The Economics of Friendship: True and False Text: Proverbs 18:24
Introduction: The Modern Friendship Famine
We live in an age of unprecedented connectivity and yet profound loneliness. A man can have five thousand "friends" on his social media page and not have a single person to call when his car breaks down in the dead of night. We have mistaken acquaintances for allies, and followers for friends. The result is a widespread, gnawing famine of true fellowship. Our culture promotes a form of friendship that is a mile wide and an inch deep. It is a friendship based on shared consumer preferences, political grievances, or shallow affinities. It is cheap, disposable, and ultimately, it is a fraud.
The book of Proverbs, as it so often does, cuts through our modern fog with the sharp edge of divine wisdom. It presents us with a stark, economic choice when it comes to friendship. There are two kinds of relational currency, and one of them leads to bankruptcy while the other is a treasure that outweighs gold. This proverb is a diagnostic tool for our relational health. It forces us to ask what kind of friends we are collecting, and what kind of friend we are.
The world tells you to network, to accumulate contacts, to be popular. The world measures friendship by quantity. God, in His Word, measures friendship by quality, by covenant faithfulness, by a loyalty that is thicker than blood. And He sets before us the great paradox of friendship: that a man surrounded by a multitude can be utterly alone and headed for ruin, while a man with one, true friend is richer than a king. This is not sentimental advice; it is spiritual reality. And at the heart of this reality is the ultimate friend, the Lord Jesus Christ, who redefines loyalty and sets the pattern for every friendship that would be worthy of the name.
The Text
A man of too many friends comes to ruin,
But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
(Proverbs 18:24 LSB)
The Popular Man's Path to Ruin
Let us take the first clause of this proverb:
"A man of too many friends comes to ruin," (Proverbs 18:24a)
Now, some translations render this as "A man who has friends must himself be friendly." While that is certainly a true statement, and a good piece of proverbial wisdom in its own right, the contrast in the verse makes more sense with the rendering we have before us. The verse is setting up an antithesis between two kinds of friendship, one that destroys and one that delivers. The warning here is against a particular kind of friendship, the kind that is broad but not deep. This is the man who is a friend to everyone, and therefore a friend to no one.
This is the man whose friendships are based on personality, not character. He is the life of the party, the glad-hander, the man who knows everyone's name. His friendships are a form of public relations. But what happens when the party is over? What happens when trouble comes? These fair-weather friends are like summer insects; they are present only when the sun is shining. When the cold wind of adversity blows, they are nowhere to be found.
Why does this man come to ruin? For several reasons. First, his identity is built on the shifting sands of public opinion. He is a people-pleaser, and a man who tries to please everyone will ultimately have no convictions of his own. His desire for popularity makes him a moral coward. He will not speak the hard truth, because he cannot bear the thought of giving offense. He will not stand for what is right if it costs him a relationship. This is ruin. As another proverb says, "The fear of man lays a snare" (Proverbs 29:25).
Second, this kind of friendship is parasitic. It is often built on what one can get. "Many will entreat the favor of a prince, and every man is a friend to him who gives gifts" (Proverbs 19:6). The man with "too many friends" is often the man who is buying his company. He is the center of a network of mutual back-scratching. But when his resources dry up, so do his friendships. This is the ruin of a fool who invested in a fraudulent enterprise.
This is a description of the world's model of success. But God calls it ruin. It is the ruin of a hollow man, a man whose soul has been spread so thin across so many shallow relationships that there is nothing of substance left. He is relationally over-leveraged, and when the market crashes, he will be wiped out.
The Covenant Friend's Unbreakable Bond
The second half of the verse presents the glorious alternative.
"But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother." (Proverbs 18:24b LSB)
This is a staggering statement. In the ancient world, the bond of blood, the loyalty of a brother, was the highest earthly allegiance. A brother is born for adversity (Proverbs 17:17). Your brother is supposed to be the one who is there for you, no matter what. And yet, Solomon says there is a friendship, a chosen relationship, that can surpass even this natural, familial bond.
This is not a friendship of convenience, but of covenant. The word for "sticks" here is the same Hebrew word used for a husband cleaving to his wife (Genesis 2:24), and for Israel cleaving to the Lord (Deuteronomy 10:20). It means to be glued to, to be welded together. This is a bond forged in the fires of shared conviction, mutual respect, and sacrificial love. This is the friendship of David and Jonathan. Jonathan loved David "as his own soul" (1 Samuel 18:1). He was the king's son, the heir apparent, yet he risked his life and his throne for his friend, because their friendship was based on a shared covenant before the Lord.
What are the marks of this kind of friend? This is the friend who is willing to wound you for your own good. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy" (Proverbs 27:6). The man with too many friends will never tell you that you are being a fool. The friend who sticks closer than a brother will. He loves you too much to let you continue in your sin. He will sharpen you as iron sharpens iron (Proverbs 27:17).
This friend is not an echo, but a ballast. He does not simply affirm you; he helps you. This friendship is not based on looking at each other, but on looking together at a third thing, a shared love for Christ, for truth, for righteousness. This is what makes the bond strong. It is not just two people holding on to each other; it is two people holding on to Christ, and therefore holding on to each other.
This proverb teaches us that true friendship is a choice, not just a circumstance of birth. You cannot choose your brother, but you can, and must, choose your friends. And a friend chosen on the basis of godly character is a bond that can be stronger than one based on a shared womb.
The Ultimate Friend
Like all the wisdom of Proverbs, this verse finds its ultimate fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the friend who sticks closer than a brother. Our earthly brothers, even the best of them, can fail us. They can misunderstand us, forsake us, or even betray us. But Jesus is the friend who lays down His life for His friends (John 15:13).
He is the friend who sought us out when we were His enemies. We were not popular, we were not attractive, we had nothing to offer Him. We were spiritual bankrupts, headed for eternal ruin. And it was then that He came to us. He did not come to us because we were friendly, but to make us friends of God. He stuck with us all the way to the cross. He cleaved to us, even when it meant being forsaken by His Father.
He is the friend who tells us the truth, even when it wounds us. His Word cuts us to the heart, exposing our sin, but it does so in order to heal us. He is the friend who, having loved His own who were in the world, loved them to the end (John 13:1). His is not a fair-weather friendship. He has promised, "I will never leave you nor forsake you" (Hebrews 13:5).
This proverb, then, is not just good advice for navigating our social lives. It is a signpost pointing to the gospel. We are all, by nature, the man of too many friends, seeking the approval of the world, building our lives on the sand of public opinion, and heading for ruin. But Christ comes to us and offers a different kind of friendship. He calls us to forsake the broad road of popularity that leads to destruction and to enter into a covenant bond with Him.
When we become friends of God through Christ, we are then enabled to become true friends to others. We are freed from the desperate need for approval that creates shallow relationships. We can love others sacrificially, speak the truth in love, and remain loyal in adversity, because we ourselves are secure in the unwavering friendship of our Savior. He is the friend who sticks closer than a brother, so that we, in turn, can be that kind of friend to the brothers and sisters He has given us in the church. The church is to be a colony of heaven, a place where the world can see what true, covenantal friendship looks like, a friendship that is stronger than blood because it is sealed in the blood of the Lamb.