Bible Bytes

The Bible provides guidance on how to treat friends and others in various passages. While it doesn’t explicitly use the term “friends” in the modern sense, it does offer principles and teachings on relationships, love, kindness, and loyalty that can be applied to friendships. Here are a few verses that highlight these principles:

1. Love and Kindness:
   • Proverbs 17:17 (NIV): “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.”
   • John 15:12-13 (NIV): “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
2. Loyalty and Support:
   • Proverbs 18:24 (NIV): “One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”
   • Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 (NIV): “Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.”
3. Forgiveness:
   • Colossians 3:13 (NIV): “Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
4. Choosing Good Companions:
   • 1 Corinthians 15:33 (NIV): “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’”
5. Encouragement:
   • Proverbs 27:17 (NIV): “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”
6. Humility and Putting Others First:
   • Philippians 2:3-4 (NIV): “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

These verses emphasize qualities such as love, loyalty, support, forgiveness, and humility in our interactions with others, which can certainly apply to how we treat and relate to our friends. Overall, the Bible encourages believers to cultivate relationships characterized by kindness, selflessness, and a commitment to the well-being of others.