Love Handles: Biblical Friendship

Summary:

True friendship is evidenced when we love our friends enough to have hard conversations with
them about each other's sins, with the goal of helping one another look more like Jesus each
day.

Questions:

• Describe a time in your life when a friend has had to have a hard conversation with you about
sin. What was good or bad about that conversation? What happened in your life as a result of
this conversation? (Or maybe you can share what it looked like for you to have this kind of
conversation with somebody else.)

Read 1 Corinthians 5:12-13

• In this passage Paul is talking about how a Christian is supposed to interact with other
Christians vs. people who are not Christians. Paul tells us that it is our place as Christians to
judge and confront other Christians who are in sin, but we don't act in the same way towards
people who aren't really followers of Jesus. Why shouldn't we hold non-Christians to the same
standards that we hold Christians to? What should it look like to lovingly address sin in the
lives of our friends who are not Christians?

Read James 5:16

• A lot of times we need friends to call us out on our sin, because we might not even know it is
there. However, many of us have an intimate knowledge of the sin in our lives. This passage is
talking about confessing our sins in the context of healing, but how is confessing our sins to
our friends, who want to help us look more like Jesus, helpful to us?

• How can we cultivate a culture in our rGroup of being able to lovingly point out sin in the lives
of our friends, as well as being able to confess our sins to each other?