Proverbs 17:17 Commentary and Bible Study

When you are in trouble you will know who your friends are. True friendship is a desire to do good at all times. Your friend is not friendly with you because he desires to get something from you – for instance, he is feeling gloomy and you are cheerful, so he wants your friendship for the present. Of course there is a reciprocal benefit in friendship but a true friend is ready to give more than he receives, to give true sympathy. Friendship has the same attitude as the Lord had to us. Everything the Lord gets from us, he has to give to us first. The Scripture defines a friend as someone who does not blow hot and cold. A true friend is not just friendly when enjoying things together. He is loyal even when his friend is despised by others and loses the praise of men. When all others have forsaken, he still remains. He feels a sense of duty when things go wrong almost like a blood relative. A brother is born for adversity not because brothers do not enjoy happy times together, but because this is the essence of being a brother. When troubles come a true friend knows that he is there for just such a time. This is the measure of his friendship; this will put his friendship to the test.Our love for God must also be constant; it must be a love and a loyalty to him that resists all attempts to break it. This distinguishes the one who loves God from the one who is merely practising religion out of a sense of duty, from one who has known the love of Christ towards his soul and truly responded to it. For his sake we bear cheerfully the shame of the cross and identify with him whatever the world thinks of him, for if the world hated him, it will hate us also (John 15:18). Christ has called us his friends and to us he is the perfect friend (John 15:13-15). All that a friend should be, he is to us, and we should also be to him, for how can we be ashamed of the Prince of glory when he was not ashamed of us in all our sin before his Father in heaven.