Should We Have Unsaved Friends

I am an independent fundamental Baptist and I make no apologies for that.  Now just because I am IFB does NOT mean I agree with every other IFB in everything.  Take for instance Westboro Baptist Church, which claims to be IFB as well, but also claims that God hates just about everybody, except them, of course.  Now mind you, God hates sin, but mainly because it separates us from Him since His main thrust was creating mankind for fellowship with Him.  But for some today there seems to be a misplaced understanding of our relationship with the lost and unsaved of the world.  We have preached separation from sin which is clearly biblical, but, we have seemingly misrepresented the love we should have for the unsaved in the process.  So should we be “close” to unsaved people or should we distance ourselves from them?

Once again, why don’t we actually look into Scripture to answer this?

1. David was God’s selection to replace wayward King Saul as king in Israel.  Though David was not perfect in every area of his life, he clearly was the “man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14).  Because of this selection Saul had come to hate David and chose to seek to kill David instead of acknowledging that God had made the decision already.  So David was forced to flee into the land of the Philistines.  The same Philistines that David had killed the champion Goliath some years before, I might add.  When David arrived he had to fain insanity (1 Samuel 21) but in time he became such a close friend to the king of the Philistines, Achish, that even some of the Philistines began to question Achish’s loyalty to his own people (1 Samuel 29).  David had endeared himself so deeply to the king that there was a complete trust and Acish even called David “an angel of God” in 1 Samuel 29:9.  David had made a friend of the Philistines because God had a greater purpose than the destruction of the Philistine people.  You see God can destroy a person or a nation with or without the aid of people, but He has also chosen His people to reach the lost.
2. When Jesus was preparing His disciples for his soon departure, He tells them a parable of a rich man who had a servant in Luke 16:1-12.  This servant had been less than stellar in his work and was about to be fired.  The servant realized that he had no marketable skills and so started to earn favor with his master’s business clients who owed the master money.  This servant wisely got the clients to write off some of their debt to the master so that when he was fired by the master, maybe one of the clients would hire him on.  Jesus says then in Luke 16:9, “Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.”  In other words, we need unsaved friends who can help us when we have earthly needs from time to time.  Once again, there is a higher purpose than just the money and a higher purpose to having “unsaved” friends.
3. But the most striking illustration is found when Jesus is accused of being less than godly in His behavior.  The religious leaders of the day had classified Jesus as a “glutton, wine bibber, and a friend of publicans and sinners” (Matthew 11:19).  But was their accusation TRUE?  When it came to being a glutton and wine bibber these hypocritical leaders were wrong as Jesus was Lord of the law and in those times where He broke THEIR dietary laws He did not break GOD’S law (Matthew 12:1-8).  So in other words, Jesus was not a glutton or a winebibber but He was a friend of sinners, and, He wore that badge openly.  Jesus spoke freely about the groups about Him being His “friends” (Luke 12:4 & John 15:14).  He claimed that the greatest love anyone can show is when they “lay down their life for their friends” (John 15:13) and isn’t that what Jesus did on Calvary, for the unsaved world?  Remember that the greatest verse to many in Scripture is John 3:16, which states, “That God so loved the world” and that is not just the saved world but the ENTIRE WORLD….sinners and all.  There is a higher purpose than isolating ourselves from every unsaved person.  That purpose is the reason Jesus came to earth, “Seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).

Yes, it is true that we as Christians are not to allow the worldly influences to affect our living for God, but we are also to make and be friends with the unsaved PEOPLE of the world.  There is a higher purpose to being friends with the unsaved and thus we are to live for that higher call.  How can we reach the unsaved world with the Gospel if we only interact with them by "calling them out?"  Stand against sin? YES!  Make friends of the unsaved? YES!  If Jesus did it, then it’s surely the right thing to do.