Friendship

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a difficult time.

One with many friends may be harmed, but there is a friend who stays closer than a brother.

Don’t make friends with an angry person, and don’t be a companion of a hot-tempered one,

The wounds of a friend are trustworthy, but the kisses of an enemy are excessive.

Don’t abandon your friend or your father’s friend, and don’t go to your brother’s house in your time of calamity; better a neighbor nearby than a brother far away.

Iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens another.

Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts.

For if either falls, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to lift him up.

Also, if two lie down together, they can keep warm; but how can one person alone keep warm?

And if someone overpowers one person, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not easily broken.

He also said to them: “Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him at midnight and says to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread,

because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I don’t have anything to offer him.’

Then he will answer from inside and say, ‘Don’t bother me! The door is already locked, and my children and I have gone to bed. I can’t get up to give you anything.’

I tell you, even though he won’t get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his friend’s shameless boldness, he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

“So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.

You are my friends if you do what I command you.

I do not call you servants anymore, because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father.