More than a Personal Relationship

God deals with people through the use of covenants. 

Carl Ketcherside in his book The Death of the Custodian wrote:

The fact is that God has chosen to relate to man on the basis of covenants. He is a covenant-making God. No one who ignores this fact will ever grasp God’s plan and purpose in any age. (p. 15)

I want to throw this idea out to you: We have a covenant relationship with God and not just a personal relationship with God. 

 

Yes, I understand that marriage is a covenant relationship, and you can't get a more personal relationship than marriage. 

Just like marriage, the covenant God established with us through Jesus creates a personal relationship. At the same time it sets apart a covenant people for Him. 

 

1 Peter 2:9 reminds us:

But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are a kingdom of priests, God’s holy nation, his own possession. This is so you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light (NLT).

Christians are a chosen people, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. 

We have a personal relationship with God, but that personal relationship is lived out in the context of community. We are in this together. Which means we have a responsibility to and for each other. None of us should try to walk the journey of faith alone. It is crucial that we help each other as much as possible because our lives are linked through Jesus.

I bring this up because I think our focus on a “personal” relationship with God sidetracks us from what God has really called us to be—a covenant people. 

Leon Morris in The Atonement wrote:

It mattered intensely to Old Testament Israel that the nation was in covenant relationship with the one and only God. All its thinking and living revolved around this fact. (p. 22)

Israel is not a great example of covenant faithfulness, but I still wonder what the church would be like if our thinking and living revolved around the reality that we are in a covenant relationship with God. 

Knowing that we are in a covenant relationship with God, that extends beyond our personal relationship with Him, leads us to consider other people. We become responsible for helping, encouraging, forgiving, and teaching one another, because that is God expectation for His people.

Galatians 6:1-3 (NLT):

Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important.

Let this be the description of our lives as we live in a covenant relationship with God that is both personal and communal. 

You Can’t Hurry Love

Americans tend to fill every waking moment with activity. With our full schedules it is difficult to find time to squeeze one more thing into our days. 

When the opportunity comes our way to help and serve some one, it often comes at us as an inconvenience. It is interrupting our schedule. So we try to hurry through it so we can do a good deed and still check off everything on our to do lists.

Sadly, this leads people feeling more like an inconvenience or an afterthought rather than feeling truly loved. 

To be different, Christians need to slow down and understand that one of the sacrifices that we make on behalf of God is the interruption of our schedules. By letting God disrupt our lives we are saying that His will is more important than our will. We are also saying that people matter more than our personal agendas.

Loving our neighbor can’t simply be blocked off on our schedules. These opportunities to love people will  appear in our lives during inconvenient times, forcing us to choose between our agendas and God’s command. 

For us to truly love people we need to sacrifice our time, our agendas, and our money to be present in the lives of other people.

This is how we can love our neighbors well.

What Can We Do?

 We live in a sin corrupted world where violence and death too often reign, and we are powerless to do anything about the evil that surrounds us.

 In moments like these all we can do is focus on what is within our power to control. So we pray, asking God to intervene in the cares and concerns of our heart, and we commit to loving our neighbor. 

This what is under our control to do.

Seek to Discover Jesus

Reading through the book of John it becomes evident that there were great disagreements about Jesus' identity.  This is even seen in the Pharisees. Here is a group that we generally talk about opposing Jesus, but the reality was that there was a disagreement about Jesus among them (John 9:16).

In John 10:19 we again see that people had a disagreement about Jesus: When he said these things, the people were again divided in their opinions about him (NLT). 

 

There was this disagreement, or division, because Jesus provided a paradox for them. 

On the one hand Jesus taught with great authority and insight. 

On the other hand Jesus did not obey the culture expectations of the day. He was not always a "good" Jew.

All these centuries later, people still have disagreements about who Jesus is. 

• Some want to classify him as a good teacher who was able to give profound spiritual insight. 
• Some may elevate him to the position of prophet, a man of God giving people a word from God. 
• Some label Jesus as a liar who led people astray. 
• Some call him a myth who never existed. 

People are still divided about who Jesus is.

Since I claim to follow Jesus, it is important that I understand who Jesus is to the best of my ability. 

Now, I admit, it is easy, even by looking at the biblical account, to create Jesus in my image. To make a Jesus I am comfortable with, who will support my agendas, and promote my worldview. 

 

Even within the Church there are many different ideas of who Jesus is, how he lived, and what he taught.

This means we need make an effort to discover who Jesus is. 

• We need understand the culture in which Jesus lived which provide much needed context to his teaching. 
• We need to seek to hear his teaching through the ears of his intended audience.
• We need to learn why see his miracles and ministry through these first century eyes.

 It is easier to engage the Gospels, as well as the whole of Scripture, at just the surface level, as we look for those eternal truths to apply to our lives. But, I have come to believe that we miss much of the truth God has for us by not digging deeper into the text. 

People will always be divided over who Jesus is, but that shouldn’t keep us from the responsibility of doing what we can to discover the Jesus of history. 

I believe that when we commit ourselves to such a study we will be blessed with the gift of getting to know who Jesus is and all that he has done for us.

Liberty Depends on Virtue

 I love this John Adams quote for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is because it reminds me that the most important thing I can spend my time doing is making disciples. Freedom and liberty are not independent of the choices that we make. 

Living with virtue makes us free from the consequences of bad choices that lead to our enslavement. When we are not enslaved we are free to help and serve those around us. This is how we live as a benefit to our community.

The second reason I like this quote is that virtue reminds us that there is an outside authority  that defines right and wrong. We are not the ones who define good and bad, rather we look to God for His wisdom to guide us in the type of life we should live.

A loss of liberty in the United States can be traced back to the reality that as a country we have lost the notion of virtue. Instead of virtue we have turned to politics to determine what is right and wrong. 

This is why every election turns into “the most important election of our lives.” 

Instead of electing people to lead us, we fight a battle to determine who has the authority to determine what is right and wrong. It is a fight that will always be nasty and brutal as dividing lines between people and groups are created.

It is impossible to have unity when there is no common understanding of what virtue is. There is no hope for unity in the United States apart from a common understanding of virtue.

Instead of using political power to try to conform people to our understanding of right and wrong, we need to focus on discipleship and teaching people the true source of virtue: the wisdom of God.