinner the seriousness of his state.

2. Show them the end of the road.

Show them where this road leads. I’ve heard of one pastor who set up a booth at a fair, claiming to know people’s future. When they come, he asks about their faith in Christ and tells them about their future accordingly. James believes in this kind of future-telling.

He shows us the child of our sinful desires growing up to kill us. He holds up dead flowers to show us the end of the rich man perishing in his pursuits. He pictures the defrauder’s heart as fat livestock being prepared for the day of slaughter (James 1:11, 15; 5:5). He shows them the end of the road.

3. Place God upon their road.

Show them their ways in relation to God. An erring path errs because it wanders from him and his standards. A hot temper is not just a hot temper; it is that which does not work God’s righteousness (James 1:19–20). Partiality isn’t just something we don’t hold, but we don’t hold it “as [we] hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory” (James 2:1).

Place God on the road behind them. They need to be “brought back.” Show them that their wanderings are wanderings away from God and his beloved Son. Remind them of their first love.

Place God beside them. They have not outrun him. God stands beside these Jonahs, even now, more willing to welcome them home than they are to return. Even to spiritual adulterers, he offers more grace (James 4:4–6).

Place God before them. Warn them that if they insist on deliberately sinning after receiving a knowledge of the truth — if they plan to trample “underfoot the Son of God” (Hebrews 10:29) — God stands at the door as Judge, and they shall die without mercy. But don’t forget to plead with them to take that other path with a crown of life.

Why Bring Wanderers Back

So, I’ve suggested that we show wanderers the road, the end of the road, and place God upon their road. Yet notice that in these final verses, James does not focus on how to bring back a soul, but rather why. In this very practical book, he ends not with principles but perspective. He wants to inspire them — not just instruct them — to be a community, a church that pursues fellow wanderers.

1. Consider what it means to bring back a wanderer.

Look again at the verses:

My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5:19–20)

Here James wants the rescuer to know that as he successfully brought a sinner back from his sinful road, he saved the wandering soul from eternal death and that, in the wanderer’s returning, his sins are again forgiven before God.

“You, not angels, are given the eternal work of persuading, pleading, pastoring souls back to the narrow way.”

Have you considered what it is to save a soul? James wants you to consider the glory of it. “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,” Jesus taught. “Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). The unbreakable noose was nearly tied around their neck, the divine sword was being sharpened, they were chasing a death unutterably dreadful — and then you talked with them. God used your voice, your concern, your heartbreak, your pleadings, to call them down from the ledge.

Philip Doddridge summarizes it beautifully: “It is as if [James] had said, do but reflect what that is, and you will find your success is its own reward” (The Evil and Danger of Neglecting the Souls of Men, 27). Do you see it? It is such a great thing, an eternal thing, an essential thing, a happy thing to save a soul from death that to do so is its own compensation.

2. Consider whom God uses to bring them back.

James attributes agency to us in a way that may make us slightly uncomfortable. We cover sins and save souls?

Now, he has already attributed saving agency to several things in the letter: the gospel (1:21), faith (2:14), God himself (4:12), and perhaps prayer (5:15). James writes to bring home the utter astonishment, the sweeping grandeur, the vital agency in a Christian’s spiritual care for his fallen brethren. Though we are not the decisive agent, do not edit the verse in your mind and miss the force of James’s actual words: “Let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death.”

Me? Save a soul from death? I cannot seem to save a houseplant from death. We get to be instruments in the eternal destiny of God’s chosen people? What is our life? We are but mists that appear for a time and then vanish — but God uses mists to save souls!

You, not angels, are given the eternal work of pursuing, persuading, pleading souls back to the narrow way. Your tears are to fall. Your prayers are to rise. Your quivering voice is to speak. Your Bible is to be open. Under the sovereignty of God, undying souls exist that will not be in heaven apart from your bringing them back; they will not persevere without your perseverance to save them from death.

3. Consider your joy to bring them back.

Doesn’t James’s logic suggest anything but self-denial for its own sake? He assumes, in presenting to the rescuer the knowledge of his rescue, that the wanderer’s return satisfies the rescuer’s happiness.

Do you want to make a profit in this life? Do you want to make it count? Seek to be used by God to rescue souls. Don’t go down to such and such a town and trade; go down to such and such a town following your prodigal brother there and convince him to return home! Our Father uses famines, but more often he uses brothers and sisters.

To fearful souls that tire and faint,And walk the ways of God no more,God often sends another saint,To make the soul’s salvation sure.

“Beloved, you would not need any other argument, did you know how blessed the work is in itself,” Charles Spurgeon once said.

Would you grow in grace? Then, help others. Would you shake off your own despondency? Then, help others. This work quickens the pulse, it clears the vision, it steals the soul to holy courage; it confirms a thousand blessings on your own souls, to help others on the road to Heaven. Shut up your heart’s floods, and they will become stagnant, noisome, putrid, foul; let them flow, and they shall be fresh and sweet, and shall well up continually. Live for others, and you will live a hundred lives in one. (Pictures from Pilgrim’s Progress, 41)

Few things in life are as painful as watching a loved one drift away from Christ. Yet few things in life give as much pleasure as watching him or her return to Christ in repentance and faith — and to know you played a part. Don’t grow weary in doing such matchless eternal good; keep pursuing.

Audio Transcript

The question today is from an anonymous woman, a young woman, who listens to the podcast regularly. She struggles with the painful memories of her sinful past life. “Dear Pastor John, I’ve been a follower of Christ for a while now,” she writes. “But my conscience still haunts me for all the really bad and dumb things I did when I was younger. Does that mean I am not saved? I’ve prayed for forgiveness many times, talked to pastors and even Christian therapists, but I don’t feel forgiven because the guilt is always there, no matter how much I pray and seek God. I feel far from God and not sure what else to do.”

Oh, how I would like to be used by God to give some measure of relief, freedom, and boldness to our friend.

So, let me start by saying that there’s one thing you said that I don’t believe is true. You said, “I don’t feel forgiven.” That’s true. She said, “I don’t feel forgiven because the guilt is always there.” That’s not true. I’m just going to say, “That’s not true.” The guilt is not always there. The feelings of guilt are always there; the guilt is not there. And if you think that’s quibbling over words, that may be your biggest problem. It’s not quibbling. It’s absolutely essential to distinguish the presence of real guilt and the presence of feeling guilty. Now, I’m not going to say that if you realize this distinction, your problem will go away. It’s not that simple. I know that.

Before the Judge

Let’s try a thought experiment. Suppose you committed many horrible crimes — stealing, adultery, killing, murder, lying to cover it all up. Then you were caught and went to trial, and everybody knew you were guilty — everybody. There was no doubt about it. You deserved to die. And when you came to trial, the judge said, “Not guilty. And you can go free.”

Here’s my question: What would that do for your feelings of guilt? And my answer is nothing. Nothing at all. You would still be guilty. You would know it. Everybody would know it. And you would be miserable for the rest of your life and may well commit suicide.

But wait — wait a minute. Somebody’s going to say, “Isn’t that what Christianity offers, Piper? The judge says, ‘Not guilty. Go free.’ Isn’t that the very heart of Christianity?” And my answer is that it’s not the same. And the reason it’s not the same is that, in our little thought experiment, there’s no substitute. In fact, in ordinary human jurisprudence, there can be no substitute. A mother cannot step in and go to jail for her criminal son, the murderer. As much as she may want to, we won’t allow it.

“It’s absolutely essential to distinguish the presence of real guilt and the presence of feeling guilty.”

But in the way God devised to handle our guilt, our sin, a substitute does in fact work. The defaming of God’s honor through our sin really is repaired when Christ bears our guilt for God’s glory. And the Holy Spirit that is unleashed through the blood of Christ into the lives of sinners really does create new people who now live for the glory of God. So, dear friend, your condition is not like a human judge arbitrarily letting a guilty person off the hook. It’s not like that. God did more, and your guilt is really gone.

Guilt Gone

Listen to these six statements from the Bible that God pronounces over you, and say as I read each one, “I believe that; I believe that,” because these are just straight Bible. Here we go.

He canceled your record of debt, nailing it to the cross (Colossians 2:14).
He sent his Son to be the propitiation (the wrath-removing agent) for your sins (1 John 4:10).
He bore your sins in his body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24).
He was pierced for your transgressions (Isaiah 53:5).
The Lord has laid on him your iniquity (Isaiah 53:6).
He became a curse for you (Galatians 3:13).

Your real guilt — that is, the just liability that you had to be punished for your sins; that’s guilt — is gone. It is no more. Nowhere in the universe does it exist. It’s gone, never to return. “There is . . . now no condemnation for those who are in Christ” because there’s no guilt for those who are in Christ (Romans 8:1).

And you know — and you may be just sitting there rolling your eyes — I haven’t said a word yet about the feelings of guilt, because that’s another issue. They’re not the same. And you need deeply to dwell on the reality of guilt removal.

Five Prayers for Guilt Feelings

So now, what do you do with guilt feelings? Well, I’m going to suggest what maybe nobody has suggested to you, and you can test by the Scriptures whether this is wise. I’m not going to suggest that you focus on getting rid of guilt feelings per se. Can you hear that? That may be surprising. I’m not going to suggest that you focus on getting rid of those guilt feelings per se. I’m going to suggest that you purge or purify or deliver your guilt feelings of every impulse that shouldn’t be there.

And yes, you’re right — that implies that something will be left over of guilt feelings. When I’ve purged them from everything that shouldn’t be there, something’s going to be left over that’s good. It’s good. It’s needed — forever. Now, you may have never heard that from anybody (I don’t know), but I’m saying that guilt feelings are not entirely bad.

You may be saying, “Good grief, you have no idea what they do to me.” Well, I do have some idea, but here’s my suggestion. You should ask God to purge your guilt feelings of five realities that can be taken out of your guilt feelings and see what’s left.

First, pray like this: “Father, take out of my guilt feelings every impulse that makes me feel hopeless, because I know hope is commanded, and you have given us precious and very great promises to feed our hope on, like ‘I will work everything together for your good’ (Romans 8:28). So, take out of my guilt feelings everything that makes me feel hopeless.”

Second, “Take out of my guilt feelings, Father, every impulse that makes me feel useless and without purpose, because I know you promise that none of our work is in vain in the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:58).”

Third, “Take out of my guilt feelings, Father, every impulse that makes me feel fearful and timid, because I know you said, ‘Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God’ (Isaiah 41:10).”

Fourth, “Take out of my guilt feelings all anxiety about being found out,” because God already knows everything about my sin and how ugly it was, and he doesn’t flinch at loving me. And I know that only his kind of people will get into heaven. That’s where I’ll spend eternity with people who don’t flinch at loving me.

“There’s no such thing as being worthy of grace. Deserved grace is not grace.”

Fifth, “Take out of my guilt feelings, Father, the impulse that I need to feel worthy of grace, since you have taught me there’s no such thing as being worthy of grace. There’s no such thing. Deserved grace is not grace. Help me realize that feeling unworthy of grace is the only proper way to receive grace. So, purge my guilt feelings of this craziness of thinking I need to be worthy of grace.”

Slaughtered Lamb

Now, what’s left? What’s left of your guilt feelings — our guilt feelings? (Yes, our guilt feelings.)

Think of it this way. According to Revelation 5:9–10, there will be a song in heaven about the slaughter of the Lamb of God. I use the word “slaughter” because that’s what sphazo means. When it says “slain” (Revelation 5:9), it means slaughter. You slaughter sheep when you’re going to eat them or do something else with them. He was slaughtered. We’re going to sing about that. It says so:

And they sang a new song, saying, “Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were [slaughtered], and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.”

We’re going to sing that in heaven forever, which means we’re going to remember our sin. We’re going to remember our guilt and what it cost — namely, the death of the Lamb of God. We will not sing that song and scratch our head, saying, “I don’t have any idea what that’s about. I don’t have any idea what that blood was about. I don’t know why he had to die. We just keep singing that song.” We will know why he died. He died because of our guilt. And we will know that forever.

But everything debilitating, everything hopeless, everything that destroys a sense of purpose and courage, everything fearful, everything that diminishes our glorying in grace will be taken out of our feelings of guilt. And all that will be left will be a miraculous new heart of humble, happy, thankful praise to the glory of the grace of God. Which means this: don’t despair that you have guilt feelings. They are necessary. Instead, spend your life purifying them of everything that keeps you from happy, thankful worship and obedience.