Jonathan: Faithful to God and a Faithful Friend

Jonathan: Faithful to God and a Faithful Friend

June 29, 2025

In 1 Samuel 20, the author of Samuel shows that Jonathan, the son of the rejected king Saul, was faithful to God and to God’s anointed king, David. That faithfulness held true even when the circumstances they both faced were threatening and also confusing. I want to highlight the faithfulness of Jonathan and then to think about one very practical lesson this passage informs us on when we think about faithfulness in a threatening and confusing world. That lesson will be the lesson of friendship.

1. The Account. 

There are just a few things in this account that we should note, and we should also remember the context.

David, in I Samuel 18 and 19, faced multiple threats on his life. Saul tried to kill him with a spear twice. He tried to have his officers kill him but Jonathan rescued him by publicly defending David. Saul tried to toy with David by promising one daughter and then rescinding that promise. He tried again with Michal, another daughter, to use her to ensnare David. He sent men to David’s house to kill him. After Michal allowed him to flee by her deception, Saul sent three different groups of messengers to Samuel’s house to arrest David. Each of them prophesied before Samuel. Then Saul himself went and he also prophesied. All these events confirmed two things. First, it confirmed that the Lord was with David and would protect him. Second, it confirmed that David was being hunted by Saul. 

That leads us to our text in chapter 20. We have an exasperated David in verse 1 who has fled from where he was saying to Jonathan – What have I done? What is my iniquity, and what is my sin before your father, that he seeks my life? What had he done? He had only been loyal to the king and the kingdom that God had established in the nation of Israel. 

Jonathan’s response in verse 2 is to reassure David that he will not die since Jonathan receives information from Saul as his son. But David knows better. Jonathan is on the outs in the court and Saul no longer trusts his own son. That is going to be painfully obvious down in verse 33 when Saul will hurl a spear at Jonathan, his own son, to try and kill him. 

Upon hearing David’s logic, Jonathan agrees. We can’t say for sure, but we might wonder if Jonathan was in denial. He didn’t want to believe his father would continue on this path. I think we can all understand that. We want to believe the best things about people and are commanded to do so in 1 Corinthians 13. But David knew that this was far past that point. Saul had murderous intent in his heart. 

So, David and Johnathan devised a plan. There was supposed to be a new moon feast the next day. Every new moon there was a feast. (The Jewish calendar is based upon the lunar movements and not upon the sun.) The point of that feast was to be a time where sacrifices were offered and the month was dedicated to the Lord. It is not all that different than when Christians might wake up each day and pray, “God, this day is yours. I dedicate it and my life in it to you.” 

Saul would have expected that his commanding officers and people of his court be there for this celebration and dedication. David knew this. So the plan was to have him miss the feast. The explanation was that his family had a yearly feast that was a time for all of them to gather and dedicate themselves to God that corresponded to this new moon feast. 

Saul would recognize that David was gone. The “tell” would be that if Saul was angry about it, then Jonathan would know that Saul was after David. In order to pass word from Jonathan to David, they establish the system of shooting the arrows into a field and using a servant to retrieve them. There was no encrypted chat or a possibility of making a phone call. Passing messages would have been dangerous. So, this was their method. 

As the account plays out, Saul saw David’s empty chair at the feast in verse 26 and suspected that David was ceremonially unclean. That didn’t mean that David had done a hard day’s work and needed a shower. Rather, this was a ceremonial uncleanness. There were a host of reasons why a Jewish man could be ceremonially unclean and therefore could not participate in a new moon feast. Some of them were relatively benign and some were serious. Saul thought nothing of it. But on day two when David was not there, Saul’s suspicions were aroused. So, he asked Jonathan where David was. This indicates that Saul knew that they were close. 

Jonathan gave the preplanned line about a family feast back in Bethlehem in I Samuel 20:28-29. But Saul was having none of that! Verse 30 – Then Saul’s anger was aroused against Jonathan, and he said to him, “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness? This language is not only damning but is also incredibly coarse and harsh. In effect, Saul was disowning Jonathan here. Saul accused Jonathan of bringing shame upon himself and his mother. And he does it in coarse words speaking of the day in which Jonathan was born. 

Now what occurs next is actually theologically important in the overall account of 1 and 2 Samuel. Note what Saul blurts out in verse 31 – For as long as the son of Jesse (That’s David) lives on the earth, you shall not be established, nor your kingdom. Saul was unwittingly speaking the truth. He was agreeing with God, even though he didn’t agree with God in his heart. Now therefore, send and bring him to me, for he shall surely die. Saul said this in the presence of his whole court. Think about the symbolism of this. This was a time where people would offer sacrifices to God and dedicate themselves and their families and their households to God for the month. Saul was rejecting God’s will. He publicly stated, practically in the form of an oath, that Jonathan would not be king. 

Jonathan was grieved about this. We see this in verse 34. Jonathan was not a young man by this point. He is probably in his 30s, if not older. This is not the point of this text, but it reminds us how the words and actions of a father can wound a soul, even well into adulthood. He was angry not only about what his father had done to him but also to David. Shame was brought on all of Saul’s household. 

Well, Jonathan continues the plan that he and David had put together. He shoots the arrows and then after the servant was gone, David and Jonathan met in the field. They both knew what Saul’s actions meant. Their relationship would be forever tenuous and strained and so in I Samuel 20:41 they kiss one another and wept. Jonathan affirms the covenant that they had made with each other in verse 42 – Go in peace, since we have both sworn in the name of the LORD, saying, ‘May the LORD be between you and me, and between your descendants and my descendants, forever.’

This passage is here for several reasons in the context of 1 and 2 Samuel. Let me give you three. This helps us to know why it was inserted. First, it was Jonathan, not David who took responsibility for David’s escape. This would communicate to the first readers that it was not some sort of cunning devious plan of David to overthrow King Saul. Jonathan swore the oaths. This was not a forced action by David. 

Second, it shows the establishment of a covenant between the house of David and the house of Jonathan. That may not seem like a big deal to you and I in our present context. But it was totally unconventional in that day. Normally, when a new king would rise to the throne, the first thing he would do is to find anyone who was a threat to his position as king and have them exiled or normally killed. That was the smart thing to do. We may think of a king automatically exercising power and having loyal subjects, but that is not the case historically. We can even see that now. Take a dictator like Putin or the leader of North Korea. Anyone, even family or the family of past leaders who are deemed a threat are killed. It was G.K. Chesterton who said of dictators that they catch a tiger by the tail. The problem is that they can’t let go once they have caught it, because the tiger will get them! Likewise, a king has to eliminate all the threats. He has to hold on to his power so that he is not overthrown. 

David didn’t do what normal leaders would do. He showed grace and favor to the house of Jonathan. Why did he do that? Because he was committed to his oaths, his covenants that he made before God. We will see this played out in the rest of 1 and 2 Samuel. 

Third, Jonathan in I Samuel 20:15 gives the first indication that David’s kingship would reach to international height. But you shall not cut off your kindness from my house forever, no, not when the LORD has cut off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth. Jonathan is already indicating that David’s kingdom would be great and would extend out beyond Israel under the sovereign plan and promise of the Lord. This, by the way, also points us forward to the Messiah who will one day rule all the kingdoms of the earth. 

In the context of the first readers, these three ideas that we have just talked about would be very very important. They show that Jonathan was in on David’s rise to the throne and not against it. That is the immediate context for why this text is here, but I want to draw a lesson from this passage today. 

I want to be clear that this lesson is not the main point of this passage. But it is a practical thing that comes out of this passage and we need to consider it. The lesson is about friendship in a threatening and confusing world. What we do see is two men, and especially Jonathan here, who were faithful friends. I want to think about friendship in light of what is said here in this text. 

1. Friendship in a threatening and confusing world. 

You know, from our perspective as we read the account of the life of David, we know the outcome. We know that David is going to become king and that God was going to establish his covenant with David and his house. But from the perspective of David and Jonathan here in chapter 20, as they were going through all this, they didn’t know that. They may have believed that it was going to happen, but they also faced the messiness of life. Hear this very very carefully – life in a fallen world is full of messes. Even today, we know intellectually and by faith that God will fulfill his promises. 

We confess and we believe with Christians of old that God will fulfill his promises. We can go all the way back to the fifth century. There was a famous creed, the Athanasian creed – “For as the rational soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one. Christ; who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead. He ascended into heaven, He sits at the right hand of the Father, God Almighty, from whence He will come to judge the quick and the dead. At His coming all men will rise again with their bodies and shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.” 

That was written 1500 years ago. We confess that still today. We believe that is true. We intellectually know that. We may even believe that in our heart. 

We are confident in the return of Jesus and his victory over all. But in the midst of life, we face real threats and real times of confusion, all of those grand things sometimes become fuzzy. I’ve given this illustration many times before. If you go out west and first see the mountains on the horizon, they are not the mountains, they are the foothills. There is a point at which you can’t see the mountains because the smaller foothills are in the way. 

When you hold your hand in front of your face, sometimes you can’t see what’s behind your hand. Sometimes in the messiness of life, we don’t really see or even feel those eternal truths. 

David really did face spears being hurled at him. He really did have to be let down out a window in the middle of night to run away. His wife had to buy him time to escape. Jonathan also had a spear chucked at him and watched his father disgrace him and David in front of all the leaders of Israel. Those are times of threats and those are times of confusion. David and Jonathan lived in a fallen world just as we do. 

When we speak of a fallen world, we mean both that the created order around us is cursed. Nature itself, as beautiful and majestic as it is, has horrors in it. Death, disease and destruction. But life in a fallen world is more than just nature and its death, disease, and destruction. Life in a fallen world also includes fallen sinful people like me and you who live in it. Nature makes messes and brings threats and confusion. But so do the people who live in nature. We sin and our sin is not only against God but also against others. We have lies and deceit and jealousy and rage and murder and theft and cursing and bitterness and on and on the list goes. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23) That is every single one of us.

In such a world, if we are going to live faithful lives toward God, we need people to walk together with us. David and Jonathan had each other as friends. God blessed them with each other. Friends are a strong encouragement when the world is a mess because it is fallen. 

Now, at this point I need to say something that I don’t really want to say. We have to discuss this because there are people in our world that want to lie about what the Bible says. There are people, supposedly in the name of Jesus, who have been trying and are still trying to use the story of David and Jonathan as an account of same sex attraction and relationship and say that it was approved in the Bible. They say that these two were lovers. They point to the fact that they loved each other, that they wept and kissed, as the text says, and then in 2 Samuel 1:26 where David says after Jonathan had died – Your love to me was wonderful, surpassing the love of women. You will find that this a huge push among even supposedly evangelical teachers today who want to normalize homosexuality as something that is OK in the Bible. This is out there. 

So, let’s just note a couple things here. First, the word that is used for “love” between David and Jonathan is used more than 200 times elsewhere in the Old Testament and never ever is it used in terms of same sex relations. Second, their relationship is pictured in covenantal terms, not romantic ones. They swore oaths before God to protect each other. Finally, there is nothing in the Hebrew wording of this text that would indicate that there was romance between them. I mean nothing. There are words that the Hebrew language could use to indicate such things and none of those words are here. 

As to the specific things like them weeping and kissing each other, those were culturally acceptable things and normal. You go to some European countries today and men will kiss each other on the cheeks. You can see that in middle eastern contexts today where men will press their cheeks together in a greeting. Last fall, I was in Chad, Africa. I was told to expect this and I saw this. Grown men would at times hold the hand of their friend next to them.You would even see them holding hands as they walked down the street. It didn’t go on for hours but it happened. We might think that is weird. But for them, it was a symbol of deep friendship. 

Having deep friendships, especially among men, has fallen on very hard times in recent years. I would just like to turn the guns around, so to speak, and take aim at the perverse people who suggest that David and Jonathan had a sexual relationship. It is because everything in our culture has become sexualized. People are afraid that every friendship may appear as something sexual. This is especially true among men but it is also increasingly common among women and has created strains between men and women because a friendship can be construed as something other than friendship. That is killing friendship in our world. 

You can see that with young men. This can be seen even with the slang term “no homo.” You will find young men who when they give a compliment to another guy add the phrase “no homo” at the end of it. “I really like that shirt on you, no homo.” “Hey man, your working out is paying off. You are jacked, no homo.” They have to make it clear that even a compliment is not some sort of sexual expression. That actually is killing friendship. 

The constant sexualization of everything and everyone is not freeing anybody. It is actually imprisoning people. They can’t actually express pure love and affection without being afraid that the LGBTQIA police will make that love and affection into something it is not. 

This is an area that Christians need to reclaim. We are at the end of what is known as “Pride Month.” That is nothing more than a month to celebrate debauchery. We need to be reminded that sin and debauchery brings said consequences when it is celebrated. Our society is reaping the sad harvest of this. As Christians, we need to push back. I don’t mean that merely in the culture. That is true to a point. But it needs to be that in this place and among Christians ourselves, we need to not believe the lies that our culture tells us about these things. Rather, we need to affirm what God says about affection and love and friendship. 

That begins by understanding what we as Christians call, “rightly ordered loves.” Another way of saying that is “ordinary affections.” What that means is that God and the Bible actually teach us that we need to love the right things in the right way. A simple way to illustrate that is that we don’t love our dog in the same way we love our wife or husband. If you get those loves mixed up or you get them on an equal playing field, you are going to have some problems. In fact, I or someone is going to see you in a marriage counseling session or two. We don’t love pepperoni pizza in the same way we love our family pets. There are different kinds of loves for different kinds of situations.

We know this by the Old Testament’s command and Jesus’ affirmation of that command that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our souls, and with all our might (Deuteronomy 6:5). That means that there is a certain kind of love that is different from all other loves, that is exclusively for God. That command alone indicates that there is an order to our loves. 

When it comes to friends, there is a love that is not the same as a love for our spouse or for God. David and Jonathan actually illustrate this perfectly. For one thing, their love for each other was found, as we noted a bit earlier, with the context of a covenant before God. That meant that first and foremost, they loved God more than anything else. That allowed their love for each to be real and rich and deep. 

Furthermore, they saw and believed certain truths together. They believed in the kingdom of Israel. They believed in the glory of God’s good name. They both believed that there were times to fight for what was right. They both believe in courage and dignity and honor. They saw things together rightly and therefore enjoyed one another’s company. 

This then is an important part of friendship and the right kind of love that friendship has. Friends see a truth together that they enjoy and believe and love. That creates a bond that is special between them. 

We know this practically. Have you ever had this happen to you? You are meeting someone for the first time and you engage in the pleasantries of simple conversation. What do you do for work, what do you do for entertainment, are you married, do you have kids, and so on. In that conversation you discover that there is something you both enjoy or see or believe that is the same. “Oh, you are a Ford guy too?” “Oh, you love tennis?” “Oh, you love to garden?” “Oh, you have kids too?” That commonality creates a bond. You start talking about your passion or love or common dislike of something. So instead of “oh, you’re a Ford guy too,” it’s “oh, you hate Fords like I do! (Name any model car here.)

In that moment, you are together bonding over something that you see and believe and even might love. In that moment, there is a little part of you that is knit together with that person. It might start out with one thread and one stitch like the beginning of a sewing project. But it is there. That kind of friendship is not so much about loving the other person. That will come. But it is about loving the same things. It is about seeing the same things together. That was David and Jonathan. They both saw the world in the same way and their souls became knit together with more than just a stitch or two. They were woven together as over time their friendship would be forged in laughs and honor and battle and blood and most importantly, forged in their common love of Jehovah God. 

This idea of friendship that sees and believes and loves the same thing is what drove C.S. Lewis to make the following observation in his book The Four Loves. Lewis observes that there is an erotic love that occurs between lovers. This is a good thing. But he says that there is a big difference between that kind of love and the love of friendship. He says it this way – “Hence we picture lovers face to face but Friends side by side; their eyes looking ahead.” (The Four Loves, p. 98) That is to say, they see and believe and love something together and thus they share something together. 

This is why Lewis would go on to say that the people who simply say “I want friends” will probably never have them. He says that the “very condition of having friends is that we should want something else besides friends.” Friends both want the same thing. The person who merely wants friends for the sake of having friends, really wants someone to look at themself. 

Nor, for Christians, we of all people should be the kind of people who can have friends. Because, we start out with certain things that we all love. If you are a Christian, you love God. If you are a Christian, you love Jesus. If you are a Christian, you love the Holy Spirit who indwells us. If you are a Christian, you love the gospel that saves us. If you are a Christian, you love the church that Jesus made us a part of. We have an eternal starting point that is better than any group on the planet. Which is why, when I go and visit another church, I can find friends fast. Because we are looking together at the same things. 

In a similar way, that is what David and Jonathan started with. When Jonathan heard David speaking about the glory and faithfulness and goodness of God, it says this in 1 Samuel 18:1 – Now when he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Why? Because they saw the same thing together!

Now over time as Christians we find other things that knit our souls together. The gospel and the triune God is a good place to start. But so are the common things in life. Like cars or gardens or sports teams or kids or canning or sewing or interior decorating or camping and so on. Those shared things we see allow our friendships to grow deeper. 

We need these kinds of friendships. Because we live in a fallen world! We live in a place where hard things happen. As I mentioned earlier, from David and Jonathan’s perspective, spears were thrown at them! I was just talking to a member in our church this week about a recent challenge that occurred in the life of their family. This person was saying that they were reminding each other as a couple that God was in control. It didn’t surprise God. We need that certainly in our marriages as friends. But we also need that among each other. 

David and Jonathan are a perfect example of this kind of a friendship. God grants us the blessing of being a friend and having them in a threatening and confusing world.