• By Lloyd Murphy
  • Posted in
  • Created for a Relationship with God (Relationships Part 2)

    In the last post we began our series on relationships by backing way up and looking at the theological foundation of all relationships: that we are relational beings because we are made in the image of God, who Himself, by His very nature as the triune God, is relational. We noted that the fact that we are male and female reveals to us the diversity within the unity of the triune God. We ended by noting that God does not need us in order to be fulfilled; He does not need a relationship with us in order to be a relational God because He has perfect fellowship within the three Persons of His triune being…and yet He chose to create us, and He created us in His own image.

    This is the second theological pillar that must undergird our thinking on relationships: the wonderful truth that God, out of no necessity, created us in order to have a relationship with us. In Genesis 1:26–28 we read that

    …God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

    From this passage we note that it was the willful decision of the triune God to make man in His own image and likeness. A central part of this image is certainly the relational aspect of man. But this relational aspect of man was not meant only to display God’s glorious nature, the creation of man was for the purpose of relationship. We see this personal relationship take shape in Genesis 2, which is an elaboration on the creation of man in day six. While the first chapter of Genesis is like a full panoramic view of the creation; chapter 2 is more of a telescopic zooming in on the most important part of the picture. We know this because of the tolodot (Heb. תּוֹלְדֹ֣ת) literary marker in Gen. 2:4 (“this is the account” or literally, “these are the generations”). This marker is used to introduce the major divisions of this entire book (cf. Gen. 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 10:32; 11:10; 11:27; 25:12; 25:19; 36:1; 37:2). Each one of these tolodots marks the outlining of the development of mankind and the various tribes of men, focusing especially on the line of Israel. So what we have in Genesis 2 is the first of these tolodot markers which sketches the beginning of all mankind. In Gen. 2:15–17 we see in this passage some very critical aspects which help to define our understanding of relationships:

    The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

    First of all, we see that God communicated with man. Communication is basic to any relationship; if two people cannot communicate, it is very difficult for them to have a relationship! Secondly, we see that there were roles in the relationship. God made it clear to Adam that He was the Creator; Adam, was the created, and therefore Adam was to serve God. God gave the commands which Adam was to obey, and Adam would find delight in obedience to God. This brings us to a third aspect of this relationship: trust. Trust is the basic, foundational aspect of any good relationship; without trust a relationship falls apart. Trust is a like a boundary marker for a relationship. It’s like the lines on a basketball court or a baseball field which alert us to what is out of bounds and will cause damage or potentially even destroy the relationship if we cross those lines. Different relationships have different trust markers which define them. The trust marker of Adam’s relationship to God was made explicitly clear: it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That tree was the boundary of trust. Many believe that the tree was a marker for a probationary test of obedience, and if Adam and Eve had just obeyed long enough they would have been confirmed in righteousness and eventually would have not been able to sin any longer. But I don’t see any reason for this kind of speculation. God merely warned Adam that if He did eat of the tree he would surely die. If we understand the tree as a test, it was a test of relationship.

    In Genesis 3:8 it appears that God had regular, personal fellowship with man in the Garden. And apparently this fellowship would have carried on to Adam and Eve’s children and their descendants because God had given him the command to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” Yet we see that this perfect fellowship was broken when Adam and Eve listened to the serpent and violated the boundary of trust. Adam was dependent upon God and obligated to Him; this was his nature and his role in relationship to God. And yet he chose to rebel against this nature and this role and to make himself his own god. As a consequence of this, man died. Adam and Eve began to die physically at that point, but far worse, they immediately died spiritually as they were cast out of the Garden and out of the presence of God. In that instant, sin infected all mankind, as Romans 5:12 tells us: “…through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”

    But in the midst of Genesis 3, we find the first indication that God had a plan for rescuing man from the consequences of the Fall. In fact, the rest of the Bible is the story of God’s redemption of man. We see, then, that although the Fall broke man’s relationship with God, the recreation of man was for the purpose of relationship. Augustine’s famous line rings true for all men: “You have made us for Yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.” God, who is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6) immediately made this possible, as we see in Genesis 3:15. God announced the consequences of sin first upon the serpent, whom He told, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” This is what theologians call the protoeuangelion, or the “first Gospel.” This was the promise of a Redeemer who would one day come to crush Satan and defeat sin and death and hell forever.

    From here on out, God begins to deal with man in a gracious manner, calling a people to Himself through whom would come the Messiah, the Savior, who would reconcile men back to Him. As we mentioned, the tolodots of Genesis map out this choosing of a people, and God continues on throughout Scripture to tenaciously pursue a relationship with mankind despite their sinfulness. He makes covenants with them, he issues promises to them, and He acts for them. He gives them His law in order to show them their sinfulness and alert them to their need for a Savior. And ultimately, He sends that Savior who, as the “last Adam,” (1 Cor. 15:22, 45) was perfectly obedient, always doing what the Father commanded, perfectly fulfilling His role as the God-man. Through the new birth which we receive when we believe in Christ, we receive eternal life, the definition of which was given by our Lord Jesus Christ: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3). Eternal life is to know God, to have a restored relationship with Him. It is to no longer be His enemy (Rom. 5:10), but to be His friend (John 15:13-14). This new birth gives us entrance into the family of God (John 1:12) and introduces us into the transformational process of becoming more like Christ (Col. 3:9-10). All of this is summed up in 2 Corinthians 5:17-19:

    Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

    What wonderful news it is to know that God is committed to a relationship with us and that by heeding His call for us to turn away from our own way and to turn to Him through Christ we gain eternal life, the essence of which is a relationship with the living God. This is what we were created for!