Religion vs Relationship

In this day and age if you tell someone that you are Christian they will automatically place you in the religious box, i.e. whenever they talk about you, you will be referred to as religious. The two words seem to be synonymous with one another as far as the world’s understanding goes. The world likes labels. It enables people to fit other people into boxes so that they can understand them more easily, and just as an aside, if it helps the understanding of the person in front of me to call me religious then I have no problem with that.

But are the two words in fact synonymous?

For hundreds of years the term Christian has been used to define a group of people who believe in the God of the Bible and follow his statutes. (Followers of Jesus were first called Christians at Antioch – the first missionary sending church outside of Jerusalem) These people most often share a common belief in God the creator of the universe, Jesus Christ his son, and The Holy Spirit the doer of God’s will in the earth and the protector of his people.

Over the years there have become many subgroups for these people separated by theological beliefs but the basis of their faith remains united in God. Because of this common belief in God the values of these groups of people are for the most part similar; we all use the Bible as our guide to tell us what is right and what is wrong, and for “Christian Societies” such as our own our laws and societal rules are all based on this belief in the biblical truth of what is right and wrong. In this definition of Christian we can safely say that the terms Christian and Religious are in fact synonymous due to the fact that the reason we follow God’s laws is because we know them to be truth and we have been brought up with their values at our core. This model of Christianity has been the standard model since 367 AD when Rome was first declared a Christian society.

Most of us know that Rome was the main source from which Christianity spread to the rest of the world. But before there was Christianity in Rome and even Before Rome itself, before Israel and before Abraham I believe God had a different plan.

Genesis 3:8-9 says; “and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day…the Lord God called to the man and said ‘where are you?’”.

Granted this is the same passage in which Adam and Eve hide from God so that he would not see them naked after they had just eaten the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. However, I don’t think that God was walking through the garden looking for them just because he wanted to yell at them for eating the fruit he told them not to eat. Have a look at the rest of the passage.

Does God really sound like he came all the way from heaven to get angry at them? From the context of the rest of the story, I would say it was a fairly common occurrence for God to be walking through the garden in the evening looking for Adam and Eve.

In Genesis 18 God turns up on Abrahams doorstep to let him know that he is on his way to Sodom and Gomorrah to flatten them and wipe out their inhabitants. But before Abraham will allow the Lord to leave he argues with him about whether or not God should consider destroying a city that might have righteous people in it. He even manages to negotiate with God that if he found 10 righteous people in the cities he would not destroy them. God already knew how many righteous people there were in the cities and he pulled Lot and his family out before destroying them anyway, but have you ever stopped to wonder why God stopped by Abraham’s house beforehand just to let him know that he was about to destroy the cities and then stayed behind to allow Abraham to argue with him about the number of righteous people he was willing to destroy for the sake of the wickedness of the entire city?

God wrestled with Jacob (Genesis 32:22-32), spoke with Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus 34:29), called out to Samuel (1 Samuel 3:4-10), and then stepped into flesh and blood, in the person of Jesus Christ, to walk amongst us teaching us and even dying for us.

If God’s plan was just simply for us to follow his rules he would have just handed us the rule book and left it at that. He knows that we are not very good at following rules but we effectively would have ended up where we are now (let’s not dwell on the fact that without the death of Jesus we would have no opportunity for forgiveness or salvation, that is too not in the scope of this discussion).

If God’s plan wasn’t to simply place us on the Earth with a list of do’s and don’ts and sit back and watch us experiment with each one of them to find out what happens when we ignore them, then what was his plan and why do we live as though that is his plan now?

I believe that God created us for relationship. Looking back at the way he has interacted with his children throughout history I see a God who desires a relationship with his children. He is not content with having a group of people just do what he tells them to (or not) simply because they know he is big enough to smite them all with one flick of his wrist. He is not content with just knowing each one of us no matter how loyal we are to him and how much we try to do what he wants, though that does give him much joy, his true happiness is sparked by those children who desire to know him, to have relationship with him in a way that enables him to share his heart with them.

The word Christian originally meant “like Christ” or simply “Christ ones” and we all know that the ultimate goal of the Christian is to resemble the character of Christ to the world. But how do we become like Christ? Can we really achieve a likeness of Christ simply by observing his will? And how do we know his will if we do not know his heart?

Please don’t misunderstand me. The bible does give us a lot of information about who Jesus was and what God’s will is for us. I am certainly not saying that people aren’t Christians unless they have an intimate, one on one relationship with God. The Bible clearly states that anyone who believes with their heart, is baptized and confesses with their mouth is a Christian. (Romans 10:9).

I am simply saying that salvation is only step one and God’s heart desire is for much more. (Philippians 2)

His desire is for a relationship that is personal, that enables you to truly know him, a relationship that allows you to influence him, a relationship that enables you to converse with him and interact with him as though he was your best friend. In John 15:15 Jesus says “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”. Salvation by faith is an obligation for all those who wish to live for eternity in the presence of God but relationship with God is an opportunity for those who truly seek to know God.

Don’t think, however, that God will just hand you this kind of relationship on a silver platter without any work on your part just because he wants you to know him. Knowing God in a personal way is a privilege not for the faint of heart. There are many situations in the Bible where God has given so much of himself to people who don’t deserve it, just because he loves them and the Cross is just one example. It is also true that we can never deserve anything from God, especially a personal relationship. (Ephesians 2:8 – 10) But just as we need to be discerning when we choose our own friends, God is also discerning about who he shares his heart with.

The point is that God will not share his heart with someone who does not truly care about who he is. Yes, He offers this opportunity to all his children, but we have to choose to enter into the relationship and the way we do that is by desiring to know him. We have to first truly care about who he is and desire to know his heart not for our own benefit but out of a true and honest desire to know him.

I wish I could share with you what it’s like to have a relationship with God. But unfortunately I can’t. That kind of revelation can only come from experience.

I can however tell you that having a relationship with God has been the most amazing experience of my life. I have seen things that my imagination could not possibly fathom (and that is saying something), and I have experienced things that I could have sworn were impossible. I have experienced his joy and also his grief in ways that have brought me to my knees and had me crying my heart out. I have had the privilege of engaging God in conversation and I have been honoured to receive information and insight not available anywhere else on the planet. But the most amazing experience is just to know him, to sit quietly with him talking about nothing in particular and feeling his heart as though it was beating in my own chest. It seems such a simple thing but that is the ultimate joy of my life and I believe the joy of the Lord’s also.

How I wish that you could feel what I feel and experience what I have experienced, because I know that anyone who has had the opportunity to truly connect to God’s heart will never desire to leave his presence ever again. But I can’t give you that revelation. It is something you must experience for yourself. To experience this relationship you need to allow yourself to fall in love with God and surrender your life into his hands so that you are able to take his hand and walk with him in obedience and love.

Remember though, knowing God personally does not give us the right to ignore his commands. Instead it is through knowing him that we begin to understand why he has given us these laws and we begin to share his values not because we know them to be right but because our heart changes to reflect his. It is through this deep and intimate relationship with God that we are transformed into his likeness, we begin to share his values, we begin to love the things he loves and hate the things he hates and we start to follow his laws not because we know them to be right but because we cannot bear to see his heart hurt when we do things that upset him. Knowing him also causes us to desire to know him more and to draw closer to him, all the time becoming more an image of him. A transformation of this magnitude cannot go unnoticed by the world, as we become more like him the world will begin to see his likeness in us and desire to know him for themselves. This is how the world will know that God is king.

At this point the words religious and Christian separate, at this point we cease to become followers of a set of rules or in fact anything of our own understanding and become followers of Christ. This I believe is the heart of God for all his children and the very reason he created us.