2. The Kingdomic Nature of Christian Friendship
God has a dream. It is a dream to build a Kingdom wherein friendship is restored in its ultimate form. At (what is commonly known to many as) "the Fall", the friendship that God had established between himself and creation was fractured. It pained the heart of God when he lost his friends, for they had walked away from him.

But God, being the friend that he is, never stops being a friend. For to him, friendship is a covenant that never ceases. He has since embarked on a quest to find a way to restore friendship as he originally intended it to be. For those who now come to him, he extends a warm embrace of friendship and says "I call you my friends".

Friendship is about the story of God. It is about the journey of a people who call one another "friends of God", and who accompany one another as they learn to dance towards the Kingdom of God together. This dance can take place only within the economy of such divinely ordained friendship.

Friendship is about learning the dance of the Kingdom together. It is about learning how to live our lives together as "friends of God". This endeavour constitutes the soul of the Christian life, for Christianity is a faith of community.

Can really deep friendships take place beyond the scheme of the Kingdom? As with any other dimension of life, the answer to this question is "yes". Friendships can exist without a kingdomic dimension. But that does not necessarily imply that this is how God has meant for it to be.

Within the scheme of God's dream, there is a reason for friendship: the reason is that God is Trinity. There is also a purpose for friendship: the purpose is that of partaking in God's dream for the restoration of the Kingdom which is built upon his being of love. These are two preliminary comments that I have felt are necessary in our construction of a Christian understanding of friendship.

We shall shortly proceed to the Dynamics of Christian Friendship. Stay with me.