Article: RELATIONSHIP WITH CHRIST | Jacob Varghese

If we are growing in a genuine, all-consuming love for God,
It will overflow into every aspect of our lives.

To build a good relationship with God is a top priority for anyone believing in God; everyone should treat it as the most important task and as their major life event. Everything you do should be weighed against whether or not you have a genuine relationship with God. In God’s word, we can see that it is quite important to have a proper relationship with God. So how can we achieve that? Knowing Jesus Christ is the most exciting relationship you can have. It is the beginning of a life of adventure with an all-loving, all-powerful God. God created man and breathed life into man, so that man became a living man with a spirit, and could converse with God and manifest and honor God. Therefore, among all things of God’s creation, man was closest to God. However, after being tempted and corrupted by Satan, we humans betrayed God, and lost the intimate relationship with God, falling into the darkness. Though we have believed in God and followed Him now, if we don’t obey God, give our hearts to God, or live before God, then we won’t have a genuine relationship with God. Therefore, establishing a proper relationship with God is crucial for us.

Intimate Relationship
The kind of love to which Christ calls us is really an act of faith directed towards others. Loving one’s enemies really can’t be done on a purely human level. It requires something more: it requires making a judgment about the reality, the world and the people in it, a judgment to the effect that it is something more than what it seems to be. A judgment that there is something about this person that I am picturing that must be respected, honored and served…. something which cannot be felt, experienced or sensed, but must be believed. So indeed, Christ binds us together into a body that is something more than human. We need to understand the intimacy with which Christ has chosen to dwell with His people. We need to understand the intimate relationship, which Christ has established with us.

The Christian understanding of the term ‘intimacy’ is quite different from its secular meaning. From a Christian perspective we see an array of false connotations presented by our culture. In the secular world, intimacy equals closeness and it is often understood in terms of a sexual relationship. Closeness has in it the sense of transparency, the ability to share with others our deepest longings and vulnerabilities. The Christian understanding of intimacy is a relationship based on our commitment and love (agape) to God and to fellow brothers and sisters. Here intimacy has nothing to do with the self and everything to do with the other person. The focus is taken off selfish desires, needs and hurts. The joy of intimacy is not in receiving, but in giving- not in being served, but in serving.

Selfless Love
When we think of God and how we relate to Him, what is the first thing that comes to our mind? Do you consider God to be your friend? The way we relate to people is depending on how we give to and receive from them. Jesus loved us so much that He died on a cross to save us. This is the kind of selfless love that He still has for us today. He loves us so much that He desires to cleanse us of the polluted life-styles of this world and, one day, take us to heaven to be with Him forever. For me to be a Christian is to receive Jesus and to have a personal relationship with Him. What does it mean? Is having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ a spiritual reality that requires the presence and appraisal of the spirit of Christ to understand what it means? If so, is it possible to adequately explain the meaning of this reality to people of other faith?

Personal Relationship
Do we have a personal relationship with our great grandfather, who might have died twenty years prior to our birth? Yes, we may have but just a biological and genealogical relationship of heritage, isn’t it? Is it possible to have a personal relationship with George Washington or Napoleon Bonaparte? Is there a necessary personal relationship between siblings with in the same family? Does biological kinship establish a personal relationship? Let me share a personal illustration: I have a cousin sister. We have a genetic and biological relationship. Is that a personal relationship? I have not seen nor communicated with this cousin for over twenty five years, nor does she apparently ever desire to do so. Do we have a personal relationship? Someone has defined personal relationship “as a dynamic inter-relatedness between persons, an experiential relationship between two persons that involves subjective interaction, a communication, a person- to- person relationship, the connection, correlation and interaction of at least two persons in what might be better termed as inter personal relationship”

Is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ just a relation of our mental assent to a historical Jesus? Is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ just an ideological relationship of belief based on the circumstantial evidence of reports that we can read in the gospels? Is it possible to have an interpersonal relationship with a historical personage that lived hundreds of years ago? Or does an interpersonal relationship with Jesus Christ necessitate an experimental, interactive relationship that involves inter-relatedness, oneness, a union, a commonality of identity and an intimacy. It is important to understand that a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is not just an objective relationship to the benefits that Christ apparently made available by historical actions of death, burial and resurrection. The Problem with Christians today is that they only look to God to meet their needs and neglect following Him and fulfilling the Great Commission. Millions of Christians who have discovered a personal relationship with Jesus have become aware God has a plan for each of their lives that can be discerned and followed.

Being a Christian is about a whole lot more than just being some sort of spiritual show off. In fact, being a Christian has everything to do with knowing God through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Knowing God is what being a Christian is all about. To be a Christian is to know God in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. A lot of people, even church going people, don’t quite understand that. You are not alone. Many church members have no clue as to what faith is really all about. Faith is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, plain and simple. That is what faith is all about. You can be a member of a church, you can serve on committees, you can chair a task force, you can be ordained as an elder, you can build homes for the poor, you can work for social justice, you can even have Reverend title in front of your name, but if you don’t know Jesus personally, you are not a Christian. Oh, don’t get me wrong; you might be wonderful, spiritual, religious person but that is just you are religious. Christian faith has nothing whatsoever to do with religion. It’s all about relationship. Another way of putting it is: it is all about the difference between knowing about God and knowing God. Knowing God is faith. And faith is a personal relationship with Jesus.

If you want to know Jesus, you need to ask Him to reveal Himself to you. You can’t know another person unless they choose to reveal themselves to you. If you wanted to know me, how would you go about doing that? Well, you could follow me around, watch what I do. You could interview my wife, my children. You could go to my records, check my college transcripts and gather a whole lot of information about me from social media accounts and so on. But you can never know me, unless I choose to reveal to you who I really am. I can reveal a false personality to you. But you can never really know me until I make the choice to reveal my self to you.

Friends, the good news of the Gospel is that God, the Father, has chosen to reveal Himself to us through Jesus Christ. Through Jesus Christ, you and I can know God personally because God is the one who invites you and me to know Him personally and from the beginning of creation that has been God’s desire for every human being. It is only your sin and mine that knocks us out of our relationship with God and it is the grace that God extends to you and me, open arms, and says, come on!, know me- not as some transcendental being that is way out there but as some one who is intimately and personally involved in your life.

Spending Time with Christ
Do you want a relationship with Jesus Christ? Then you need to spend time with Him-just like you would be with another person if you wanted that relationship. And as Christians, we do that through prayer and also through reading Scripture. Prayer is not some fancy thing trying to think of high-flown words to address God. Prayer is merely conversation with God as a friend. That is where we hear God speak to us. Then another way to spend time with Christ is in corporate worship. Jesus makes the promise to us, ‘I will be with you always.’ But He also makes an even grater promise, ‘wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.’ Another way to spend time with Christ is to be involved in Ministry, i.e., servant hood ministry. When you and I do that, what happens? We are merely going wherever Christ is going, getting involved in what He is already doing out there in the world.

Nurture
Your relationship with Christ needs to be nurtured just like any other relationship. Some times people say, “God seems so far away.” You know why? “Think about our quiet time” “Oh, well, I don’t have one”. Think for just a moment about our best friend, or may be your wife or husband, who is it that means the most to you in life, your dearest relationship. Picture that in your mind, Now let us say for the next six months, you have made a decision; you are not going to talk to that person. And you have made a decision; you are not going to respond, when they talk to you for the next six months. Hit the fast forward button for six months! What is that relationship like? Why do you think it is any different with Christ? No, except it is a whole lot different, because Christ is infinitely more gracious and merciful than our wives, husbands or best friends. When you and I come to know Jesus Christ, when we encounter the living Christ, we are able to exclaim with awe and adoration: now I know there is a God in Heaven! More than that, you and I are able to say “I know ‘that’ God through a personal relationship with Jesus as Lord and as God.” When you come to know Jesus, you come to know God. Faith is nothing less than a personal relationship with Jesus. Once we get intimate with Jesus, we are never lonely and we never lack understanding or compassion. We can continually pour out our hearts to Him with out being perceived as overly emotional or pitiful. The Christian who is truly intimate with Jesus, will never draw attention to him, but will only show the evidence of a life where Jesus is completely in control. This is the outcome of allowing Jesus to satisfy every area of life to its depth. The picture resulting from such a life is that of the strong, calm balance that our Lord gives to those who are intimate with Him.

God created us for a close, intimate relationship with Him. But Self centeredness and a God less life style-what the Bible calls “sin”-were like an unseen barrier between God and us. So Jesus came on a mission of reconciliation-to seek out human lives that had been “lost”- to God. This is why the cross is so central to establish a true relationship with God. The death and resurrection of Jesus shattered the barrier between God and us once for all, opening the door for us to return to God. Jesus said that the first and most important commandment is to love the Lord God with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our strength and our entire mind. If we are growing in a genuine, all-consuming love for God it will overflow into every aspect of our lives. Therefore the virtues of a Christian life are a byproduct of a consistent personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus has an intimate relationship with those who turn to Him. Putting mud on the eyes of a blind man was an intimate gesture. The good shepherd who could call out each of his sheep by name had an intimate relationship with them, even though there were lots of them, even though they all looked much the same. The good shepherded goes to look for a sheep that is lost; in human terms that means not only people who have deliberately turned away from Him, but also all those who have been rejected by their communities, by their churches. In many countries people find themselves rejected by their families, communities or churches that out of fear or ignorance are unable to offer them the love and care that they need. But Jesus the good shepherd continues to care for them and calls on the Christian’s world wide to follow His example, that in joining with Him to offer love and acceptance to those who have been rejected; they too might be good shepherd of His sheep.

JACOB VARGHESE