Relationships Have Rules -- In Covenant He Rules for Us

I have never found the element of "relationship with God" adequate to describe what happens to someone who is born again.

Of course, we from being alienated from God, dead in our trespasses, to entering full sonship with God the Father:

"But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,

"To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." (Galatians 4: 5-6)

We receive this adoption through the Holy Spirit:

"For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. " (Romans 8: 15)

The relationship between a Father and his child is based on much more than rules, though, but one of identity:

"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world." (1 John 4: 17)

The Jewish leaders of the New Covenant ministry had to lay down some "guidelines" when they began bringing in Gentiles into the Body of Christ. They did not deem it right or righteousness to lay on them the laws of Moses:

"Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?" (Acts 15: 10)

In fact, those laws are now within us, an internal leading through the Holy Spirit:

"For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
 
"And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.

"For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." (Hebrews 8: 10-12)

In the New Covenant, God does everything, and we receive His grace by believing that all our sins are forgiven. In this covenant, more than a relationship, He rules in us.