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Japanese Yes. The Bible calls a spouse a friend and a companion: in the Song of Songs the woman says of her beloved, “this is my friend,” and Malachi calls a wife “your companion.” Catholic teaching calls married love the “greatest form of friendship,” a phrase it takes from Thomas Aquinas.
What does the Bible say about friendship in marriage?
The clearest statement comes in the Song of Songs, where the woman ends her praise of the man she loves: “This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem” (Song of Songs 5:16). The prophet Malachi, rebuking men who had been unfaithful to their wives, reminds each of them that “the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant” (Malachi 2:14). The Hebrew word translated “companion” there, chabereth, appears only in this verse; the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon defines it as “consort, i.e. wife.” Proverbs uses a word for a close friend, alluph, for a husband when it describes an adulteress “who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God” (Proverbs 2:17).
In Genesis, God says, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). The Hebrew word for helper, ezer, is also used of God himself: “he is our help and our shield” (Psalm 33:20), and “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:2). Genesis then describes the man and his wife becoming “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
Other passages speak of shared life in general terms. “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow” (Ecclesiastes 4:9–10) is not about marriage in particular, but the same book tells its reader to “enjoy life with the wife whom you love” (Ecclesiastes 9:9). Jesus told his disciples, “I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).
Are there examples of friendship in marriage in the Bible?
Priscilla and Aquila were a married couple who worked and taught together. Paul met them in Corinth, “and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade” (Acts 18:2–3). When the preacher Apollos arrived in Ephesus, “Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately” (Acts 18:26). Paul later greeted them as “my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life” (Romans 16:3–4). The New Testament mentions the couple six times, always together.
The wife described in Proverbs 31 is trusted and praised by her husband: “The heart of her husband trusts in her,” and “her husband also, and he praises her” (Proverbs 31:11, 28). Peter tells husbands to live with their wives “in an understanding way,” because “they are heirs with you of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7).
How do the churches describe friendship in marriage?
Several churches name companionship among the purposes of marriage. Pope Francis wrote in Amoris Laetitia (2016) that “after the love that unites us to God, conjugal love is the ‘greatest form of friendship,’” citing Thomas Aquinas, and that it has “all the traits of a good friendship: concern for the good of the other, reciprocity, intimacy, warmth, stability and the resemblance born of a shared life” (123). Pope Paul VI had described married love in Humanae Vitae (1968) as “that very special form of personal friendship in which husband and wife generously share everything” (9).
The Church of England’s 1662 Book of Common Prayer says marriage “was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.” The Westminster Confession of Faith says marriage was ordained “for the mutual help of husband and wife” (24.2), and the Southern Baptist Convention’s Baptist Faith and Message calls marriage “the framework for intimate companionship.”
Can a married person have close friends of the opposite sex?
The Bible does not address the question directly. Jesus’ warning that “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28) applies to any relationship. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s 2009 social statement on sexuality says that in friendships, “Erotic interest can also create conflicts and danger. These have to be faced honestly when one or both of the people involved already have made promises of fidelity to another.”
What does research say about friendship and marriage?
Economists Shawn Grover and John Helliwell, in a 2014 working paper later published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, found that the “well-being effects of marriage are about twice as large for those whose spouse is also their best friend.” Many couples begin as friends. In a 2022 analysis of seven samples of university students and adults recruited online, 1,897 people in all, Danu Anthony Stinson and colleagues found that two-thirds reported that their romantic relationship had begun as a friendship.
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