Religion versus Relationship

The buzzword in the church today is the word ‘relationship’. We say that being a Christian is not about religion, but about ‘relationship’. This is true in a sense – if we use the dictionary definition of the word relationship, meaning how two things or people are related to one another. Clearly true Christianity describes the way in which we are related to God in much different terms than does religion. But in modern culture the word ‘relationship’ carries a certain amount of baggage the does not necessarily apply to Christianity.

I want to first clarify how Christianity defines our relationship (how we are related) to God. It is summed up rather nicely in the five solas; by Scripture alone, by faith alone, by grace alone, through Christ alone, to the glory of God alone. In other words, it is not what we typically think of when we think of ‘relationship’ (i.e.: marriage, employer-employee, parenting, etc.)  This relationship, unique among all of our other relationships, is not dependent on us. It is dependent on the grace of God through faith in Christ Jesus that comes to us through the preaching of the Scripture and exists to bring God glory. You do not get out of this relationship what you put into it. To paraphrase Martin Luther, the only thing you ‘put into’ this relationship is the sin that makes it necessary. Because Christ has fully and finally completed the work necessary to justify us, he and he alone is the basis of our continuing relationship to the Father. There is no give and take on our part. We are takers (or partakers as Paul would say) only. 

This is where we can create confusion by the terms we use in the church. The word relationship implies to us that there is something that we must do (other than believing) that establishes or perpetuates our relationship to God, when in truth there is nothing we can do.  But, we protest, we must pray and read the Scripture and witness and tithe and attend church. Must we? Let me restate that with the emphasis where it should be; must WE? The very fact that we think I must do this and I must do that should throw up all kinds of red flags telling us that we are living according to a different gospel than the one we find in the Romans 10:9:

…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

All of this comes from our inborn fear of grace. Superficially, we fear grace because we think that if we preach salvation and sanctification as God’s work through faith alone that people will go wild and abuse grace. On a deeper level, I think we fear it because we know that it is the only thing with the power to truly change us from the inside out and we fear change. It is easier to take the Pharisee’s approach to grace and decry it as an excuse for sin than it is to fully embrace grace and allow it to kill the inner Pharisee altogether. We allow the Pharisee to convince us that grace is dangerous and needs to be used with great caution. My relationship with God cannot be a one-way street because that would render my inner Pharisee (me, at the core) worthless and strip me of any reason to boast. In the end, that road leads to the place where my only value is that value that is assigned to me by God through the death of His son for the payment of my debt to him.  The humiliation of Ephesians 2:8-9:

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

This seeps over into our evangelism with devastating consequences. If I perceive the acceptance of God’s grace by faith alone as being ‘easy-believism’ , then my gospel will undoubtedly contain some mechanism to prevent this from happening.  In other words, my gospel will not reflect the liberating message of Jesus (For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life... Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God – John 3:16,18) but will contain some kind of contractual language. “Give your life to Jesus” and “Surrender your life to Jesus” are two such contractual phrases that are commonplace in evangelism today. In order to receive God’s acceptance and forgiveness this is what you must do. We allow the inner Pharisee to subtly take the gospel and turn it into religion because, despite all bravado and YouTube videos to the contrary, we are terrified of the concept of grace as a gift. If the person is converted to our message, we now have a convert who believes he has received the grace of God because he has fulfilled the contractual obligation that we identified. He will continue to attempt to fulfill that obligation as a means of staying within God’s grace. Roll Matthew 23:15:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

The solution to this is not an easy one. It is an extremely painful one. It is the most painful thing that many of us will have to endure because it means the end of pride, the end of boasting, the breaking of contract and death to self.  But it is very simple; allow yourself for one brief moment to accept God’s grace as a gift with no strings attached. You don’t have to surrender to him  ‘as much as you know how’ right now. He does not demand that you ‘give your life’ to him. He says this; if you believe that I have done everything necessary to fulfill the law on your behalf through my sinless life and satisfy your condemnation for law-breaking through my death, you are saved. It is finished. Now breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. Do you feel that? It might be freedom. That’s the feeling of Galatians 2:19-21:

For through the law [religion] I died to the law [religion], so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God [how I am now related to God], who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God [how I am related to God], for if righteousness were through the law [religion], then Christ died for no purpose.

Ahhhh. That is the gospel truth.

The Gospel Conference

My home church was treated to something very special early this week. Two very gifted young preachers - Timothy Haupt of Buffalo, Missouri and Joshua Hedger of Bolivar, Missouri - came and presented the gospel over the course of two evenings. When I say presented the gospel I mean unapologetically. There were absolutely no holds barred. Just as Paul proclaimed it - by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone to the glory of the Father alone - so did they. The reaction has been overwhelming.

Do American Christians have any idea what Paul is talking about when he announces in Romans 1:16 that he is not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for salvation? The number one comment I heard was that the preaching was powerful. I think that Tim and Josh would both agree that the power behind the preaching is not their education or talent as public speakers. The power is the gospel itself. Any one of us, having the boldness to preach an unadulterated gospel of justification by the blood of Christ and nothing else, can wield the same power. So why don't we?

I honestly believe it is because we don't know it. We haven't been taught nor have we wrapped our heads around the idea that our salvation is completely of God. In fact, for many of us, the initial invitation we heard was not to obey the powerful gospel but a plea to make a 'decision for Christ'. As a result, we have lived a life devoid of the power that the gospel supplies while struggling to make good on that 'decision'. Far from being set free in Christ we have been imprisoned in the worst sort of self-imposed morality that dooms us to failure and disappointment year after year. Having become awakened to our nature as sinners, we lock horns with ourselves in an attempt to muster the righteousness that we know a Holy God demands. Like Paul's Jewish contemporaries we are ignorant of the righteousness of God in Christ and go about seeking to establish our own (Romans 10:1-4). When the real gospel comes, the vastness of grace that it conveys is shocking to us. It is both exhilarating and bewildering.

Can we hold on to that sense of awe? Can we be continually exhilarated and bewildered by the gospel truth? The answer is yes. But there is a key, of which I was reminded through listening to several hours of pure gospel preaching; faith comes by hearing. If we neglect the hearing of the gospel, our faith grows stale very quickly. If we approach the scripture without our 'gospel goggles' on, it becomes a series of impossible demands. The only way I know to continue in awe of the gospel is to be keenly aware of and reminded of the gospel of grace every day. To preach it to yourself and to others, and to allow them to preach it to you. That is the gospel truth.