In our last night of the Relationships series, I want to look back at the things that we've learned as well as give an opportunity for questions or testimonies.
All of us experience some tension between desiring safety and connection. The most isolated person still needs other people to survive at some point. The most connected person still gets hurt. Those like us can frustrate us, and those who are different are hard to understand. But we are designed to reflect our communal God, and so healthy, balanced relationships are necessary. They're part of how we're designed, but because of sin, they can really hurt.
We need to acknowledge that although sin is generally a problem, sin inside us is the specific problem. It might be easy to pass the blame off to other people, even Satan, but I need to admit that I would still sin even if I never had help from another person or from Satan himself. That's why I will only see change in my relationships because of the power of Christ in me. Christ inside us is the solution.
Because God lives is un, God wants us to have unity with each other and sanctifies us through relationships. The unity we have with each other reflects the unity enjoyed by the Trinity. Biblical relationships reflect God to other Christians and to a fallen world. But those biblical relationships are also making us more like God.
That's why it's so important that all good relationships have a proper view of who we are and who God is. None of us was designed to please other people. We were designed to bring glory to God, and he is sufficient to please us. Remember that Christ has given us everything we need to be the people he has designed us to be. That frees us to serve and love others. We are free to be humble, patient, gentle, and forbearing. This enables us to let go of a worldly perspective and embrace godliness.
Words matter, so we must communicate as ambassadors for Christ in a world that is not our home anymore. We need to say the right thing in the right way to the right person at the right time. Our communication should take place with the understanding that we don't speak for ourselves, but we speak as Christ's representative. Will he be made to look higher or lower by what we are about to say?
Because of sin, personality differences, and poor communication, conflict seems inevitable. But, God uses biblical conflict to defeat sin in us and make us more like him. He has taken something that only exists because of sin and turned it into a way to fight sin in our lives. God himself entered into conflict by coming to earth to conquer sin and save us. Conflict between believers is God's way of exposing my own wrong desires and chipping them away. Because of conflict, I can become more like Christ.
A major part of resolving conflict is forgiveness. True forgiveness means canceling someone's debt to us and absorbing that cost ourselves. If it weren't for God, I would be perfectly just to make someone pay for the wrong things they do to me. But God's example was not making me pay for what I had done. Instead, his son absorbed the cost of my sin to make it possible for me to be in a right relationship with God. As someone who has received great forgiveness, I need to be willing to never bring the debt up as leverage, never to bring up the offense to others to slander the person who sinned against us, and not dwell on the offense.
Because relationships take place in the middle of real life, with real problems, we can all get discouraged by what seems like an impossible task. True encouragement places the focus on Christ, not on ourselves or the other person. Nice things are nice, but they cannot change us like God's truth can. We need to point others toward Christ to gain courage in a harsh world.
But if we want to really push our relationships toward Christlikeness, we need to mimic Christ. Christ did not come to produce great leaders. Christ did not come to produce great followers. Christ came to produce servants. Christ calls us to serve others so that we can be like him. None of us are too great to serve and none of us are too insignificant to make a difference in the lives of others.
Relationships are necessary. Relationships are hard. Relationships are part of God's plan for growing his kingdom. Relationships are part of God's plan for changing us to be like him.