Auf Wiedersehen

There are moments in life when language fails you, not because words do not exist, but because the words available feel unequal to the weight of the moment. Bidding farewell to dear friends is one of those moments.

Today, a man I love as a brother leaves. We met in seminary, and though it took time to earn the title of friend, I am so grateful to be counted among those upon whom he bestows it. And when he determined that he would marry, I praised God for His kindness in gifting him a woman as warm and gracious as she is capable. Our circle of friends drew close around her in hopes of giving her a family while away from her own. For a time, by the grace of God, I know we became just that.

Now they go. And I find myself reaching past the obvious word.

“Goodbye” is what you say. It is courteous, it is expected, and, of course, it is English. But another phrase pressed itself forward in our parting: auf Wiedersehen (German, “until the again-seeing”). Until I see you again, rendered more properly in English. The difference between those two expressions is the difference between two understandings of what a farewell actually is. For the Christian, it makes all the difference in the world.

Before we can understand what the gospel does to a goodbye, we must understand what is being lost—or rather, what is being temporarily surrendered—when a true friend departs.

“Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.”

—Proverbs 27:171

Proverbs 27:17 is often quoted and familiar, but the imagery warrants a closer look. Iron against iron. The process of sharpening is not soft. It involves friction, pressure, and contact. One blade is drawn against another, and, gradually, the end result is an edge. My friend was often this for me, though he may not have always known it. He pushed me to be a better man, and, being from cultures that were sufficiently different, he often had a perspective that differed from mine.

This is what distinguishes a true brother from an acquaintance. An acquaintance keeps his edges to himself. A brother presses in. He asks the harder questions. He speaks the word you needed to hear. He prays for you with a specificity that only comes from knowing you. And you are sharper and more like Christ for it.

The grief of parting is, in a very real sense, the measure of the sharpening. We do not mourn the loss of what was trivial. We mourn what has shaped us. And if a friend’s presence has been a means of grace in your life—if you have been made more patient, more faithful, more prayerful, more honest in his company—then his departure carries a genuine weight. Feeling that weight merely confirms receipt of a gift in and through the relationship.

My friend surely sharpened me and others. He did so simply by being who he was, a true brother in Christ. I am not the same man I was before I knew him, and our parting hurts in proportion to that truth.

Proverbs, however, does not let us stop at the grief. It points us to what the friendship was always for. Iron does not sharpen iron for its own sake, but the blade is sharpened for use, for work, for the purposes of the one who wields it. Christian friendship exists in service of something larger than itself. We sharpen one another for the glory of God and the good of the world. That purpose does not end when friends part ways. If anything, the sharpened blades go out to do their work in different fields. The immediate fellowship may be interrupted. Yet, the sharpening goes on.

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I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.

—Philippians 1:3-8

Paul wrote these words from prison, to friends he might never see again. He wrote them not with resignation but with joy.

That joy is what demands your attention when you read the opening of Philippians slowly. The distance between Paul (who is under guard) and his friends (who are in Macedonia) is considerable, especially when one considers the means of transportation in the first century. And yet the letter does not read like a farewell address but like a letter shot through with gladness because Paul understands something that the word “Goodbye” cannot contain: the bond between believers is not a function of one’s proximity but a fruit of the faith wrought in and through and by Christ Himself.

What holds Paul to the Philippians is the partnership, fellowship, and participation in the Gospel itself. They are bound together by something that preceded their friendship and will outlast their separation. The affection Paul feels for them is sourced from “the affection of Christ Jesus.” It is Christ’s own love, moving through Paul toward the people for whom Christ also died.

Whether in this life or the next, auf Wiedersehen captures the sentiment of parting believers.

When a Christian says “until I see you again,” he is making a confession about the nature of the bond itself. If the friendship is rooted in Christ, then it belongs to a category that miles cannot break. Christ holds us fast.

My friends go, and I will miss them. I will certainly grieve their absence from daily rhythms, but I do not say goodbye to them the way a man says goodbye to something he is losing. I say auf Wiedersehen because I hold them in my heart, as Paul held his Philippians, and because the God who knit this friendship together is not confined to any city or any country. He is as present in the place they go as He has been in the place we shared.

The distance is great. The bond is greater still.

If you have a friend who sharpens you, pursue that friendship with intention and protect it with prayer. Iron-sharpening relationships are gifts, and gifts require stewardship. Do not let the slow drift of a busy life separate you from the brothers and sisters who have helped make you who you are in Christ.

And when parting comes—as it will, in one form or another, for all of us—grieve the parting but be joyous in your shared faith in Christ and His kindness to have brought you together. Paul longed for his friends with a real longing. You are permitted to do the same.

Be encouraged in knowing that the God who ordains the farewell also governs the reunion. Every parting among believers is temporary.

Say goodbye if you must. But mean auf Wiedersehen.

Until next time, keep your hand on the plow and break up the fallow ground!

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