Countering Challenges to Christian Platonic Cross-Sex Friendships: Introduction and the First Challenge

Image Credit: Media from Wix

One of my major goals is to facilitate sibling-like friendships between Christian men and women who are not married to each other. While I want to do this, I also want to do it with the primary goal of being a means of God realizing the spiritual unity of love He calls all His Son's people to, which unity will be actualized by His Spirit.

So, to that end, I will dedicate my next blog posts (including this one) to identifying challenges to such friendships and proposing solutions to them. The source from which I will derive all these challenges is Wikipedia's "Cross-sex friendship" article (accessed November 24-25, 2025) [1].

Now, let's begin with the first challenge listed: "Determining the type of emotional bond experienced in the relationship." Now, what should a Christian man and woman do when they choose to relate to each other in the context of a platonic friendship rather than in a marriage or in a pre-marriage relationship like courtship or dating [2]? In this post, I will give a summary answer that I hope will be both broad enough and specific enough to be a thorough blueprint for Christian men and women who want to engage in such friendships. My answer is this: 1) gather together and note all the New Testament passages that are the "indicative texts" (i.e. the Biblical texts that describe the reality of the union in Christ, and consequently with each other, that you two share with each other as fellow believers in Christ), 2) gather together and note all the New Testament passages that are the "imperative texts" (i.e. the Biblical texts that prescribe how you are to relate to each other as fellow Christians), 3) believe and confess these Biblical indicatives and imperatives as the elements of the kind of emotional bond you have with each other, and 4) by trust in the living Christ (as the Holy Spirit solely reveals Him in the Bible), conform your heart to these Biblical indicatives and imperatives and do them in your life, knowing that Christlikeness is what is to characterize your friendship with each other (indeed, Christlikeness is to characterize all relationships in your life, whether they be with fellow believers or unbelievers)! And a final note: you both must ENSURE that you're in a local church that believes (and shows they believe by both their words and actions) that the Bible, which is the 66 Books of the Old and New Testaments (no more and no less), is the ONLY Authority for faith (what to believe) and practice (how to live)!

[1] Here is a screenshotted picture of the Wikipedia article (which shows the portion of the article with the relevant information) as it was when I downloaded it:

[2] And all such pre-marriage relationships are platonic and MUST be so until marriage!

NOTE: For a summary of how to obey God by faith, read, believe, and meditate on 2 Corinthians 3:18!