Last time, we looked at how our reputations are to be based on furthering the Name and reputation of Christ. We are those who live in the Name of Christ, and thus His Name is what is to determine our reputations. Sometimes we will fail in this. Yet, on the whole, it is His reputation that is to be valued and pursued, rather than our own. Our own reputation is to be viewed in terms of His own. We already looked at this with regard to our reputation before others, especially unbelievers. Today, we will be looking at what our relationships should look like; lived in terms of our primary relationship with God.
I will begin with a seemingly obvious question: What are relationships? In its most basic form, relationships are things that people have in common connection with one another. It is based on things that bring them together—common threads. We can have good or bad relationships; shallow or deep ones; one’s based on hobbies or faith. The question for the Christian is, “What sort of relationships does God desire for us to have?” We can start to ask this question by observing the common threads of a relationship, and especially those that determine the nature of the relationship.
Between believers, this common thread is to be principally our Christian fellowship. What this means is that, whatever we are as Christians, and our call to love one another, must be the primary thread. Our relationships with other believers are never to consist primarily in what we do as a profession or in what our common interests are, or in our family affairs, or the like. As important as these things are, these things are all tertiary to our identity in Christ and membership in God’s kingdom. To have these things reversed is to be as a soldier forgetting his duty—being one who gets himself recklessly entangled in civilian affairs, and therefore displeasing his commanding officer (2 Tim. 2:3-4). Rather, our relationships with other believers are to consist in our common duty to God and to one another, so that the common thread between us is principally in our common faith. What does this mean? It means putting God’s priorities above all others in all of our relationships. It means having our profession, hobbies, and family be things that are submitted to the desires and commands of our chief officer: Christ. Such things are to operate within a context of obedience and love for God and others. Truly, God is a jealous God, and we invoke His jealousy whenever we make anything else the greatest common thread between us as believers. (1) Whatever we emphasize and (2) whatever we focus on and (3) spend our time speaking on—these are the things that dominate our hearts and are the things to which we give our allegiance. So, with your fellow believers, what is the common thread of your relationship? Is it God, or something else? What do you find yourself usually focusing on when you speak to them? And, when you do speak about God (if you do so), is it with reverence, deference, and awe of God, or to simply analyze a vacant curiosity, as if God were a mere object of analysis? It is good to ask questions and to seek to learn better about God and His Word, but this must be done with all respect and holiness. Think about your common thread with believers that you know, and seek to set this aright.
What about our relationships with unbelievers? Our relationships with unbelievers differ from relationships between unbelievers in that their common thread is seldom ever God, but something else. Unbelievers can seek to build relationships on anything (often on anything but God). However, as far as we are able, we are to set a precedent for extolling and parading God’s glory in how we think, act, and speak. (Any other subject or thread than God in our relationships with unbelievers, therefore operates as inherently subordinate to our principal mission from God, and is clearly within that frame and not in the frame of the unbeliever). As we saw last time, we, as soldiers of Christ, have a duty to unbelievers: to bear the Name of Christ (we are His reputation to the world). While they may seek to relate to us on purely godless grounds, we are to redeem our relationships with unbelievers by making them glorifying and honourable to God. In other words, we are to, as much as we are able, have true faithfulness on display before a dead and dying world. We are not to relate to unbelievers in the same way that they relate to each other, but set a godly precedent of love for them, as we remain faithful to our love and obedience to God. Why should we act as unbelievers, or as those ashamed of Christ? When we simply assimilate their own expectations and values, we are, in fact, abandoning Christ’s; we are laying aside our duty to Christ as His soldiers. The Bible teaches that cowards have no place in the kingdom of God (Rev. 21:8). Rather, we are to have courage, and bring what Christ desires and commands to a dead and dying world. What sort of hatred must we have for unbelievers if we simply adopt their own values and expectations in our relationships with them? Do we not have a better way? We do have a better way, and we have a commission to be salt and light in the world, and to bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. Therefore, our relationships with unbelievers need to be that which extolls God—operating from the basis of our Christian identity (our identity in Christ), and therefore as soldiers of the cross. May we do so faithfully, and may we trust in Christ for this as we go boldly out into the world for Him.
In summary so far, (1) our relationships should not be principally built around common hobbies or work, but around God. If we want to use hobbies or work as a part of our relationships with others, then it needs to be spoken of in a God-centric way (as an extension of our relationship and talk of God). (2) In our relationships, our relationship with God is to determine our relationships to others. For believer-to-believer relationships, this means that we get to know the spiritual lives of others, encourage them in faith, help them with their struggles, open up to mature believers to help us with our issues, and always keep our relationship with God as the greatest common thread in all of our interactions and relationships. For a believer-to-unbeliever relationship, this means having God as the foundation through which we relate, and not the expectations or mores of the unbelievers. We are Christ’s ambassadors, and our reputation is to function for upholding His, parading His glorious Name. Our relationships are to be built from the ground up from God to match a believer-to-believer relationship, or a believer-to-unbeliever relationship. In other words, our relationships are to be defined by our membership in Christ’s church to one another.
Does this mean that all we talk about is God directly? No. Rather, when we do talk about the hustle and bustle of life, and even our likes and dislikes, or God, we do so in a God-honouring way that explicitly acknowledges His centrality in those things. For instance, if we are talking about a repair that we need to do on our car, we ought to acknowledge God’s providence, or show gratitude, having an attitude and disposition of humility before God. How we talk about these things will change. For instance, rather than having a complaining attitude about the repair—which would actually be a complaint against God, who provided it for our good—we would maintain a godly submission to His providence and sovereignty. The tenor of our conversations would be that of trust and honouring the Lord, which will highlight the realness of our faith for all who speak to us. It will also have the effect of shaming others who are complaining or living in sinful rejection of God’s gracious providence. People will know that things like a needed repair are not at the center of our lives. Rather, this serves as an opportunity to show genuine trust in God. Imagine, now, how much this will transform even your conversations about things like needing repairs, or of our hobbies, or politics, just to name a few? We will cease to be a complaining and bitter or angry people, and be ones who uphold God in everything, even in conversations that are not explicitly about Him. Doing this will also make it far easier to talk about God, and it will show our separateness from the worries and complaints of the world.
Even though we may talk about many things in relation to God, we will also speak a lot more about Him directly. This speaking, when our relationships are redeemed, will also thus center on Him, and this includes talking about Him. For the believer, God is to be predominantly on our minds. This means thinking of everything in terms of our principal relationship with God. All relationships are thus to flow out of our relationship with God. In a way, our relationship to others is to be an extension of our relationship with God. That is not to say that relating with others is relating to God, but that how we relate to others is based on furthering and promoting our relationship with God. How we relate to others is a form of how we are relating to God, since it is with the state of our hearts (our inner-man) before God that we honour (and thus rightly relate to) God. So, how we are in our relationships and conversations has a direct bearing on how we relate to God. Therefore, any relationship or conversation where our hearts are not principally giving deference to God are those that sinfully waste the time. Such betrays a sinful deference to something other than God. Relationships (and thus conversations) between believers are hence of a very different kind and nature from that of unbelievers.
I will speak very briefly about the place of good works in relationships, since it has been covered earlier in this series. In our relationships, what we say needs to match what we do. This includes our character, disposition, acts of charity, living out what we affirm, and seeking the good of those around us. Our relationships, regardless of how well we speak, will be empty and devoid of honouring God if we do not also strive to be consistent with what we affirm. God will help us with this as well as we trust in Him.
Next time, we will be looking more at how we can redeem our conversations.