Gospel Relationships
The article below is a short extract from the Crosslands Foundation course, Gospel Relationships. The full course covers:
Perspectives: the story of redemption
- Perspectives: the true nature of authority and the heart of our problems
- Perspectives: the centrality of the cross
- Perspectives: the support of the church and the light of eternity
- Relationships: marriage and singleness
- Relationships: work and retirement
- Relationships: parenting and friendship
- Problems: anger and conflict
- Problems: fear and pride
Relationships in the story or Redemption
Relationships are a big part of our lives. Most of our joys and most of our troubles come through relationships. We’re happy when we’re spending time with a loved one. We’re miserable when relationships fracture. We’re excited to go out with friends. We’re anxious when work relationships are tense.
How should the gospel shape our relationships? How should it shape the roles we play like spouse, parent, worker? And how does the gospel help when relationships go wrong?
Let’s begin by telling a story …
Living in the Bible Story
We tell stories to make sense of life. Sometimes those stories are fictional, but they allow us to engage with issues at a safe distance – articulating our emotions or processing our experiences, perhaps, through the characters in the stories. Often those stories claim to describe reality. They can do this at a micro and macro level. At a micro level we re-narrate what has happened to us, perhaps in a way that justifies our actions. At a macro level culture has stories that purport to make sense of life. These stories are sometimes called worldviews and they describe who we are, what’s wrong with the world and how it can be put right. Evolution as a worldview says human beings are merely advanced animals whose aim is to pass on our genes. Life is a struggle from which the fittest survive. Modernity says human beings are rational minds inside bodies. Our problems are caused by ignorance and deprivation. The solution is better education and improves social conditions.
This instinct to make sense of our lives through stories is a good instinct. The problem is that people often choose the wrong stories. We choose stories of our own making. Telling our own story is a way of creating our own reality. We become self-made people instead of submitting to the Creator.
A Christian approach to relationships and roles begins by placing those relationships and roles in the context of the human story as God tells it – the true story that we find in the Bible. So our first gospel mindset perspective is this:
- The story of redemption – the Bible story makes sense of our lives
Here’s the Bible story in summary:
Creation: Human beings are made in God’s image to know and serve God. We are made for relationship – with God, other people and creation.
Fall: Our problem is that we have rebelled against God, and our rebellion has fractured our relationship with God, and therefore it has fractured our relationships with other people and the creation world.
Redemption: We cannot put things right. But God in his mercy has forgiven and reconciled us through the death and resurrection of his Son. Now God is restoring our relationships through the transforming power of his Holy Spirit.
Hope: One day Christ will return and God will restore all things in a new creation.
Notice how this story redefines our personal stories:
- our identity – we are made for God
- our problem – we have rejected God
- our solution – God rescues us in Christ
- our hope – God will restore all things in a new creation
Notice, too, how integral relationships are to every aspect of this story. This is the story that makes sense of our need for relationships, why relationships go wrong and how they can be put right.
Let’s drill down into the story and see how these themes unfold across the pages of Scripture.
Creation
When God first creates humanity, we read: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness …’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Gen. 1:26-27) God says: “Let us” – not “Let me.” The one God is a triune community of three persons. God himself exists in and through the trinitarian relationships. And what God says to himself, Father to Son, Son to Spirit, is “Let us make man in our image.” We are made like God, and that includes being and relational. We are made for relationships – with God, with one another, male and female. To be truly human is to live in relationship. “It is not good for man to be alone,” says God in Genesis 2:18.
In our culture we often think we will “find ourselves” by going off and doing our own thing. But it’s not true. Does God the Son “find himself” by doing his own thing? Of course not. The Son is the Son through his relationship with his Father in the love of the Holy Spirit.
It’s the same for us. We find our true identity through the relationships that fill our lives. Perhaps you’re a son; you work in an office; and you’re part of your church’s music team. Or perhaps you’re a wife with two small children who leads a regular Bible study. These roles involve a network of relationships that is unique to you. No-one else but you is simultaneously the child of your parents, the colleague of your particular fellow-workers, a member of your specific church and a friend to the people in your specific music group. No-one else but you is simultaneously the wife of your husband, the mother of your children, a member of your specific church and the leader of your particular Bible study. This matrix of relationships makes you unique – it gives you your identity. But it makes you unique in a way that connects you to other people. You cannot “be yourself” on your own.
We are made for relationships and relationships are what give us our identity – supremely our relationship with the triune God.
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If you enjoyed this short extract and would like to explore the full Gospel Relationships course or other similar courses from Crosslands, contact our team here or email hello@crosslands.training