Why Is It Important To Have Good Friends

The Skill Nobody Taught Us

There is a statistic that should stop most people in their tracks: one in three men say they have no close friends. Not acquaintances, not colleagues, not people they follow on social media — close friends. The kind who would sit with you in a hospital waiting room at two in the morning without being asked.

And it is not just men. Research suggests that around forty percent of young adults say they often or always feel lonely. We live in the most connected era in human history, and yet loneliness is reaching epidemic levels.

So what went wrong?

We Forgot What Friendship Actually Is

A speaker who works with university students shared something revealing. His organisation used to teach "friendship evangelism" — the idea that Christians should share their faith naturally through existing relationships. But they noticed a problem. Eighteen and nineteen-year-olds arriving at university did not know what friendship was.

"Before they talked about friendship evangelism, they needed to talk some more about what friendship is."

That observation led to a whole series exploring what it means to build friendships, to be a friend, and to look at examples of friendship in scripture. And the more they dug into the gospels, the more something became clear.

"Jesus didn't recruit a team of workers. He built a team of friends."

That distinction matters. Jesus had twelve people he spent almost every day with for three years. He ate with them, walked with them, argued with them, wept with them. He told them things he did not tell the crowds. And on the night before he died, he said to them plainly: "I no longer call you servants. I call you friends."

The Man Who Never Had a Friend

The talk referenced a man in his mid-seventies who had never really had any friends. His whole life. He had been ridiculed and teased as a child, and he turned inward to protect himself. Now, decades later, he did not know how to be a friend or how to receive friendship.

That story is heartbreaking on its own. But it is not unusual. Many people go through life surrounded by people and yet fundamentally alone. Not because they are unlikeable, but because nobody ever showed them how friendship works.

The Bible, it turns out, has quite a lot to say about this.

What Friendship Looked Like for Jesus

In the gospels, Jesus modelled friendship in ways that were radical for his time — and remain counter-cultural today.

First, he was intentional. He chose his twelve disciples deliberately, and within that group, he had an inner circle of three: Peter, James, and John. He did not try to be equally close to everyone. He invested deeply in a few.

Second, he was vulnerable. Jesus wept openly when his friend Lazarus died. He told his closest friends about his anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane. He asked them to stay awake and pray with him. He did not pretend to have everything together.

Third, he pursued people who were hard to love. Tax collectors, social outcasts, people with reputations — Jesus sat at their tables and called them friends. He did not wait for people to clean themselves up before offering relationship.

And fourth, he was present in difficulty. When his friends failed — and they did, spectacularly — he did not abandon them. After Peter denied him three times, the risen Jesus sought Peter out and restored the friendship over breakfast on a beach.

The Difference Between Mates and Friends

There is a useful distinction between what we might call mates and actual friends. Mates are the people we enjoy spending time with when things are going well. We watch football together, share a meal, have a laugh. Nothing wrong with any of that.

But friends are the people who stay when things fall apart. Friends are honest with you even when it is uncomfortable. Friends know your struggles and do not use them against you. Friends make time for you not because it is convenient, but because you matter to them.

"Friendships aren't really disposable," the speaker observed. "And we all need friends."

The Bible puts it even more directly. Proverbs 17:17 says: "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity." Real friendship is not tested in the good times. It is revealed in the hard ones.

Why We Struggle to Go Deep

If friendship is so important, why do so many people find it difficult? Several reasons emerged from the discussion.

We are busy. Genuinely, relentlessly busy. And friendship requires time — not just scheduled time, but unstructured time. The kind of time where you sit around long enough for the real conversation to start.

We are afraid of vulnerability. Opening up means risking rejection. It means letting someone see the parts of ourselves we have carefully curated out of our social media presence. For many people, especially men, that feels dangerous.

We move around more than any previous generation. Jobs, cities, relationships — everything is in flux. Building deep friendships takes years, and many people do not stay in one place long enough to do the work.

And we have substituted digital connection for real relationship. Having five hundred friends on Facebook is not the same as having one friend who will tell you the truth over a cup of coffee.

What the Early Church Got Right

The early Christians understood something about friendship that we have largely forgotten. They did not just meet on Sundays. They shared meals in each other's homes. They pooled resources when someone was in need. They bore one another's burdens — not as a programme, but as a way of life.

The book of Acts describes a community where "all the believers were together and had everything in common." That is not a model for communism. It is a description of what happens when people genuinely care about each other.

The letter to the Galatians puts it simply: "Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ." Friendship, in the biblical sense, is not a nice addition to faith. It is central to it.

Friendship Requires Initiative

One of the most practical points from the discussion was this: friendship does not just happen. It requires someone to go first.

Someone has to be the one who sends the message. Someone has to be the one who suggests meeting up. Someone has to be the one who asks the honest question and then actually listens to the answer.

Jesus was that person. He walked up to people and said, "Follow me." He invited himself to dinner at Zacchaeus's house. He initiated. And that invitation changed lives.

For most of us, the barrier to deeper friendship is not a lack of opportunity. It is a lack of initiative. We wait for others to reach out, and they wait for us, and everyone stays lonely together.

Building Something That Lasts

Friendships that last are built on a few simple things: consistency, honesty, and showing up. Not grand gestures, but regular, ordinary acts of presence.

A text message that says "thinking of you" when you know someone is having a hard week. A phone call that is not about needing anything. An invitation to come over for dinner, even when the house is messy.

"I think our churches would be a lot more healthy, our lives a lot more holistic, if we worked rather than just on getting stuff done but on building friendships."

That applies far beyond church. It applies to workplaces, neighbourhoods, families, and every other context where human beings share space.

One Question to Sit With

The challenge here is not complicated. It is just uncomfortable.

Who in your life needs you to go first? To send the message, make the call, extend the invitation? And what would it cost you — really cost you — to do it this week?

Because the research is clear, the scriptures are clear, and most of our own experience confirms it: we were never meant to do this alone. The question is whether we are willing to do something about it.