More Than A Personal Relationship

We have all been told, that we too can have a personal relationship with the Lord. I would ask, is that all that God the Father intended when he sent his Son to die for our sin. I have many such personal relationships in my life, with my boss, my friends my wife, my natural brothers and sisters and the list goes on and on. But the difference is, none of these people are my life, they are only part of my life.

Christ came that I might have life and have it more abundantly. His life, has become my life. He took my old life to the cross; that the man of sin might be destroyed, and He gave me newness of life, in Him. He said “I am the vine, and you are the branches: He that abides in me, and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing. We all understand a natural vine. This again is God, using a natural thing, to teach us a spiritual truth. The vine and the branch are one life. The branch has no life, but what it receives from the vine through the root. Remove the branch, from the vine and it withers and dies, why, because it has no life in itself. Just as we have no life in ourselves except that of the Lord. If we do, it is not eternal life and we shall parish in it. The branch has much more than a personal relationship with the vine. The vine is the source of its life, and so it is with one in Christ.

A personal relationship only implies that you are acquainted with someone in a personal way. Being one with the Lord, of one body and one spirit is altogether different than a mere, personal relationship. How we water down the Word of God, to fit our unbelief! How unfortunate it is that for the most part, the ”church” teaches it’s converts that all they have is a long distance, personal relationship with their savior. When at the same time we are told to ask Jesus into our heart. Not realizing that the heart is the center, from which the life flows, Christ in our heart, becomes our life. The life is in the blood, which is pumped from the heart. This again is God showing us spiritual truths using natural things. Obviously this is a spiritual matter and not a physical one. But the typology implies that Jesus becomes the source of our life. Only the Son knows the Father and has true relationship, with the Father. You now have relationship with the heavenly Father, just as you had relationship with your natural father, as a Son.

But we have much more, than a personal relationship, we are a relation, or a relative “praise God”.

Art Groesbeck