Relationship, pt. 4

Part One   Part Two   Part Three

Relationship.  You can't live without it.  You can't live with it.  Bad relationship can be torture.  I don't have to explain.  Everyone reading knows.  It can be great, fantastic, and enjoyable.  It can be infuriating, frustrating, or sad.  It can influence toward either righteousness or evil.  It mainly does the latter.  We need to know about relationship.  We need to know what God says about it.  We will be judged by God for and about relationship.

Relationship with God is priority and the basis of all human relationship.  Relationship starts with God, and that relationship is also the source and model for all successful and fulfilling relationship.  The desire for relationship that is inherent in every human being also turns every person into prey, using relationship as bait.  People want relationship to the degree that they will pursue inordinate relationship, instead of pleasing God in it.  Organizations, including churches, use relationship to pander to an audience.

To understand right relationship, everything fundamental to it can be found in the relationship between the Father and the Son in the Trinity, the Godhead.  Both the Father and the Son reveal in scripture various components of their relationship with each other in a way sufficient to explain the right kind.  Those characteristics of their relationship are teased out further in revelation in scripture about relationship between people.  What scripture says should be the guide by which we inform and the grid by which we judge our relationship with God and with people.

The relationship with God has been called, and in an accurate and helpful way, a vertical relationship.  The relationship with people has been titled, also accurate and helpful, a horizontal relationship.  It is also true and edifying to consider the horizontal relationship depends on the vertical relationship.  It is good then to see the association between the vertical and the horizontal.

Horizontal as a description of human relationship is a bit of a misnomer.  Almost all relationship divine and human is what could be called hierarchical, so much so that one should say that relationship is hierarchical.  This is also likely the most repulsive aspects of relationship to depraved humanity, and especially today.  People resist authority, starting with God.  Problem with most relationship is a problem with God, because relationship is hierarchical, as seen in several ways in scripture, not necessarily in this order.

One, in 1 Corinthians 11:3, the Apostle Paul writes:

But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.

This represents the most important relationships in existence:  Father to Christ to man to woman.  If hierarchy is in the Godhead, then it shouldn't surprise someone that it is also crucial for humanity.

Two, the first words in God's relationship to man are a command.  When God started talking to men, He commanded man (Genesis 2:16-17):

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

The relationship of God to man is "God commanded the man."

Jesus, the God-man, did not treat His relationship with the Father differently than what God expects of all men.  Three, more than any other gospel, John presents the relationship of Jesus with His Father, and all through the gospel of John, Jesus says He's doing exactly what the Father wants Him to do.  The purpose of Jesus was to do the will of His Father, that is what sanctified the Son, and what the Son said sanctified people as well.

John 5:19, "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise."
John 5:20, "For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth."
John 5:30, "I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me."
John 5:36, "for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do."
John 8:28, "I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things."
John 8:29, "And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him."
John 8:49, " I honour my Father."
John 10:18, "This commandment have I received of my Father."

There is much more.  I often asked and still ask my own son, "Is there anything that I'm telling you to do as a son that either is not in the Word of God, or is against the Word of God?"  I've never heard, no, to that question.  Sons still often think that what the father says is optional or even harmful to them, albeit scriptural.  Relationship between the Father and the Son in the Trinity is hierarchical, and that is the model relationship.  Someone may say, "Well, the Father loves the Son, so it is easy for the Son."  Here's what the Son says (John 10:15-17):

As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. . . . Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.

The Father was also pleased because the Son did what the Father wanted Him to do at His baptism (Matthew 3:15-17).  The love of the Father and the pleasure of the Father is attached to the obedience of the Son.  The Father and the Son would not have a relationship if one or the other sinned.

Since God is at the top if the hierarchy, disobedience to God in relationship is what causes enmity in the relationship.  Relationship is not some type arbitrary connection.  It is designed by God and what ruins it is what God says ruins it, which is true.  It's not for people to decide what disrupts relations.

Four, the ten commandments reflect hierarchy.  The love of God is seen in the first four commandments, which are essentially valuing God above everything and putting Him ahead of everything.  This is the first of the great commandments.  The second table starts with "honor thy father and thy mother."  Relationship between people is represented in children honoring and obeying their parents.

Five, the two tables of the law are mirrored in the New Testament.  Ephesians as much as anything is about relationship.  God wanted the relationship in the church with each member one with the other, a special focus on the Jews and the Gentiles in chapters 2 and 3, proceeding from their relationship with Him, an "in Christ" relationship.  Paul called them one new man, the unity so tight that they were behaving like they were all one Person, Who was Christ.  The Apostle Paul breaks down varied relationships as starting with "be filled with the Spirit" (Eph 5:18).  All of the relationships represented then in Ephesians 5 and 6 -- husband/wife, parent/child, employer/employee -- spring from submitting to the Holy Spirit. They are all hierarchical.  What makes them work is submission, starting with subjection to God.

I know many people who want "good relationships" and by that, they mean people treating them well.  The same people often have a problem with authority.  They don't like hierarchy and don't do well with it.  The problem, again and again, "are the people in charge" (their assessment).  This parallels the big issue for unbelievers.  2 Peter 2-3 speaks of the typical apostate "speaking evil of dignities."  They don't like having a boss and classically they nit-pick those above them.  They "walk after their own lust" and scoff at what clashes with their will.  They don't deny themselves, aren't thankful, and worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator.  All of this will sabotage relationship.

More to Come