RIGHT RELATIONSHIPS
FREEDOM IN CHRIST
If you can I want you to think for a moment about what existed before God created the world. Before there were any galaxies, before there were any plants, animals, before anything existed – can you think what there was? God! God – no beginning and no end. God in three persons, perfect trinity. Now listen carefully to what I am going to say next because it is the foundation to all else I am going to share with you this morning. Because God is Trinitarian, three distinct persons, yet one – at the very heart of creation is a relationship because the very essence, the very core of God is a perfect relationship. When you read the accounts of creation in Genesis you realise that God created man in His own image and He then states this “It is not good for man to be alone.” We usually limit that to the creation of Eve and to the institution of marriage. Yet the Biblical truth is that God created Adam for relationship – primarily with God and then with one other in the intimacy of marriage, and then with family that he blessed them with and the wider community. At the very heart of all that God created, all that He declared to be good, was (and is) relationship. So this morning I want to share with you the freedom that we find in a right relationship with God and the freedom we experience in a right relationship with one another.
RIGHT RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD.
In Mathew 22 Jesus has answered a series of questions put to Him by the Sadducees. Their questions were an attempt to trip Him up and entrap Him. When they fail to corner Christ the Pharisees think they will have a go. And so in verses 34-35 you have this question posed: “What is the greatest commandment.” There are nearly 700 laws in the OT and the Pharisees want Christ to reduce it to one. With astounding wisdom and with authority we hear Christ’s response – read verses 37-40. In His answer Jesus goes to the very heart of the reason we have been created and He sets before the Pharisees, and us, the essential order of right relationships. Look closely at what He says in answer to the question. Jesus in summing up all of the Law of God tells us that it can be encapsulated in this one command – Love the Lord your God…
“Love the Lord your God…” Love, eternal love, perfect love, unconditional love – is at the centre of the relationship of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and here Christ puts love of God as the foundation to a right relationship with God. Notice will you how personal the command is – “the Lord your God.” There is a relationship in those words. The “Lord your God.” Do you see the emphasis on the personal relationship with God? You know when we read of God in the OT He always reveals Himself in the context of a relationship. How often we read “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” God is personal and in order to love Him we must know Him personally. The question is: “Do you?”
All of us this morning are called to Love the Lord God – but for how many of you is it a personal truth? For how many is the personal relationship of the commandment a reality? All of us begin life alienated from God because of sin. Scripture tells us clearly – “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Adam and Eve disobeyed God and brought sin and death into the created order. That act of disobedience broke the relationship with God and God in His love and mercy sent Christ to die that the relationship might be restored. But let me ask you has it been restored for you this morning? There is a need for a personal response to a general question. Christ commands us to Love the Lord God in and through a personal relationship with Him.
To help them understand this command to love God Christ adds that this is to be done “with all your heart, soul and mind.” In essence you are to love God with all that you are, with every part of your being. Every faculty, every capacity that you have is to love God first.
Friends let me ask you a question this morning: “Would you say that your heart, your soul and your mind are focused primarily on loving God?” “Is the primary concern of your life loving God?” I don’t mean do you think occasionally about God. I don’t mean do you read your Bible or pray now and then. I mean is Christ, is God, the very heartbeat of your heart, the life of your soul and the thoughts of your mind? Do you actually love God? Do you seek to know His love more and more each day? Do you delight in His love? Maybe I should have asked “Do you know the love of God in your life?”
Let me say as simply and as humbly as I can to you this morning: That for many of you, and I am talking to those of you who know Christ as Lord and Saviour, the reason your spiritual life is in the doldrums and you do not know freedom in the Christian life is because somewhere along the path you stopped loving God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind – or maybe closer to the mark would be that you never started out that way. Please hear what I am saying this morning – I am not saying you are not a Christian but what I am saying is that your spiritual life is not what it should be because you have not set your heart, your soul and your mind first and foremost on Christ. Let me spell it out for you in some very simple but practical examples of this: in simple situations your first thought is not what will bring me into a deeper relationship with God here? In terms of finance God is never given a second thought. In terms of your time and your talents He is not your first priority. Friends listen to me. I am not wishing to be harsh on anyone but to open our eyes this morning to the meaning of this command, not only its meaning but the implications for our lives this morning.
Love your neighbour as yourself. Christ then goes beyond what has been asked to point out the practical implication of keeping the first commandment. Again do you notice how personal it is? The call is to Love your neighbour. On another occasion when Christ was asked who is my neighbour He told the parable of the Good Samaritan. Love even for those we consider our enemies, is to be the mark of someone who loves God with all his heart, soul and mind. But set aside this morning that issue of loving your enemies. What about our brothers and sisters in Christ? We are called into a relationship with God and with one another. The NT knows absolutely nothing of this idea that our relationship with God is private. It knows nothing of this heretical idea that you can be a follower of Christ and not be in a right relationship with other members of the body of Christ. It knows nothing of this idea that you can know Christ as Lord and Saviour and stay away from those occasions when the Body of Christ meets together for worship, for prayer, for Bible study and for the breaking of bread around the Lords’ table together. When you enter upon a relationship with God in Christ you enter into a relationship with the rest of the Body of Christ. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12 just as the physical parts of the body cannot say they do not need the other parts of the body so it is in the church, the body of Christ – we need one another.
In Romans 15 verse 7 Paul urges the believers in Rome to accept one another as Christ has accepted them. Now let me ask you this morning: What would that mean in Holy Trinity this morning? How has Christ accepted you? Unconditionally, that is how He has accepted you. You came to Him as you were – a little sin filled urchin and He washed you clean. He did not leave you as you came but cleansed you and since that day has been changing you to be more like Him, to bring you to perfection that one day He might present you spotless before the throne of grace. So how does that play out in the way we are to love one another at Holy Trinity? We are to accept one another unconditionally but that is not the same as saying we will not work to change one another to be more like Christ. Friends let me say to you this morning that without one another, without accepting one another, without encouraging one another and having fellowship with one another we will miss out on the experiencing of God’s grace in our lives as we encounter it in other peoples lives.
In 1 Thessalonians 2 verse 8 Paul tells the believers that when he and Silas spent time with them they shared their lives with them. Paul, as their pastor, did not just share information with them but shared his life with them. Paul did not just preach and teach the gospel to them but shared his life with them. When I look at Christ in the gospels that is the clearest thing about Him – He shared His life with people. He went to a wedding at Cana. He had tea with Zaccheus. He played with children. He had dinner with Simon the Pharisee and prostitute washed his feet with her tears. Nicodemus, the woman at the well, healing Jairus’ daughter, and we could go on and on. The gospels are full of incidents of Jesus sharing His life with people. Yes He taught them, yes He preached but primarily it was all about ‘relationship.’ His disciples – what did He do with them for three years? He shared His life with them. When He goes to Gethsemane and His soul is deeply distressed what does He do with the disciples? He shares His life with them. That is why Paul could write those words to the Thessalonians. He was only modelling what He knew His saviour had done. Do we model this in our lives? For those of you who are married is it modelled with your spouse? Is it modelled in the home? Do you share your lif? Not do you share information? Not do live in the same house, eat at the same table? But do you actually share your life?
When it comes to fellowship here at HT we cannot share our lives with everyone but we are called to love everyone. Christ had 70 disciples and within that He had 12 who He shared His life with. Within the 12 disciples He had 3 who were closer still, James, Peter and John and then there was the beloved disciple – John. When Christ voluntarily limited Himself in human form He could not be in two places at one time, and neither can you. He shared His life publicly and privately. There were times He spoke to thousands and times He spoke to one. But He shared His most intimate life with just 12, 3 and 1 person. If we love God and love our neighbour we will model what Christ modelled.
Let me finish by spelling out for all of us the difference that will make in our lives and in the life of Holy Trinity. Henri Nouwen once said this about a particularly difficult period in his life: “I needed a safe place to hit bottom.” He found that safe place in a community called L’Arche. A place where people with disabilities and none live in community together, sharing their lives. Nouwen gives a wonderful account of how he understood the love and grace of God through this community because these people did not care about his academic qualifications or his reputation as a great Christian writer but they did care about him. Now let me ask you something: Would you hit bottom safely at Holy Trinity? Some of you might answer yes to that, some of you would answer ‘No’ and some of you probably have no idea what I am talking about. Is Holy Trinity a safe place to hit bottom? Is it a place where all of us can take off the masks and share our lives so that we might know the grace of Christ in and through other people? For some of you the answer to that would be yes because you have experienced that here. For some of you it would be no because you have not had that experience here. That will only become a reality in HT when it becomes a reality in our own lives. When we begin to share our lives with one another, openly and honestly, then we will begin to see the grace of God working in our lives because we will experience working in other peoples’ lives. It will mean trusting one another. It will mean loving one another. It will mean our primary concern for the other person is how can we help them grow into Christlikeness? It will mean forgiving one another and bearing one another’s burdens.
I want to challenge us all this morning to make it a reality and we begin by being in a right relationship with God through Christ which is then lived out in right relationships with one another.
Amen.
