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Created for Relationship — with each other

John 15: 9 – 17

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 20 Aug, 2006

LAST WEEK we saw how insistent the Bible is that we are created for relationship with God. But a relationship with God which lacks relationship with others is defective.

In the first letter of John, we are challenged with this truth: how can a person love God, whom we can’t see, if he can’t love his brother whom he can see?

I think Mike Dennis challenged us this way when he spoke at our Anniversary. He quoted the old rhyme,

To dwell in love with saints above

Oh, that will be glory!

To dwell below with saints we know —

Well, that’s a different story.

C.S Lewis wrote about how irritated we can become with fellow–believers who have squeaky boots or sing out of tune. We can positively hate those who hold a different theology, or like their hymns served up to different tunes.

Recently there has been discussion in the Sydney Morning Herald. It began with discussion of the origins of Mormonism, but moved rapidly on to discussion of religion in general.

There are many people who absolutely hate Christianity and what it stands for. Many have been angered by Christian incompetence, by Christian petty–mindedness, and by the conflicts which so often plague us.

Imagine if they saw us truly loving one another! Imagine if that love spread out to the entire world around us! Imagine how that would undermine their arguments. Where could that love come from, if not from divine intervention?

John Lennon wrote his song, Imagine, where he imagined a world without religion, a brotherhood of man.

Imagine a brotherhood of mankind under God, a brotherhood filled with the principles of Jesus! Then we would see what life is supposed to be like!

STARTING IN GENESIS

If you go back to where we were last week, when we saw how God created us to be in relationship with himself, you will also see that it says,

^{GEN 2:18} The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

¹⁹ Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. ²¹ So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. ²² Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

²³ The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called `woman,’

for she was taken out of man.”

²⁴ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

God’s plan is that humans have companionship. Don’t get so focused on breeding that you can’t see that the first consideration is that it is not good for man to be alone.

When people focus on sex and forget companionship, you get all kinds of twisted attitudes. Misunderstand the Bible, and you will misunderstand an awful lot of other things.

We humans need society, and the family–like society is basic.

What about people who don’t have families? What about single people, or widows? There are many ways that people can still have social interaction. When a male–female relationship is basic, there are still other possibilities.

I am going to say some pretty radical things here, but I hope they will make sense to you.

A woman and a man married to each other, a couple living together, a man and woman sharing a house, two men living together, two women living together... insofar as they are doing it for companionship, they are doing right. They are following God’s basic principle, that it is not good for a human being to live alone.

Have you got that bit?

It doesn’t matter what else they are doing, they’ve got that bit right, at least.

Now, if that relationship is involves sex outside of marriage, if it is an abusive relationship, or if the relationship centres on some unlawful activity, of course that is wrong, and those things may justify ending the relationship.

But we Christians have no right to force people to live in the best way that God plans for them. We know that defacto relationships break down about ten times more frequently than marriages do, and that will impact on their kids. It’s just that we can’t make horses drink from our trough.

But I will say that, as Christians, as people interested in redemption, we should be looking for ways to help people make the most of the relationship side of things, because that is a basic human issue.

People fade, they suffer mental illnesses, they even die, if they are isolated. That is why or detention centres are so evil, particularly those on places like Nauru. That is why the treatment of David Hicks and people like him is as criminal as anything they were supposed to have done. That is why even an evil person like Ivan Milat, who has to be kept in isolation, has to include access to TV so that he can at least see what human society is like.

Human beings are created for society. God says it is not good for man to live alone.

ISRAEL AND COMMUNITY

One of the great insights of the Bible is to see how much the full enjoyment of human life depends on community.

The creation sets out a minimum standard, that we are created not to be alone. It establishes the family, the husband and wife bond, as the primary kind of social relationship. Once you have that you have the potential for sustainable life and for the continuation of human existence.

But in the nation of Israel, there was another model as well, not to replace the creation model, but to supplement it.

In Psalm 133, we read,

^133:1 How good and pleasant it is

when brothers live together in unity!

² It is like precious oil poured on the head,

running down on the beard,

running down on Aaron’s beard,

down upon the collar of his robes.

³ It is as if the dew of Hermon

were falling on Mount Zion.

For there the LORD bestows his blessing,

even life forever more.

This gem of a Psalm spells out how good it is to be part of a larger community.

We misuse the term community, when we mean society, or even when we mean something more like “living in the one district.” Community means far more. Literally, it means “Unity together.” It translates the Greek, koinônia, which has the idea of sharing, of holding things in common in the way that a married couple would.

An English word with a similar meaning is fellowship. It means an equality of status. Originally, if two Englishmen had fellowship, it meant they had the same number of cows, and could afford to pay the same price for anything. It meant they were like peas in a pod, like twins.

The Psalm says that it is one of the best things in life when we have that kind of family relationship between us, when brothers live together in unity.

This doesn’t really mean sons of the same mother. The Israelites had a concept of being brothers together through shared faith, through shared rituals, through shared lifestyle, through shared experience of God’s saving acts. That was what made them brothers.

And being brothers in unity means being a people in community. It’s more than sharing the same house or the same neighbourhood. It’s being willing to give ourselves for each other.

And it’s the way to great blessing.

In the Old Testament, oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Community in God is the way to blessing through the Holy Spirit.

Aaron was the first great High Priest of Israel. He was the father of the whole priesthood. The priests were anointed for their service;; here the Psalmist sees an overflowing of Holy Sprit anointing on the entire nation of Israel: everything below the priestly head, everything covered by his priestly office, gets blessed.

How much more does this apply to Jesus, our Great High Priest, whose priesthood is never temporary and imperfect, but is an eternal priesthood after the order of Melchizedek?

^{HEB 9:11} When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. ¹² He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. ¹³ The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. ¹⁴ How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

Here is Jesus, the one supremely anointed by God, the one who combines in his own person both kingship and priesthood. The anointing oil flows over his head and down on us below, when we are gathered together in loving unity under his headship.

How good and pleasant it is when God’s people dwell together in unity!

That is the beginning of true revival, when we come to Jesus and gather close to him; when we deal with what hurts us and what we have done to hurt each other; when we truly stand in him.

REDEEMED TO RELATE

This takes us through to the final aspect I want to look at today.

We have seen how we were created for fellowship with God. We moved on to understand this in terms of our redemption through Jesus our Lord.

Now we look at how we were created for relationship with each other in the community of God; and we are moving on to the redemptive work of Jesus.

The gospel repeatedly shows how what God made us for at the creation is restored in redemption, as God buys us back from bondage and releases us in Christ.

In between stands the Old Mosaic Covenant, which takes up the idea of the creation and points forward to redemption.

So we come to John’s gospel, where we read,

^{JOHN 15:9} “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. ¹¹ I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. ¹² My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵ I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit — fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.

God desires a people bound together in love.

I have told you before about Juan Carlos Ortiz, who was the pastor of the largest Assemblies of God church in Argentina. One day he realised that he was not really the pastor of a church, but the director of an orphanage, merely running around filling bottles and changing nappies for Christians who refused to grow up.

One Sunday he came into the pulpit and told the people he had a very important message for them from Jesus. He said, “It is this: love one another!” Then he sat down. No one moved. So he stood up again. “Maybe you didn’t hear me. Jesus commands us, ‘love one another!’”

Bit by bit the people stood up, walked around, introduced themselves to each other, began praying for one another... they started loving one another.

It was a turning point for the church.

Jesus paid the price to bring us back to each other. What we were created for is what we are redeemed to — that, and far, far, more.

CONCLUSION

We are created for relationship. It is not good for anyone to dwell alone.

God has always planned for close, loving, God–filled relationships. He knows that, when we relate closely to him and to each other, exciting things will begin happening.

In Jesus, we have the perfect setting for relationship: if he died for you and me, with all our sins, if he paid such a price for our redemption, how hard can it be to yield to each other, to confess our faults, to restore relationships, and be one in him?

That is the beginning of revival. It is the beginning of an empowered church, because it is the beginning of being open to the Holy Spirit.

We are here, above all, to learn to relate to God and to each other.

We have time at the end of our service for people to pray for each other.

I have a message from Jesus. He says, “Love one another!”

Let’s do it!

AMEN

© Peter R. Green 2006. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)