The essence of relationships

What is the essence of relationships?

All relationships consist of giving and receiving love (value).

However, different types of relationships occur in a variety of ways between various parties.

What makes them unique is the form or manner in which love and value are expressed or exchanged, i.e., what kind of relationship it is and who the persons with whom love and value are shared. 

Is it between God our Creator and His image bearers (you and I), husband and wife, parent and child, siblings, friends, extended family, business partners or associates, fellow believers, etc.?

Each kind of ¹relationship has unique characteristics that the others do not have - i.e., a unique way of showing love and value - while also the same, in that they all share love and value in some form with the other person or object of our love. 

For example, physical intimacy between a husband and wife is unique to that relationship. Love expressed in this way is only legitimately expressed between them and not others or other kinds of relationships.

Physical intimacy makes the marriage union the ²most complete human relationship. Marriage embodies the expression of giving and receiving love in all forms - friendship, companionship, partnership, and physical intimacy - within a single relationship.

Each kind of relationship is valuable and designed by God to reveal something about Him (and us) that the other types of relationships don't. The nature and vastness of God are too great to be fully displayed by any one kind of relationship alone.

How does God fit into all this? 

God himself is relationship as Father and Son in, by, and through the Spirit, and the basis for all relationships. All relationships reflect something of who He is and what He is like.

Therefore, we find the most joy in relationships with persons other than God when we understand and recognize that ultimately they are all gifts from God designed to reveal something about who He is and what He's like, not only to us but to each other. This adds to and aids our understanding of God and helps us appreciate Him more. This also adds greater fullness and meaning to all ³secondary relationships outside of Him, i.e., they are expressions of His love for us.

The highest form of love (and therefore relationship) is God's love. Why? It is the only love that does not require love to be given in return. It is a kind of love that flows out of the fullness of who God is, not out of something needed or missing within God. It is unique and the highest kind of love. It is giving, never taking.

Because God ⁴is love, relationship for God is the "natural" - i.e. organic - outcome of who He is; a being of relationship between the Father and Son, in, by, and through the Spirit. 

This triune relationship has always been from all eternity past. There has never been a time when God was not in a relationship of giving and receiving love. 

God never requires our love ⁵in order to give us His. His love is overflowing and sacrificial, i.e., always giving (and receiving), never taking. And this is because He doesn't need our love, therefore neither requires it - at least not for His sake. 

One of the most well-known passages in scripture says, "God so loved the world he gave... " What (who) He gave is not something trivial. He gave the most valuable and significant "thing" He could give - the eternal Son of his infinite affection. 

God's love only and always gives and never takes. Not because God doesn't want or enjoy our love in return, He simply doesn't need it (though it is always welcomed and delightfully received when given by us).

Though we occasionally show sacrificial love ourselves - often in "fits and starts" - God always operates this way. He always operates out of fullness, never out of need. He is always overflowing in love and always has from all eternity past between the Father and Son in and through the Spirit, long before we ever came into the picture.

" ...For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor so that you by his poverty might become rich." - 2 Cor 8:9

" ...because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved!" - Eph 1:4-5

"...God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. - Rom 5:8‭-‬10

For related discussions, the following links are offered:

Man...saint or sinner

Man's dilemma

God is relationship

AND

God is nonstop love beauty and glory

Is the wrath of God unfair? Click here.

Why are relationships important? Click here

The giving and receiving of glory/love click here.

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Footnotes:

¹Relationships are so much a necessary part of who we are that adults who choose to remain single will often have pets to be in a relationship with another being - even if only on a simple and limited level with a pet. While pets are wonderful gifts from God and provide a kind of companionship, they come nowhere near the level of a God-centered, vibrant, and healthy human relationship.

²Because of this form of love, marriage is the only relationship that produces offspring i.e. another bearer of God's image. This makes marriage the highest form of relationship - closest to the union of Father, Son, and Spirit - and why the fruit of its union - children - is sacred.

³The best marriage or best relationship between a child and parent or siblings is one that is exercised by the love and forgiveness of God.

⁴Love is central to or the core of God's being.

⁵The Father accepts and totally embraces Christ's love on our behalf i.e. as if it were our own love. 

God also poured out the consequences of our rejection of Him and His love onto Christ, as if Christ rejected the Father. 

All this is offered and given as a gift when we place our trust in Christ and what He did on our behalf. 

The only question is, do you believe and receive what Christ did for you? You will never experience the transforming benefit He offers to you otherwise.

"performance" or action by faith

What is the difference between

·        action by faith and

·        performance based action 

First, how they are alike. 

They both require

·        choice 

·        effort/action

·        giving to get

So in the above ways they are exactly the same. And this is also why they are so easily confused with each other. Why? Because understanding the difference is a matter of the heart, not simply the head i.e. knowing the movement/ motives of our heart is key but usually very hard to discern. 

However, they are totally different in other vital ways for the same reason; in ways not easily identified because they deal with the ways of the heart; hearts that are often hidden from our full awareness. 

Defining terms

Performance is acting to obtain something missing...a sense of "being right," being forgiven, accepted and valued by and through our efforts/actions. It's about proving ones goodness/worth/value by and through self/flesh driven (vs Spirit/love driven) effort/action. 

Action by faith, is acting out of fullness because of what you already have...you already know you are loved, forgiven, accepted and of great value in the eyes of God. Your dependence/trust in God and his assessment of you is what you base your value/worth on. In other words, action by faith is based on knowing that someone of infinite wisdom, judgment and value sees you as good, right and of infinite value/loved (even though practically we often are not good and certainly never good enough through our own efforts). 

When you believe and fully embrace this (i.e. by faith), you respond accordingly i.e. you love Him back in response to his perfect love for you. The more you believe his assessment to be true the greater your action...actions that are an overflow of love, not an attempt to win love i.e. not performing ("jumping through hoops") to gain love.

To operate by faith is possible only because your value to God was already totally proven by actions someone else ¹took on your behalf i.e. God doesn't just declare you valuable, he treats you as valuable i.e. he took action in and through Christ to prove how much he values you. 

Christ took these actions so you might enter into and participate in the same love of the Father the Son experiences and fully participates in (and has always had from all eternity past). 

Christ wanted you to have what he has; the unlimited, unobstructed love of his Father. So much so he willingly gave up something of that love, that you might fully have it (2 Corinthians 8:9). 

This is evidence of how great he values you and has nothing but infinite love for you. He finds great joy and satisfaction in knowing he makes this happen for you. 

What kind of actions did Christ take that proves his love?

He set aside the fullness of his glory and took on human form so he could die in order to settle the debt of your unfulfilled obligation to love and honor God as ¹he deserves and you were designed to do (as well as loving your neighbor). This was necessary because your refusal to live according to his design alienates you from the Father and his love. We turned our back on God when we did what God forbid, he never turned his back on us  As evidenced by sending Christ to us - Emmanuel - God with us.

He did this for two key reasons. 

1. Because you could not  

2. So you would no longer have to in order to be fully in union with God again.

Christ also lived to fulfill your obligations to live as you were designed i.e. he lived exclusively to show forth to others the great honor and worth of his Father that you were meant and designed to do yourself. 

Why would he do all this? He didn't act out of obligation, guilt, need or any other reason. He created you and therefore values (loves) you. You are in his image. 

What do we get, how do we get it? 

So if we, because of Christ, already have God's full, unlimited and complete love, what are we getting when we act by faith?

We are "getting" (entering into or participating in) what we already have. 

To fully experience and benefit from his love already fixed upon us and fully ours in Christ, we must participate in it. 

This is like having the most renown gourmet of all time prepare, cook and set out for you the most delicious and healthy meal possible, with all their experience, resources, skill, thought and effort required to prepare it. A meal that would cost far more then usual (at no cost to you btw) or more than you have. A meal specifically and exclusively prepared for you. A meal that not only brings health and healing but looks and smells exquisite. Clearly an act of care and love. 

Yet, one you won't fully appreciate and enjoy until you sit down and actually eat it. When you do, only then will you completely experience and enjoy the thoughtfulness and care (love) intended for and directed at you by this highly regarded gourmet chef who prepared it. 

So how do we eat/participate in the infinite love of the Father?

Christ himself tells us how he did when he said the following…

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." Joh 15:9-11  

First, we must understand, we are talking about the perfect, infinite and infinitely loved Son of the eternal Father. Nothing Christ did ever caused His Father to love him. The Father loves the Son because of who Christ is, not because of what he did (though what Christ did certainly confirmed why the Father loves the Son with infinite affection). Christ and the Father have a love relationship that is constant and has always existed from all eternity past before we came along. There has never been a time when the Father and Son did not love each other, nor will there ever be. There was and is ²nothing Christ could do, to add to, or take away from this infinite love.

Nevertheless, Christ still went out early in the morning seeking his Father in prayer. Why? In doing so, was he trying to earn, through his efforts (performance), what was already fully his? NO!!! He did so to participate in the love that was already there, waiting for him to partake of. 

To fully abide in/experience his Fathers love he pursued the Fathers will i.e. followed his directions/commands. And because he loved and fully trusted his Father he found joy in doing so. This wasn't a performance to impress his Father to gain His love. It was a demonstration and display of love and honor for the love (Father) of his heart. And there is something about acting on our affections for another that makes them more real. 

How does anyone experience a love relationship? Do they experience it best when they are miles apart and never interact or speak to the one they love? No, the experience occurs best and most when they are fully present, engaged and participating in that relationship - e.g. when apart from the one they most cherish, they travel to be with the other so they can be together or they get on the phone to talk to each other and see how the other is doing and how they can best show their care/love for each other etc. The greater the participation in the relationship the greater the experience of the love that is already there. 

Who has not been in a relationship with someone near and dear, such as a spouse, only to experience the affection of that relationship wane when time is not spent together. Is it not that way with any love relationship? 

If so, why would it not also be the same with us in our relationship with God? Wouldn't it be exactly the same (i.e. we desire and find love through relationship [time spent together] with God just like with others)? Isn't God a relational being as well, just like any person? We are no less relational beings when it comes to God simply because that relationship is with God instead of another fellow image bearer. In fact, all "personhood" is an expression of the very image of God himself. 

It all starts with and comes from God.

When we consider personhood comes from God as well as relationship; that God is a person in relationship via the Father, Son and Spirit, this makes a relationship with God even more significant and powerful. A relationship not with just any person but the very person who is the source of love and relationship and has always and only existed in relationship. 

The key difference is God does not need us, we need him. But he enjoys relationship with us no less. In fact He delights in relationship. He created us for it and is the source of it. It is who he is and it (i.e. love) drives all he does. 

So how do we participate in this love relationship with God? How do you with any relationship. You cherish the other person in that relationship. Some of the ways you do is find out what they like and then you do all you can to do that for them or give it to them i.e. you seek to discover everything you can about them and how you can best carry out their wishes and show them how much you value and love them by doing so. In so doing you are saying (by action, not just words) they are important to you. You value them. The greater your effort (faithfulness) to do this the greater the evidence of your value/love of them and the relationship you have together. 

This is just as true (maybe more so) with God as with any relationship. 

Joh 14:15  "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 

For a further discussion on love being something other then just feelings click here. 
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¹Because we fail to carry out this primary design of loving and honoring God according to the greatness of his worth, we also fail to carry out our secondary design to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

²not to suggest Christ's obedience was robotic, automatic or without real challenge as demonstrated in his wilderness temptation, the garden of Gethsemane and cry to his Father on the cross of feeling abandoned.

Co-dependence

We hear a lot about co-dependence these days. But what exactly is it, what causes it and how does it work? 

A co-dependent relationship is a mutually accepted arrangement between two people to take or get from the other what they need i.e. a relationship where each party agrees to use the other to meet their needs (not necessarily ¹consciously or verbally, but often - if not always - an unspoken understanding/agreement). 

When there is "giving" it is not truly to give but is giving in order to ultimately get. It is based solely on getting by both party's not based on giving. It is a relationship based on mutual taking. 

Co-dependent relationships can and often do work for an extended time as long as circumstances are good, i.e. good money, good sex, mutual goals, pleasant circumstances, etc. When circumstances become hard, the underlying weakness of this type of relationship is brought to the surface and exposed.

Co-dependent relationships also become unglued and unravel when one party becomes healthy and the other doesn't. For these relationships to continue working well, each must remain unhealthy (i.e. co-dependent) and circumstances remain easy/comfortable.

Health vs co-dependence

Healthy relationships may look very similar on the outside to co-dependent ones but operate totally different "under the hood" (on the inside). The motive that drives and holds a healthy relationship together is completely different from an unhealthy one.

A healthy relationship is based on giving not getting. Because of this, it is virtually impossible to distinguish between a co-dependent relationship and a healthy relationship on the outside - though there are often red flags that give us a clue when a relationship is more co-dependent. Only as we become spiritually and emotionally whole/healthy are we able to more clearly see the difference (not necessarily or always with others, but more with ourselves).

All relationships may have some co-dependent elements mixed in. It depends on the individuals within the relationship. The healthier the individuals, the healthier and less co-dependent the relationship. Most relations are a mixture because few of us are completely whole/healthy spiritually and emotionally.

How do we become healthy? By looking to our Creator as we were designed to and deriving our sense of worth, value, and love from Him as our ²primary source. 

The greatest emotional health can only come through knowing we are perfectly and infinitely loved. And that can only occur by and through the Infinite Source of love - i.e. God - and ³not until then. 

The more we draw our sense of love and value from God in all his infinite love, the more whole/healthy we become.

For a further discussion of the necessity of trust in a healthy relationship, click here.

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Footnotes:

¹When Adam and Eve rebelled from their dependence on God, they cut themselves off from the only source of true life and love. As warned by God, the consequence of this was death. The essence of death was not only physical but no aspect of their existence was whole/connected/unified any longer. Not only was their relationship and connection with God severed, but unity with each other, the rest of creation and self as well. We experience this same disconnect to this day.  

One result of our disconnect with self is we no longer have a clear awareness of our heart and true motive for acting. We not only hide our true condition from God, but from ourselves as well as from each other.

The essence of death is separation from God, the source of life and love we were designed to operate in and by. This resulting in fragmentation of all other aspects of our existence. 

Without God, nothing works as originally designed. Everything is broken. In short, we are spiritually dead and therefore emotionally empty/ bankrupt; so much so that we are often in denial of this in our present condition.

We are so full of pain from the guilt and shame of our rebellion and subsequent failure to be who we were designed to be - i.e. recipients and conduits of God's love designed to love God with all we have and are and our neighbor as ourself - we are unable to acknowledge the depth of our brokenness; doing so is simply too painful and overwhelming. Only the love of God - His perfect acceptance and embrace of us as we are - can free us to take an honest look at our broken condition. 

When we come to trust Christ did everything necessary to remove our guilt before God and restore us back to the relation of infinite love we were originally designed for, only then are we able (feel safe enough) to acknowledge the extent of our brokenness to him and ourselves. We can only fully acknowledge our true condition in and through Christ.

For a further discussion on pain, click here.

For a further discussion on what it means to be broken click here. 

For a further discussion on the solution to guilt and shame click here.

For more posts discussing guilt and shame click here.

²God shows His love through others but that love will only be received as it should be when we recognize those who love well only do so because they have learned to receive God's love well. It is God Himself that they are indirectly experiencing through others. 

³Since the '60s when "free love" was heavily promoted and took a foothold in American culture, the cohesion of the family unit has deteriorated significantly in America.

Before then more kids grew up in a relatively stable and supportive family environment resulting in them feeling safer, more loved, nurtured, valued etc. (not necessarily because today's parents are unloving but because they were together and more unified in their commitment to the child and each other) which also gave the child a stronger sense of worth. This resulted in healthier individuals and less co-dependent relationships. 

The ultimate result of the breakdown of the family unit is that co-dependence is on the rise. The fruit of this is the rise of narcissistic self worship e.g. the age of the selfie and a major focus on loving ourselves.

The irony (silver lining to this cloud of dysfunction) is it is when we are weakest, at our worst, we are most likely to look to and appreciate God for help most. 

Trust...essential to relationship

What is the key to any relationship?

¹Trust.

What is the key to trust?

Knowing (believing) the party you are engaging with truly has your best interest in mind, i.e. they love ²you.

As someone proves their genuine care by their words and actions and is not engaging us simply to get or take something from us, our trust grows. If someone over time demonstrates they are using you, your trust wanes and your caution grows. This takes time because outward actions don't always reveal inward motivation right away.

Some would argue love is the key to any relationship. And this would be true if we weren't so deeply broken and distrusting. 

Love binds a relationship together, but love is not received until we trust the one who offers it. To say it another way, we don't "buy in" to someone's kind gestures and overtures of care if we don't trust they are genuine i.e. that their kindness is really kindness and not a "trap" to allure us into a relationship in order to ³use us.

The problem is you can love someone with everything in you but if the one you love does not trust you (i.e. they think you are trying to use them to get something from them instead of give something to them) your love will not "land" i.e. be accepted. This is why different groups and people responded in an exactly opposite way to Christ e.g. religious leaders vs. the sick and poor.

To illustrate, we are told God so loved the world he gave his only Son, yet not everyone who has been told this is clamoring to pursue or receive God's offer. In fact, most do not accept this offer of love even after it is extended and explained. Why? They don't trust the one making the offer or believe it is true. They are suspicious of God, who is making the offer. They don't believe his claims about himself and about them. They somehow are convinced God does not have their best interest at heart, even in light of this most significant and wonderful evidence.

As an illustration, we likely know of or heard of foster kids being assimilated into a family and how the foster parents' hearts often break trying to convince the child he/she is loved. Why? Because the child brushes off those attempts and will even act out to see if these "parents" still love them in all their ugliness i.e. the child wonders if the new parents really love them or do they simply feel sorry for them or want the child to meet some need in the potential new parents? 

Why is this? They are "jaded" as they say. After being jerked around emotionally by opening themselves up to being loved by other so-called parents, only to have it taken away, they choose not to open themselves up to the possible hurt of losing love all over again.

By God's grace, you can control how you treat others, i.e. treat them in a loving vs. an unloving way. You can not, however, control whether they will receive your love. Only God can open their hearts to receive love. Our loving others may be the means, but when all is said and done, God must open their hearts and eyes to see the love that is there, i.e. his love coming through us to them.

Loving someone is what we are called to do. Being used (abused) by someone is not. 

(We may choose to let someone "use us" for a time so we might win them to Christ, but this is a separate topic). 

Love without trust?

Can you love someone without trusting them? Yes. You can sincerely want what's best for someone ⁴you have no trust in. 

This is where we get confused. We think, how can I forgive someone who is not trustworthy? You can forgive them because you truly care about them. But that does not mean you trust them or should entrust yourself to them. Love should be a given, trust is earned.

This is also true of our relationship with God on both sides. 

As we come to believe God always and only wants what's best for us, our trust grows.

When God sees we genuinely love him for who he is and not just using him to get something else, he trusts us more and entrusts us with more of his blessings, knowing we will use what he gives to love others, thereby honoring him.
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Footnotes: 

¹Someone would say love is vital, which is ultimately true. However, if the one seeking to love us is not trusted, we will never receive or experience their love. This is true not only from other people but also from God.

²self interest is not the same as selfishness. If you look at every promise of scripture, what is the appeal? These are promises made to you, i.e. self. In fact, self-interest is assumed when we are told to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. It is not condemned but merely appealed to as the standard by which we treat others. 

The issue isn't whether it's valid to care about ourselves, but how is "self" best cared for. Self is not best cared for by self (which is selfishness) but by God. For us to focus on self-caring is bondage, simply because we can never truly provide for ourselves that which we most need...infinite and eternal love and care. To focus on God is freedom because only he alone can love in the way we need and were designed to be loved i.e. with infinite love from an infinite source. 

³If each party is seeking the best of the other, they both will benefit. The key is what drives that action that benefits others. 

To be clear, few relationships are based solely on each party seeking only to give something and not get something. Few (if any) of us are that grounded in our walk with God (and thereby full of his love so that he is our primary source for love instead of our spouse or some other significant relationship)

We get into relationships because we get something out of them. But that is not the same as getting into a relationship to take or demand something from the other. All relationships result in both benefiting or they wouldn't exist. This, however, isn't the issue. The issue is why do people primarily seek relationships, to get or to give.

I would guess many relationships start out more with an eye on getting more than giving. But as each person matures, it shifts in time to giving more than getting (at least by one party), otherwise, it would not likely last.

Any healthy relationship is reciprocal. However, there is a difference between giving and receiving love and giving to get love. Receiving love is vital in any relationship, but it differs from engaging in a relationship for getting or taking. A relationship based solely on getting is classic co-dependence.

A key indicator of the difference is gratitude. One expressing gratitude for the other partner is because they recognize their kindness was a gesture of giving/loving, not taking. 

A key indicator someone is primarily about getting or taking is anger. Getting angry when one does not get what they want, or the other doesn't give them what they demand, is an indication the relationship is not based on love but on what they can get or take out of the relationship.

To say it simply, a truly loving relationship (on both sides) is based on what you give, not what you get. In this kind of relationship, both are still getting but as the fruit of a loving relationship, not the goal. 

⁴You can also extend love to someone who does not trust you, but until there is trust, it will not "land". Loving them over time, however, can build the trust needed for it to finally break through.

Trinity - the importance and necessity

The essence of God is relationship. Without the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit, there is no God (or love). The oneness of God is a oneness of relationship; a union of three. Even though each of the three persons of the Godhead is God, they are God together and not God separately or independently and individually without or outside of relationship i.e., God is one being. 

None of the persons of the Godhead stands alone, independent of each other, by virtue of the fact that to be fully the God He is, He must be God in relationship, making all three persons necessary for "Godness" to exist.

When the Bible says that God is love it is because He is relationship. And not just any kind of relationship but one defined by love i.e. the giving and receiving of glory/value/worth/honor. A relationship in which each is equally and mutually valued/loved/honored by the other.

Because the Son issues forth from the Father and the Spirit issues forth from the Father and the Son, they are all God. So in this sense everything issues forth from only one God as Father, yet God cannot be Father without the Son, and the relationship between the Father and the Son is bound together and expressed in, by, and through the Spirit, who is love. There is no relationship between the Father and the Son without the Spirit. 

God is Spirit, and God is Love. And He is all these because He is relationship. And because He is relationship, He is all these.

For a much fuller discussion of this click here

For a discussion on the source of love, click here

For a discussion on the "dependence" of God, click here. 

legal vs practical consequences of distrust

When we in Christ, the legal consequences of our rebellious distrust of God - condemnation, alienation and death - are no longer part of our status (i.e. we no longer stand condemned before God) nor are they a part of God's disposition toward us. These are entirely removed. They can not be revisited by God and should never be by us. To do so dishonors Christ and his work on our behalf. As Christ said in his dying breath "It is finished..." The work required for us to stand right (perfect) before God is done, over, completed! We can add nothing to it.

The practical consequences of our ¹distrust of God, however, are fully in play and have a real, ongoing, and significant impact on our disposition or sense of closeness to God, our day-to-day relationship with Him, and experience of His love. ¹Distrust may no longer be a legal issue for God but it is still very much a practical one for us.

Though these are entirely separate issues, both are equally significant in how we relate to God. To the degree distrust is no longer a legal issue it is equally significant as a practical one. We often mix these up and have a hard time keeping them separate.

Accurately assessing and acknowledging these two very different and seemingly opposite - but vitally ³connected - aspects of our relationship to God are essential to living in the fullness of love now that he's called us to i.e. to love God with all we are and have and our neighbors as ourselves. To not see the former clearly - i.e. our legal status - is to not enter into the day-to-day practical benefits of our relationship with God fully.

To fully participate in the life we now have in Christ we must see both our perfect righteousness before God and our ongoing deeply embedded distrust of God at the same time.

To recognize and focus on the practical issue of our ongoing distrust is not to revisit - place ourselves under - God's rejection and condemnation we were once under. It is to clearly assess where we need to trust Him more. In Christ, rejection, and condemnation by God no longer exists. We are now fully accepted, cherished and embraced by God. 

The practical issue of our distrust is an entirely separate matter from the legal consequences of our rebellion. It has to do with our moving toward or away from God, not God moving toward or away from us. In Christ God is now fully and perfectly for us, never against us. He is now Immanuel - God with us. 

The practical issue of our distrust must be addressed daily if we are to honor God, experience all He has for us, and be all He created us to be.

To illustrate, once a couple marries, they are fully husband and wife no matter how strained their relationship becomes. Unless they legally divorce, they will remain husband and wife with all the vows, responsibilities, and potential benefits of that relationship intact. However, while held together by binding covenant, they can become completely alienated from each other emotionally due to distrust within the relationship. To build trust does not make them any more a husband and wife legally than they already are but it does make them better partners as husband and wife i.e. The practical outworking of their legal status as husband and wife is more fully and appropriately expressed,  experienced, and demonstrated when trust is a vital part of the relationship. The more they trust each other the more they experience the other's love.

Trust is vital to our developing a stronger relationship with God just as it is with our spouse - or any other significant relationship. This involves our ongoing and increasing love and faithfulness to each other. In each, the stronger the relationship, the more healthy, satisfying, and rewarding it becomes.

Is God's love conditional or unconditional? For a further discussion click here.

For a further discussion on the now but not yet aspect of the gospel, click here.

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¹Even though we are redeemed and the legal consequences of our distrust are gone and no longer held against us, distrust itself remains. It is still embedded in our character, nature or disposition. 

Though trust is greatly restored once we are initially reconciled to God it is still deeply ingrained in our makeup and its negative effects still linger, even as His children. 

God continues to work on and  increase our trust - remove our distrust - in order to strengthen our relationship with Him i.e. He seeks to increase our faith and our experience of His perfect love.

²We are freed from the latter (distrust) to the extent we grasp the former (no condemnation). The greater our grasp of our perfect legal standing before His unfettered love the more impact it has on us practically in our trust of God and day-to-day walk with Him. In this way these two aspects (legal and practical) of our relationship with God are vitally connected though they are seperate.

³Though I am perfectly loved, I do not experience his love perfectly. How far that progresses in this life depends on the progress of my faith-trust in God and faithfulness to him. Once we are in eternity and glorified, the unfettered experience of his love for us begins. Distrust is no longer part of the equation/relationship i.e. we will fully trust at that time because we we will be face to face with Him. We will be like Him because we will see Him as He as is, our perfect loving God.

The more we learn to trust him now, the greater our experience of him in eternity - and today. He is our greatest reward.