Our Relationship with God – from the Beginning, to Now

Above YouTube Music Video Captures the Essence of God’s Relationship with Man & Vice Versa

In the beginning, Adam & Eve were created. in the Image & Likeness of God. All of creation lived in absolute harmony. Humans & animals, birds & fish, trees & plants were one, happy, ecological family – no food fights.

But Adam had Free Will. Satan Exists. Adam Sinned.  And the relationship with God was broken. Paradise lost.

Pain and suffering replaced peace and joy. Ever since, humanity inherited struggles and dismay. The new norm was an adversarial relationship with all things. The relationship with God was broken.

God attempted to restore His relationship with “Man” (A collective pronoun for all genders). The Old Testament records 3 Covenants of attempted restoration. Each Covenant was a legalistic “Quid-Pro-Quo”, requiring “Man” to do something, then God would restore their relationship. “Man” always failed to keep his part of the bargain. “Man’s” misery continued for thousands of years, ignoring the Prophets attempts to open minds & soften hearts.

The poster child of “Man’s” inability to keep commandments, to follow the Law, is the Old Testament’s King David. David was called “A man after God’s own heart.” David was a licentious adulterer and murderer. His lust for Bathsheba was his crazed motivation to send her husband to the front lines to be killed, so he could marry her. His saving grace was Nathan, his advisor. Once Nathan exposed David’s sins to him, David genuinely repented. David expresses in his repentance in his marvelous Psalm 51: “Create in me a new clean heart.” David’s repentance is part of the spine of “Man’s” role in the “New Covenant” between God and “Man”. Faith is the other part.

Thus, God Flip-Flopped His Restoration Plan. God knew that stiff-necked, hard-headed, flawed “Man” was incapable of complying to any “Conditions/Laws” of restoration. “God so loved the world that He sent His only Son (to become man, suffer & die to acquit “Man” of all his sins, then rise from the dead as proof that He was God) so that all who believe in Him, shall not perish, but have life everlasting.” The New Testament’s Covenant was God’s unilateral, unconditional Love of “Man”, which restored the relationship between God & “Man”, once and for all.

Our belief in God is expressed by loving God and each other, as God loves us. Period. It’s not a relationship precariously perched on the “tenter-hooks” of adherence to Laws, to constantly earn the companionship of God. No. It’s a relationship of love.  Christ is the Personification of God’s love., of unselfish love, giving His life for His friends. In return, not out of some legal requirements, but out of the natural reciprocity of love, we share who we are, with God and each other, asking nothing in return. That’s the Cosmic Beauty & Joy of our new restored relationship with God. We love God and each other because we want to, not because we have to.

The new relationship with God is not broken when man sins, when man reverts to doing his will. “Man’s” will is to be selfish. Seeking gratuitous pleasures, fortune, and fame. Sin tears the relationship.  But, it’s broken at the lack of repentance for the commission of sin. That’s the distinction between the Old & New Testament.

Good Friday restored our relationship with God, and allows us to repent to maintain that restored relationship: “To create in us a new clean heart.” Easter Sunday provides the Faith to trust that God is sovereign over all things.

Our faith and genuine repentance acknowledge that No Sin, no matter how vile or frequent, can exceed the love and forgiveness of the welcoming embrace, of the outstretched arms, of the Redemptive Cross. (Sometimes it’s difficult to accept that God loves us so much.)  Faith and repentance maintain the restored relationship with God. Paradise found.

Above YouTube Music Video Captures the Essence of this Blog Post Message

Paradise found began at the first Christmas.