Relationships, Not Rules

God-intended human life involves relationships.  Without relationships, life is an incomplete and faded image of what God intends it to be.  Jesus said that our first and greatest relationship is with the God who created us- He says in Mark 12:30-31, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The next greatest relationships are with one another- “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 

Therefore, Christianity is first and foremost about relationships.  Some think Christianity, particularly Christianity viewed from the outside, is all about following rules and loosing autonomy to a distant God.  But in God’s great economy of things, breaking God’s rules can be forgiven, which God is very quick to do.  We follow God's rules and acknowledge His boundaries simply because we love God.  God placed these rules and boundaries in our lives simply because He loves us.  Following God's commandments is surely an expression of our relationship with God.

From God's perspective, being in a relationship with Him based on love is our purpose for being and  why God created us.  God came to us in our fallen humanity in the person of Jesus to be the way back to an unfettered love-relationship with Him.  Jesus says in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."  Through Jesus, heaven’s gates are opened wide for us to enjoy a full and forever relationship with our Heavenly Father.

God’s purposes become clear to us when we realize that God did not create any of us just to live "three score and ten years," as Psalm 90 puts it, and then pass into oblivion (or worse), but He created us to be in a love-relationship with Him and, by extension, with one another.  This full, unfettered, and forever relationship with God is called Heaven.  This full, unfettered, and forever relationship with one another is called the Communion of Saints in Heaven.  In Christ and through Christ, someday we will take our place in the full presence of God among the saints in Heaven. Alleluia!

Rob Hartley 01-07-22