" Here is, 1. A charge given to be faithful and constant to our friends, our old friends, to keep up an intimacy with them, and to be ready to do them all the offices that lie in our power. It is good to have a friend, a bosom-friend, whom we can be free with, and with whom we may communicate counsels. It is not necessary that this friend should be a relation, or any way akin to us, though it is happiest when, among those who are so, we find one fit to make a friend of. Peter and Andrew were brethren, so were James and John; yet Solomon frequently distinguishes between a friend and a brother. But it is advisable to choose a friend among our neighbours who live near us, that acquaintance may be kept up and kindnesses the more frequently interchanged. It is good also to have a special respect to those who have been friends to our family: "Thy own friend, especially if he have been thy father’s friend, forsake not; fail not both to serve him and to use him, as there is occasion....
Voddie Baucham uses the word "ethnic" in seemingly the same way that many Christians, including Reformed Pastors and Theologians, have used the term "race" or "races" historically, and even recently. We can consider Geerhardus' Vos's well known Biblical Theology, in which he states, "Under the providence of God each race or nation has a positive purpose to serve, fulfillment of which depends on relative seclusion from others." This is quoted by present day White RPCNA Minister Dr. Frank Smith, who said in his recent book Race, Church, and Society, " Social and cultural distinctions still remain—they are not eliminated. The oneness celebrated in Galatians 3:28—a unity focused on our salvation and our right standing before God—does not eradicate our natural connections. We are not disembodied spirits—we still consist of a psychosomatic unit (soul and body), which means that we still carry those ethnic (racial) traits with which we wer...