Imagine you’re sitting with a few friends when one of them makes a joke about someone’s accent. You laugh along. The person it was aimed at goes quiet, and you wish you hadn’t joined in. By the time you decide to say something, the conversation has moved on. Bringing it up later feels awkward. Leaving it alone doesn’t feel right either.
How do you tell your friend the truth without turning a concern into an attack? Start by seeking their good. Face your own part honestly, ask what happened, and give them time to answer. Then say what needs to be said with gentleness. Scripture helps us see why each of those things matters.
When silence stops being kind
Proverbs 27:5–6 challenges the idea that keeping someone comfortable is always kind:
“Better an open rebuke than love that is concealed. The wounds of a friend are faithful, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.”
— Proverbs 27:5–6, Berean Standard Bible
We may care deeply about a friend and still keep quiet because we don’t want an awkward evening. The love is real, but it stays hidden when it needs to speak. And as the proverb’s enemy shows, pleasant words can conceal very different intentions.
The proverb asks us to look beyond how a conversation feels. Pain does not prove that a rebuke was loving; pleasantness does not prove that it was true. The question is whether the words are faithful to the person and to what is right.
The same chapter speaks of the sweetness of a friend’s counsel and of friends sharpening one another (Proverbs 27:9, 17). There’s more to this friendship than correction. If all a person hears from us is criticism, something is missing.
And “open” doesn’t mean making a public scene. If a fellow believer sins against you, Jesus says to speak with them privately, seeking to win them over (Matthew 18:15). He’s addressing a wrong done to you, within His teaching on accountability in the church. The joke in our example hurts someone else. Even in that different situation, we can draw on the same desire to restore a person rather than embarrass them. None of this requires an unsafe private meeting or excuses threats, humiliation, or control.
Begin with what you need to admit
Before you rehearse what your friend needs to hear, take an honest look at yourself.
But doesn’t Jesus tell us not to judge? Matthew 7:1–5 answers that concern with a picture of someone trying to remove a speck from another person’s eye while a beam remains in their own. The would-be helper cannot see properly. Jesus tells that person to deal with the beam first, so they can see clearly to help. His warning confronts hypocrisy; it does not leave us with permanent silence about wrongdoing.
Self-examination is part of loving correction. Have you misunderstood what happened? Are you calling a difference in taste a moral failure? Are you angrier about being inconvenienced than about the harm itself? Have you done something that requires an apology?
You don’t need to be faultless to raise a concern. But you do need to give up the position of someone who only has faults to find in others.
If you didn’t share in the wrong, don’t invent something to confess. Be honest about your part, including when you had no part in that particular action.
When you did join in, say so. “I laughed along, and I shouldn’t have” is a more honest beginning than speaking as though you stood apart from the whole incident. Your apology should stand on its own, without making your friend’s apology its price.
Listen before you finish your verdict
James tells his readers to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger” (James 1:19, BSB). He goes on to call them to receive God’s word humbly and put it into practice. Listening is part of a life willing to be taught.
In a hard conversation, that means leaving room for information you do not have. Asking “What happened?” is different from asking a question whose answer you have already rejected.
Return to that joke about the accent. “You always put people down” is likely to start an argument about every other conversation you’ve had. Try something more specific:
“I laughed at that joke about her accent. That was wrong of me. What did you mean by it?”
Then stop. Let your friend answer before you state your concern. Ask because you want to understand, and be willing to hear something you weren’t expecting.
Their answer may change your understanding. It may also explain what happened without excusing it. You don’t have to agree with everything you hear. You do need to respond to what your friend actually says, rather than carry on with the argument you rehearsed alone.
After hearing the answer, you can explain why it concerned you. If the reply is “It was only a joke,” you might say: “I understand you meant it as a joke. I still think it was hurtful. I’m going to apologize for joining in.”
Keep the concern about that particular joke. Your friend can consider what they said without having to defend their whole character.
Give gentleness a purpose
Paul tells the Galatian believers to restore someone caught in wrongdoing “with a spirit of gentleness” (Galatians 6:1, BSB). In the same verse, he warns the person helping to watch themselves, because they too may be tempted.
Paul wants the person restored. Once our aim becomes winning, gentleness starts to feel like a disadvantage. His warning to watch ourselves matters here: we’re capable of sin in the very conversation where we’re trying to address it.
You can name the concern plainly without adding an insult or collecting an audience. Give your friend space to answer. If an apology is needed, leave room for a real one; don’t force words from someone just to end the discussion.
The next verse calls believers to carry one another’s burdens. There’s more to do after we’ve said our piece. In the example above, you might offer to go with your friend to apologize, if they want that support. You can also change your own part in the group’s conversation next time.
Let Christ’s love shape what comes next
Jesus tells His disciples to love one another as He has loved them. He speaks of laying down His life for His friends, and He calls them friends because He has made known to them what He heard from His Father (John 15:12–15).
We’re learning to love from the One who gives Himself for His people. Being right can’t be the whole ambition of a conversation shaped by His love. Paul describes the church growing into maturity under Christ, its head, through “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15, BSB). Our words can serve that larger purpose: helping one another grow toward the One whose love we are learning.
Your friend may still be angry. Or you may discover that you were mistaken and need to take back what you said. Either way, there’s a person in front of you who needs your care, and you may have more listening to do.
Before you speak, pray for the willingness to hear truth as well as tell it. Ask for words that are clear enough to help and gentle enough to show the care you mean. Then, when the conversation is over, keep looking for the good you can honestly do.
A friend is a person to love before, during, and after the hard sentence.
Reading and inspiration
Read Proverbs 27; Matthew 7:1–5 and 18:15–17; James 1:19–27; Galatians 6:1–5; Ephesians 4:11–16; and John 15:12–17. Scripture quotations are from the Berean Standard Bible, a public-domain translation.
This original article was prompted by Tim Keller’s sermon “Friendship,” preached May 29, 2005, available through Gospel in Life.