Better than a Personal Relationship
This is the fourth and final post in a short series of posts on the theme of the ‘Doctrine of God’. In the first post I explored why we should bother studying God’s revelation of himself at all. In the second post I wrote about how we can know God. And in the third post I discussed a little of what we can know about God from the bible, and warned against setting God’s love against everything else he has revealed himself to be.
In this post we will think a little about the character of our relationship to this God.
As was established in the first part of this series; we Christians don’t simply aim to know about God, but to really know God. So what does that actually mean?
There is a common phrase amongst that we evangelicals like to us, an expression common enough to have almost become a cliche at this point.
What do we have as believers? We have a:
“Personal Relationship with Jesus”
Of course, this phrase gets at something very important. Our faith would be less than nothing without the person of Jesus right at its centre. We are not called Christ-ians for no reason. And if I, as an individual human, have no individual relationship to him then I have no share in the salvation he offers.
Many of us have used ‘Personal Relationship with Jesus” to ward off one very particular, and very dangerous, danger: Cold, dead, mechanistic performance of religious duties for the sake of getting to heaven.
And, in agreement, I offer a wholehearted “down with cold, dead, mechanistic, religious, duty - amen and amen.”
However, there are significant issues with the phrase. Or rather issues with the paradigm that the phrase has come to represent. The phrase has come to occupy a central place in the minds of many. When asked how we relate to the God of the universe, this youth group thought is the controlling idea of how we relate to him. We have a personal relationship with him, and that phrase has become the coat rack for all sorts of sketchy imaginations.
The paradigm has come to stand for a relationship that is:
Emotionally intimate
Fluidly expressive
A functional partnership-of-equals
Free of obligations (in fact, antithetical to obligations)
The ideal of the ‘Personal-Relationship’ paradigm has, in fact, come to conjure in our imaginations something more akin to young romantic love than anything else. Young love; that time of heady passions when obligation and duty seem to come like a grey shawl to squash spontaneity, when emotions come-in and go-out like the tides, and when history and wisdom have not tempered the affections into real friendship and loyalty.
This has become the imagined ideal of our relationship to God.
Such ‘personal-relationships’ are feeble compared to how God wants us to relate to him. They are like watery soup. To understand the kind of relationship God actually calls us to, we need to turn to the biblical paradigm. That of the covenant relationship.
Covenant Lord, Covenant Relationship
“God also said to Moses. “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.” Exodus 3:15
The verse above comes from a key moment in the history of God’s people, just before the Exodus events kick-off in earnest. God makes himself known to Moses as the one who is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That is, he makes himself known as the one who made covenant with those patriarchs. And this is how he is ever to be known, as the Covenant Lord, the one who has made covenant with his people.
And this is a taste of a larger pattern throughout scriptures; God relates to his people and his creation through covenant.
Covenants are a type of formal personal-legal relationship. They contain obligations, they contain promises, and they contain the whole framework necessary for two parties to form a shared history of faithful fellowship.
Very briefly here are three important features of covenants:
Covenants are legal realities
Covenants are personal realities
Covenants are inherently hierarchical
Covenants are legal realities. The covenant relationship is a formal relationship, when a covenant is made a legal entity is created. Covenants therefore have obligations, one party promises to be something to the other, and the other party promises to respond in a certain way. In this way a bond is written into the fabric of reality that is more binding than mere affection, and more real than the back-and-forth swing of felt closeness. Covenants do not change from person to person, or moment to moment. The legal reality of a covenant provides stability, reliability, and clarity.
Covenants personal realities. The aim of a covenant is not bare formality, cold officiousness, or duty for the sake of duty. God’s covenants flow from benevolence and they prepare the ground for overflowing generosity. Good covenants are like a well crafted trellis that provide all the support that a growing vine needs, and allows it to bear the weight of fruitfulness without buckling. Covenants are obligation for the sake of love, and duty for the sake of building a shared history of faithfulness.
Covenants are inherently hierarchical. Covenants have heads and subjects. Our covenant relationship with God makes it abundantly clear to us that this is no partnership of equals.One of the parties is the transcendent Lord of the whole cosmos, the creator of everything, and the one without whom nothing would be. And we, the subjects, are dust, were made from dust, and are heading back to the dust.
Perhaps the 'personal relationship' paradigm is a dear one to you. I know it is for many, we often honour it because we feel it’s the phrase that led us to the Lord in the first place. But I believe that the ‘covenant relationship paradigm’ is even better news for us. Here are some reasons why:
With a ‘personal-relationship’ metaphor, my standing with God can very easily feel entirely up-in-the-air. Perhaps yesterday I felt close to God, and yet today I don’t. Has my closeness to him, and his to me, drifted along with the emotional intimacy I feel (or don’t feel) today? With a covenantal relationship, my standing is based on something concrete; a legal reality founded on the sure word of God, and sealed with his blood. On the Jesus Christ who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
With a personal relationship it is hard for me to know what my duties are, and what they are not. And, as an observation, it seems that many who have taken the ‘personal-relationship’ paradigm into the core of their being don't really know their obligations either. Obligations are a good thing in a relationship. What would marriage be without obligations? It would be dead in the water. Obligations, duties, things that bind are not a curse for a relationship, but a blessing. It would be a curse however, to be in the dark about them. How many marriages have fallen to pieces because neither party knew what they owed to each other. And on the other side of it; what a blessing it is to let our feelings of closeness to God follow, instead of lead.
What a blessing it is to know, for example, that I am a Christian and so my covenant Lord expects me to meet him where he has promised to be. What joy to know that I don't have to search the heights and depths and innards and outards of my feelings to meet him, but instead must simply listen to his words, to the contours of his covenant revelation, to trust that he tells the truth, and come to meet him in his word on Sundays, and at his table.
The difference between a ‘personal-relationship’ and a ‘covenant relationship’ is like the difference between trying to explore a landscape shrouded in thick fog and exploring it in the clear golden light of a beautiful day.
On a beautiful day, the lines are sharply drawn, and softly embellished. The craggy cliffs with their hard severity are sharp and obvious, the grassy downs, and their gentle tussocks of rush are there to enjoy, and the shining stars of celandine and anemone shine in the glades; clear to the eye and marvellous to delight in.
On a foggy day you're just as likely to tumble off those cliffs or land belly up in a ditch as to enjoy even the slightest glimmer of the sun on the water.
The God of the universe wants us to not only know about him, but wants us to know him. And the relationship he wants with us is far better than the transitory feelings or the fruitless phantasms of a 'personal relationship'.
The type of relationship he offers to us is one of solidity, comfort, great joy, hard lines, and beauty beyond measure. He invites us, through the blood of Jesus Christ, into his covenant.
