Part One   Part Two   Part Three   Part Four   Part Five

Since relationship proceeds from and is modeled after the relationship within the Trinity between the members of the Godhead, all relationship should be and will be according to the Word of God.  Relationship is not just some arbitrary connection.  God must approve.  He doesn’t just approve, but cause and then judge. This reflects the hiearchical nature of relationship established in earlier posts in this series.  Relationship depends on pleasing God and pleasing God is being and living according to God’s Word.  There is no alternative to this.  It’s God or go home.

For instance, if you want to have a good relationship with another person, you have to have a good relationship with God. The former springs from the latter.  A single person on either of the two sides of a relationship can ruin it.  In the case of God and us, God is never the one ruining it.  It’s us.  Between people, however, it’s possible for either one out of two to be the problem, or it could be both.

Sin and Relationship

Sin impedes relationship with God.  A person must deal with his sin.  Tolerating sin forfeits the relationship.  Some sin against God also deters a relationship with a person.  For instance, lying to someone else is sin against God.  When David sinned with Bathsheba against Uriah, he sinned against God.  He wrote in Psalm 51:4, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight.”  What might seem horizontal is actually vertical.

On the other hand, the horizontal affects the vertical, which means it’s also vertical.  James wrote in James 4:4, “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”  You have to make a choice.  You can either be a friend of the world of a friend of God.  You can’t have both.  If you love the one, you hate the other (Matthew 6:24).

You cannot maintain relationship in the world, because of the violation of the vertical.  To continue pleasing the world, you won’t please God.  You’ve got to make that choice.  Some are deceived into thinking or just allow some kind of straddling of the world with God, which is actually just the world. Some choose friendship with the world.  Is that relationship?  It isn’t what is between the Persons in the Godhead, because relationship in the Godhead is based upon righteousness and truth.  It is faux relationship or no relationship in the world.

Sinners and Relationship

Sin itself impedes the relationship with God.  It’s not just represented as that throughout the Bible. Not making the proper break with sinners also impedes the relationship with God.  That’s part of not having it both ways.  You can’t be cozy with unbelievers and close to God.  The classic communication of this is Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1.  Paul corresponds pollution in the horizontal with that in the vertical in 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1.  Does the problem with the vertical come from the horizontal or is every violation in the horizontal a fruit of the vertical?  2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1 reads like a person, who won’t make the break from unbelievers, isn’t a child of God.

Two of Paul’s questions are these:  “What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?” “What part hath he that believeth with an infidel?” He concludes (vv. 18-19): “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,  And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”  We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that our relationship with people has nothing to do with God.

Lot’s wife couldn’t or wouldn’t separate from Sodom.  Her association turned her into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26).  With God’s warning, Lot himself left (19:29).  Peter reveals that his righteous soul was vexed with seeing and hearing their unlawful deeds (2 Peter 2:8).  I know of many people who call themselves Christians, but they aren’t vexed with seeing and hearing.  They lap it up and seem only to be angry when someone exposes their own unlawful deeds.

Christians often know Psalm 1, but do they take the point of relationship into its intended consideration?  The blessed man is contrasted with the ungodly in his end, the latter not standing in the day of judgment.  The blessed man is qualified more than any one thing by relationship:  he doesn’t walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of the scornful.  The clear conclusion is that those who go ahead and walk, stand, or sit in this company “shall perish.”

Peter writes in 1 Peter 3 that Noah and his family were saved by water.  How did the water save Noah and his family?  It saved them from the world, which had persecuted them while they preached for 120 years.  In the same way, Peter says baptism saves.  Baptism doesn’t save from “the filth of the flesh.”  It so identifies a believer with Christ and the church, that it separates a believer from the world.  It is a public manifestation of a relationship, like wearing a wedding ring.

Emptiness without True Relationship

What is it that attraction for professing believers to friendliness or intimacy with unbelievers, the ungodly, who reject Jesus Christ?  Sometimes professing believers want to keep a relationship with an unbeliever.  Sometimes it goes all the way to marrying one of them.  Rather than reproving the unfruitful works of darkness, they have fellowship with them (Ephesians 5:11).  Scripture reveals reasons for this behavior, the first being that they aren’t truly converted.  They love the world and the things that are in the world, because the love of the Father is not in him (1 John 2:15).

Without relationship, unbelievers experience emptiness.  God created them for relationship with Him.  Paul deals with this point in Colossians.  Paul says in Christ “all fulness dwells” (Colossians 1:19).  Fulfillment is found in the position in Christ.  He continues in Colossians 2:12:  “ye are complete in Him.”  The Lord Jesus Christ does solve emptiness.

It is possible still that believers will experience emptiness even though they are in Christ.  Believers are complete in Christ, but they will not experience that completion, that fulfillment, when they are not walking in the light or living in obedience.  Not experiencing fulfillment doesn’t mean someone is not saved.   At some point, if he’s a genuine believer, he can’t endure the lack of fulfillment.

Without fulfillment in Christ, people look elsewhere to find it.  Maybe they feel lonely.  They know they are missing something.  They struggle to give up the world, because of the emptiness.  It is a replacement, however, for an actual relationship.  This is not trusting Jesus Christ.  Like Lot, a righteous soul will also be vexed, an indication of the life of God in him. Quoting Proverbs 26:22, Peter compares looking for a worldly relationship to a dog returning to its vomit (2 Peter 2:2).  A believer will know it’s vomit compared to Christ and can’t persist with that.  The charm of the world will not hold him.  This is characteristic of a true Christian.

How could someone be saved, really know Jesus Christ, when he keeps choosing the world or unbelievers or sin over Christ?  Christ isn’t satisfying Him.  Christ satisfies.  It isn’t Christ who is the problem.  This is a person, if he continues, who doesn’t have that relationship.  That’s why he keeps choosing the replacements.

More to Come