“Your love for one another will prove to the world that you
are my disciples.” John 13:35
It’s not a stretch to say that the whole Bible is about
relationships. The Bible speaks not just of our relationship with God, but
about our relationships with other people as well.
Consider the Ten
Commandments. On the surface, they look like a list of rules, but a better way
of thinking of them is as the guardians of relationships.
By observing the
first four commandments, we honor and protect our relationship with God.
1. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make idols.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in
vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
And commandments five through ten address our relationships
with others.
5. Honor your father and your mother.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet.
Or consider that when someone asked Jesus to tell him the
greatest commandment in the law, Jesus spoke about loving relationships with
God and with others.
“‘Love the Lord your god with all your heart and with all
your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and
the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matt. 22:37–40).
According to Jesus, you can summarize most of the Bible as
God’s plan for us to have healthy, loving relationships with him and with
others. In the first story of the first book of the Bible, God makes sure that
we catch this. We hear him say with his own voice that we were created to
connect with other people:
“It is not good for the man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18).
This means that our desire and capacity for relationship
are part of our hard wiring. Consider your own life right now. Are you sharing
your life with other disciples? How are you spiritually connected to the body
of Christ? Are you in need of someone to disciple you? Or, if you have been
disciple by someone already, do you have anyone in your life that you are
currently discipling? If not, I wouldn’t be surprised that you are feeling dry
or unproductive in your faith and in need of a spiritual tune-up.
Scripture gives us many examples of people investing in
relationships with other people. We all know that it’s one thing to sit in a
church gathering—watching and listening—but it’s another thing to be taught
about Jesus with a few others who know you well. In the context of personal
relationships, questions can be asked, real-life stories can be shared, sin can
be confessed, accountability can be offered and encouragement can be given.
There is a greater capacity for truth transfer. Coincidentally, this describes
how Jesus made his own disciples. Jesus’ ministry teaches us that disciple
making is a relational process, one built on trust.
Dr. Coleman, in his book The Master Plan of Evangelism,
assumes that the incarnation of Jesus was the starting point and foundation of
Jesus’ method, but he did not explicitly start with it and states it in his
book. By this principle he means that Jesus entered fully into human life,
especially in relationships with other. And this trajectory of the incarnation,
taking on everything “human” to fully identify with and relate to us, was
characteristic of Jesus’ ministry and his methods. Coleman states that if he
were outlining his principles today—over fifty years after writing what became
one of the most influential Christian books of the last hundred years—this is
the only principle he would add to the book and emphasize. He said that he made
the mistake of just assuming it.
Jesus’ method started when he entered into the world of
others and built relationships with people. He didn’t just come to be a human
being; he came to be a human being in relationship with people and show us what
it really means to live a godly life, fully alive to God and people. And
because we are blind and unaware of how to do this, he first came into our
lives to show us how much God loves us.
Coleman had it right, and we tell everyone who wants to
follow Jesus’ method today to begin the same way. Start by entering into the
lives of others. Form relationships with the heart of Jesus. Show them how much
God loves them. Coleman puts it this way:
“Nothing disarms a person like love. Everyone likes to be
loved and for someone to express love to them in tangible ways. When you know
you’re loved, you’ll listen and open up. It was Christ loving people, his service
to them, his ministry to them—healing the sick, opening the eyes of the blind,
delivering those possessed by demons, teaching them about the Kingdom of
God—that drew people to him, and the same is true with our ministries. You have
an audience with everybody who knows they’re loved and knows you care about
them. The incarnation is the foundation upon which we must begin to express our
life in Christ. It’s a beginning place to fulfill the Great Commission,
starting with reaching out just as Jesus did in making disciples.”
Motives matter. If you’re doing all this to fulfill an
inner need to accomplish something or to prove to others that you are a good
leader or really smart, it won’t last. We don’t engage others in relationship
because it proves that we are effective disciple makers. True discipleship
begins as a response to God’s love. God’s love humbles and transforms us into
people who are freed up from focusing on ourselves to truly love others. And as
we love others, we experience the joy of God. All of this produces the fruit of
God-honoring relationships. Relationships lie at the heart of God’s nature as a
Trinity, and they are at the heart of our created purpose as human beings.
Jesus came to restore relationship, so it’s no surprise that relationships are
one of the most important things talked about in the Bible.
Taken from: The Disciple Maker’s Handbook by Bobby
Harrington and Josh Patrick. Copyright © 2017 by Bobby Harrington and Josh
Patrick. Used by permission of Zondervan. Zondervan.com This post first appeared HERE.
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