Relationship? No- Righteousness and Oneness in Christ

To describe salvation as  forming a relationship with God is just not adequate.

“Relationship” implies that we bring something, and the other party contributes something. In truth, we are dead in our trespasses. Jesus Christ has brought us back to life.

 

"I am come that you may have life, and that more abundantly." (John 10: 10)

 

and also

 

"When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." (Colossians 3: 4)

 

and

 

"He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." (1 John 5: 12)

We did not initiate a relationship. We are called, welcomed into a covenant, one which could not keep ourselves, one which God the Father cut with His own Son, who represents us before the Father. He came to us, while still sinners. He died the death and provides the life which we cannot create for ourselves.

"4But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) 6And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:" (Ephesians 2: 4-6)

Christ is not a religion, or even a relationship. He is everything for manm beginning with Wisdom, then righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30).  He is our heart and the beat. The Body and the Blood, who meets every need, gives every seed, and blesses with all deliberate seed. We give nothing but our poverty, and He makes us rich (2 Corinthians 8: 9).

 We bring nothing to this "relationship", if we insist on calling it such. "Righteousness and right standing", this is what every believer has in Christ:

"I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me." (John 17: 23)

We are not just in a relationship. We are not just in righteousness and right standing. We are Christ, we are His:

"And ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." (1 Corinthians 3: 23)

and

"For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." (Colossians 3: 3)

and

"For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3: 26)

and

"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)

A relationship implies separation, division, a lack of oneness. Even a man and a woman are not as one as we are in Christ Jesus!