There is no Personal Relationship with God Without…

There is no Personal Relationship with God Without…

Many Christians love to tout the idea that they possess a personal relationship with God:  they express this about their prayer life, their inner-consciousness and their primal spirit man. The primary role Christ suffered on the cross was to save the world from sin and to redeem the lost on this earth.

Aside from perhaps faith, nothing is impressed upon us by Jesus more than the love of his brethren, the church. As a result of our required service to others, we are indebted to manifest our relationship to our creator through Christ.

Too, nothing expresses this relationship better than Christ’s perpetual love for his people. That is what makes Christ’s witness on this earth personal:  he came here in the flesh for us.

Thus, there is no personal relationship with God aside from his church, aside from the people he loves as that is how he expresses his love.

In the absence of Christ walking on this earth in the flesh: in actuality, there is no God for most as there is no personal evidence of it. Hence, whatever personal relationship we have with our Lord must be manifest to others in the love that Christ emulated in the flesh. This essential element is necessary as Christ called Christians to be disciplines and to pick up our cross and follow Him.

Reduced to its simplest terms, this means if we are to have a personal relationship with God, then we must in fact encircled a personal relationship with people. If we say we have a personal relationship without people, then we only deceive ourselves.

There is no way we can love one another without other people.  There is no relationship unless there is a reaching out to those who are without: to those who are hurt and forsaken.

Salvation then becomes a personal and a collective effort as we find ourselves bonded to each other as a member of the other: the church. Our entire person then becomes a living sacrifice to others and by that sacrifice we become known for what we are:  a true member of Christ through his church. This means we are nothing without all the others and without Christ we are even less.  If we want Christ we’ll go after his desire and his desire is for all:  that none will be left out.  That doesn’t leave much room for person sanctimony that resides only from within. It means that all love, all energy must concentrate itself on everyone else.  From that vantage point, then, through our brethren, the church of Christ, we possess and live our personal relationship with God.

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Pious Profanity

 

By all accounts the events at the Garden of Gethsemane has to be one of the most painful endurance as Christ was humiliated by being betrayed by a kiss.

Of all things, an expression of love was employed to denote a betrayal that led to the eventual crucifixion of our Lord, the Christ. Indeed, the ploy of friendship, the ploy of affection as a form of deceit can be one of the most painful experiences anyone can endure.

The very name of Judas depicts a picture of vileness and utter scorn.  Yet, I wonder how many of us as Christians come across to others.  No, we probably aren’t out kissing our neighbors, but nonetheless, we generally are announcing how much love we have for the Lord and His people.

And then we open up the doors of profanity whenever we declare our love to others and fail to do so.  When we act only in words and not in deeds, a loud and profane utterance is performed on this earth and witnessed by the angels in heaven.

We engage in pious profanity whenever we say virtues than those that dwell inside us:

For yes, it is profane when we say:  I love you when you don’t.  When we say we accept people when we don’t.  When we say we forgive and hold hatred in our hearts.

The piety becomes profane when we begin a foundation of denial:  we deny Christ because we fail to introduce him to others.  We deny Christ when we avoid obedience to his commandments.

The entire cloak of goodness then, the piety of being good grows corrupt and is profane because it becomes none of the element it states that it is and all of the things that is says it is not.

Evil is bad enough in itself, it becomes intensified whenever it is declared to be good.  It is profane because our actions become a testament against the goodness of our Lord, against our words and against good itself.  Rather we should remain quiet and contain few words than rant all the good things we know we can never do or become.  The purity of our heart should be as a result of grace and obedience and not the profanity of emptiness and that which is false.

To believe the world, one would think that everyone loves everyone and that nothing is ever wrong.  To believe Christians takes all of this at least one step upward.

To show evidence of our beliefs of Christ we then manifest our hearts through our actions.  And through our actions, there need be no use for words at all.  Our works speak for itself: and our actions demote and neutralized the profanity that we would otherwise speak.