Do you relate?

Did you know that all relationships are rooted in the Trinity?  God said in Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”  Notice the personal pronouns ‘us’ and ‘our’.  When God made us, it was not just the Father who did the creating, but the Father, Son, and the Spirit.  Remember John 1?  Jesus was there in the beginning creating.  Remember the Spirit at creation present and hovering over the face of the waters (Gen. 1:2)?

So what does this mean that all relationships are rooted in the Trinity?  It means that a perfect representative example of how we are to relate to one another is displayed for us in how the three persons of the Trinity (Father, Son, Spirit) relate to one another.  Jesus did not attempt to usurp the Father’s prerogatives, nor did the Spirit attempt a coup to overtake the other two persons.  Paul tells us that Jesus didn’t even consider equality with God something to grasp after (Phil. 2:6).  It was not His role.  He was subject to the Father to follow His Father’s will. . . and He was pleased to do it!

Have you noticed that we are very unlike this?  We strive to overtake the people we claim to love with our own agendas, secrets, lies, plans.  We get angry when our spouse questions our motives.  We demand our children behave “because we said so.”  We pilfer supplies from work to get back at the Big Man.  We feel we deserve recognition so we gossip to tear down others.  

Well . . . our sin creates a mess.  Our relationships are drastically broken.  Fortunately, the Trinity is more than just an example of what real relationship is to look like.  The Trinity is the only power by which we can also experience restored, renewed, and healthy relationship.  Because the Father sent the Son and the Son willingly came; because the Son lived willingly and obediently to the Father; because the Son sent the Spirit; because the Spirit willingly came; we can know a salvation that not only brings an example and a covering for our sin, but that gives the power to truly love through the power of the resurrected Christ and the Spirit who dwells within those who trust in Jesus.  Christ’s relational love which chose to love us (the unlovable), ought to compel us to humbly trust and rely on Him for change in how we relate to each other.  

If you are in relationship to Jesus Christ, then the ability to see your relationships made new is there to receive and in which you can actively participate.  As Jesus humbly carries out His role before the Father, we too are to humbly come before Jesus and ask that He work in us to submit our relationships to His care that we might submit ourselves to the change that we need to make.  Are we willing?