The reason for hope in relationships

Does the challenge and mess of relationships leave you discouraged? Does the biblical honesty about human community shock you? Are you feeling overwhelmed by the hard work relationships require? If so, you are ready for this last fact: The shattered relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit at the cross provides the basis of our reconciliation. No other relationship ever suffered more than what Father, Son and Holy Spirit endured when Jesus hung on the cross and cried, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). Jesus was willing to be the rejected Son so that our families would know reconciliation. Jesus was willing to become the forsaken friend so that we could have loving friendships. Jesus was willing to be rejected Lord so that we could live in loving submission to one another.

(p.13, Timothy S. Lane & Paul David Tripp, Relationships: A mess worth making)

When Christian friends meet

My Christian friendships should look like this. I should

pour out my sadness to the one who is close to me and ask him for comfort. What that person then gives and promises to me as regards comfort is to be affirmed by God in heaven as well. On the other hand, I should also comfort and and say to another person: dear friend, dear brother, why do you not let go of your affliction? It is certainly not God's will that you experience a single bit of suffering. god allowed his Son to die for you, so that you need not mourn but that you can be joyful. Therefore be of good courage and be comforted; you will do a service and that which is pleasing to God, and you ought to kneel down with one another and pray the Lord's Prayer, which is certainly heard in heaven, for God promises: "I am in your midst" [Matt. 18:20]. He does not say: "I will see it. I will hear it," or "I will come to you," but "I am there already."

(Martin Luther, Matt 18-24 interpreted in sermons; 1537-40, cited in pp. 277f, Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation).

I.e. Christian friendship should involve:

• Openness in discussing sins, worries and sadnesses;
• Application of the Gospel to comfort, encourage, and bring joy;
• Corporate prayer.

I have friendships with Christians where I'm pretty bad on one or all of those. But Luther is not listing requirements for gritty and serious Christians to put their backs into their Christian growth. Instead, it is a wonderful encouragement that Christ stands behind our words of consolation guaranteeing their truth, and that he stands with us when we pray so that we can have confidence of an answer.

Questioning people

Listening to: Red Mountain Church: The Gadsby Project

Questioning Evangelism by Randy Newman argues that it is much better to answer a question with another question when doing evangelism. I could do with reading the book, rather than just skimming it, but it strikes me that questions are important not just because they are an effective evangelistic technique, but because of what they communicate in themselves. As such, they are important not just in evangelism but in all our relationships.

1. Questions communicate that we care - people who care ask questions. A self-obsessed person will talk about what themselves, what they think, and what they've done, till the cows come home. They don't want to listen to you, or understand you because that's irrelevant to their relationship with you. In contrast, someone who really cares about you will ask probing questions to find out how you really are (although not in an insensitive way).

2. Questions communicate that the person we're speaking to is not the judge - a danger of suggesting that we always ask questions is that we assume that to be loving is just to listen. But questions also ask people to give an account. They demand an answer. We are always prone to think that we understand the world perfectly, but as soon as we are forced to explain it to others we realise the shortcomings of our understanding. We realise that we are not in a position to judge - the questions are being asked of us. The questioner becomes God to us, and it is now us in the dock, and not God. This is a challenge to the sinner in us who judges themselves to be righteous apart from Christ, and release for the broken saint involved in self-condemnation.

How to seek to have our relationship needs met

Listening to: Sovereign Grace Music: Worship God

In The Four Loves, CS Lewis begins by making a helpful distinction between what he calls "need-love" and "gift-love". He explains that:

The typical example of Gift-love would be that love which moves a man to work and plan and save for the future well-being of his family which he will die without sharing or seeing; of the second, that which sends a lonely or frightened child to its mother's arms

He successfully shows that there is nothing wrong with "need-love". We all have emotional, physical and spiritual needs that we need meeting. So how should we go about having those needs met in our relationships?

Firstly, I think it is helpful to take the point that Ed Welch makes in When People Are Big and God Is Small. We need to examine our "needs" and consider whether they are actually sinful wants. We shouldn't just assume that because we feel the need for something that it should be met.

But given that we have done that, how should we pursue the meeting of those good relationship needs we have? Perhaps we should just look for them from God. Shouldn't he meet our needs for love, recognition, friendship etc? This seems to have some weight because to seek the meeting of our needs elsewhere looks (a) like idolatry; and (b) hopeless, because of people's limited ability to "deliver".

But if we should look only to God, is there still a place for desiring marriage, friendship etc? We know that these things are good things, but maybe only in moderation. You shouldn't love your wife too much, or be too dependent on anyone. Perhaps we just have to keep things in proportion, and ensure we always are more dependant on God. Perhaps Tim Keller definition of an idol is helpful:

It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God (my italics)

But the first commandment, is not "You are to have no other gods more important than me", but "You are to have no other gods". God is one.

Martin Luther is right when he says that "it is God alone ... from whom we receive anything good". But, no sooner has he seemingly backed some super-spiritual monasticism than he says that "much that is good comes to us from human beings". He believes both these things because:

we receive our blessings not from [human beings], but from God through them. Creatures are only the hands, channels, and means through which God bestows all blessings. For example, he gives to the mother breasts and milk for her infant or gives grain and all sorts of fruits from the earth for sustenance - things that no creature could produce by itself.

In fact, to reject our needs being met through other human beings is to "through arrogance...seek other methods and ways than those God has commanded". In seeking to have our needs met only in God, we could be in danger of actually spurning his gifts and before we know it we would "not be receiving [our needs met] from God, but seeking them from ourselves".

But returning to the practicalities of how we should seek to have our needs met in relationships, this means that if our emotional needs (as well as 'spiritual' ones) are met by God, then we should receive them in the same way as we always receive gifts from God: passively.

But as when we receive our righteousness passively, that does not mean that we are not active. But we are active not in earning or obtaining it for ourself. The activity comes from the faith that we already have everything in Christ, even if we do not see or experience it yet.

On reflection I think that it is in those relationships where I have set out to serve and give, and continued to have to do so, have been the ones that have given the most to me and helped me through the most. But when I think about relationships that I have sought for what they give to me the fruit goes rotten in my hands. They just don't deliver.

Perhaps then we should seek only gift-love in our relationships, but then we will receive need-love anyway. The problems with idolatry come when we are actively looking for our needs met in relationships with other people, instead of passively expecting to receive through them by God's grace. Only in self-giving love are we free (as Jesus was when he gave himself for his people) and only in that way do we actually receive the love and glory we long for (as Jesus received from his Father who glorified him because of his obedience).

In Luther's book The Freedom of the Christian he sets out two famous statements:

1. "A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none"
2. "A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all"

He is basically saying there are two dimensions to life and if we misunderstand this then everything goes astray (The two kinds of righteousness). By faith in Christ we share in his lordship of Creation. Everything serves us and works for our good (Rom 8:28 etc), and this happens freely apart from any effort or works of our own. But at the same time we are called and empowered by this grace to serve everyone we meet. We don't do things to receive justification before God, or good things from people, but we serve everyone without any hope of gain because we already have everything in Christ who gives through his creatures.

By the way, I haven't thought about all this a great deal until very recently, so please feel free to poke holes. It would be helpful if you do. Hopefully, its not totally obscure.