From Friend to Friend

How your little conversations will one day turn to great joy: a reflection

Photo by Juri Gianfrancesco on Unsplash

From Friend to Friend

The gospel has always had a way of moving in the most beautiful and ordinary way.

Indeed, it has crossed oceans, shaken cities, overturned temples, angered kings, outlived empires, and outburied its enemies. This is fascinating alone, but very often it has moved in the simplest way imaginable, from friend to friend, from brother to brother, from one ordinary conversation to another, from one man saying to another, with whatever mumbling, stumbling, and trembling he could manage, “I want to tell you about Christ.”

We sometimes imagine the spread of Christianity in broad historical strokes, councils, creeds, empires, persecutions, missionaries boarding ships, preachers in pulpits, reformers with books, martyrs with flames around them, and all of that is true and glorious in its place. Indeed we love to hear these stories.

But before Christianity became history, it was often simply news carried by people who knew each other. Andrew finds Simon and says, “We have found the Messiah” (John 1:41). Philip finds Nathanael and says, come and see (John 1:45–46). The Samaritan woman goes back into town and says, “Come, see a man” (John 4:29). The man delivered from demons is told to go home and tell how much the Lord has done for him (Mark 5:19). Again and again the gospel spreads not through platforms, but through real relationships.

I don’t think this has changed.

The church didn’t begin as a distribution system for religious content. They didn’t have internet or social networks to pump out endless material. No, she began with men and women who had seen Christ, heard Christ, been broken by Christ, restored by Christ, and then could not help but speak of him to others.

The gospel moved through households, meals, roads, prisons, borrowed rooms, riverbanks, marketplaces, and the long personal chains of human affection.

Think of it! A jailer hears from Paul, a household hears from Lydia, Timothy hears through his mother and grandmother, and over and over again the gospel spreads.

In Scripture, as in church history, the faith is often handed along not only through proclamation to crowds, but through trust between persons. This is wonderful to me as I think about it.

On the other hand, the spread of the gospel has often meant that one man risked the loss of another. One friend spoke and a friendship changed, a woman believed and a household became separated, a son confessed Christ and his father no longer owned him. Indeed, Jesus told the truth about this, he said he had not come to bring peace, but a sword, setting even family members against one another (Matt. 10:34–36). He showed us that loyalty to him would, at times, really hurt. Many of the martyrs learned this early because before the empire killed them, their families often grieved them, opposed them, disowned them, or pleaded with them to recant.

This is one of the costs of friend-to-friend Christianity. To tell a friend of Christ is not always to gain him. Sometimes it means you lose him. Sometimes you watch a family break to pieces. Sometimes it means you become strange to those who once knew you best. Sometimes it means you hand a person the truth that saves and discover that this same truth also divides, exposes, provokes, and costs you everything.

But, this is also how the kingdom grows.

A friend tells a friend, a sister tells a brother, a mother tells a child, a prisoner tells another prisoner, a pastor tells a congregation, a laborer tells his coworker, a student tells his roommate, a wife tells her husband, a husband tells his wife, and a Christian, with all the weakness and awkwardness that often attends such things, tells someone else what Christ has done, and somewhere by the secret mercy of God, light enters. Then that person goes on to tell another.

And then another.

And then another.

No one but God can trace the full line. This is amazing to think about.

The man who led you to Christ may not know what became of the word he spoke. The woman who prayed for her child may not live to see what God will do through that child three generations later. A sermon heard by one frightened teenager may one day lead, through a thousand hidden providences, to churches planted, children raised in the faith, sinners converted, missionaries sent, martyrs strengthened, and old men dying with hope.

Indeed Heaven alone can count the fruit of one faithful conversation.

That is why it must be remembered that no Christian witness is small.

And I think that is why the final day will be so joyful and great.

Because on that day all the severed lines will be mended in Christ. All the friendships begun in him will be gathered without envy, without misunderstanding, without fear of loss, without death interrupting, and how many brothers and sisters will then say, in joy too large for this world,

“I want you to meet the person who came to Christ after you told me about Christ.”

And that one will say it to another, and another to another, and the chain will keep lengthening, not into weariness, but into worship, until at last every friendship, every witness, every tearful conversation, every costly confession, every martyr’s death, every lonely act of faithfulness is seen to have been held together by the same sovereign and loving hand.

From friend to friend.

And finally, all of them together, around Christ.

I can’t wait for that day!

Cling to Christ!