Big Thought: A true friend is one who loves so much that he sets aside his own for a friend.
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1. True friendship is founded on .
a. This love is .
Matthew 22:39 (ESV) – And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
b. This love is .
John 17:20-23 (ESV) – I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. The glory that You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and You in Me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me.
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2. True friendship is founded on .
a. With no .
b. With no .
c. With the truth being .
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3. True friendship is .
a. Selfless in its pursuit of .
b. Selfless in its pursuit of .
Ephesians 4:22-24 (ESV) – To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
John 3:30 (ESV) – He must increase, but I must decrease.
c. Selfless in its pursuit of .
Philippians 2:5-11 (ESV) – Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
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4. True friendship at great risk.
a. By standing in the .
Romans 8:34 (ESV) – Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the One who died, more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
1 Timothy 2:5 (ESV) – For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.
b. By giving .
1 Peter 3:18 (ESV) – For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.
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5. True friendship .
John 15:13 (ESV) – Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down His life for His friends.
Proverbs 17:17 (ESV) – A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
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