In making a case for the rWorld, Dale S. Kuehne asserts: Christianity is essentially and fundamentally about relationships. When Jesus was asked what was the most important commandment, he answered: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22)
In saying this, Jesus pointed to the Law as being about two things: how to love GOD and how to love one another. “Every law in the entire Bible is about one or the other.” (Kuehne, 115) Why would these matters be the focus of the Law? We were made for relationship.
Since we are made in the image of the Creator, it is critical that we know something about the nature of GOD. In Genesis 1:26, we read “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness.” More than merely a declaration of intent, it reveals GOD’s nature as relational. GOD was not solitary or lonely; He did not create man out of a need for relationship. (The reality that GOD is love can only make sense if there was and is love within the Trinity.) That humans are relational by nature is seen in the statement, “It is not good for the man to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18) We cannot find wholeness without relating to GOD and one another.
The beauty of relationship as experienced in the garden is portrayed in the statement, “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” (Genesis 2:25) But this was shattered when those made in the image of the Creator no longer trusted Him and chose to do as they pleased. The destruction of the existing relationships was illustrated by the need to clothe themselves, to hide from GOD, to blame others, and finally by the man and the woman being expelled from the Garden.
Amazingly, in spite of the shattered relationship, GOD has never stopped loving us. As Kuehne puts it: “We=re talking about God here. The Almighty. The one who is so holy that we are not worthy to utter his name and cannot stand in his presence without perishing. We=re talking about a being with the power to ignore or even destroy our corner of the universe, treating us as a failed experiment. Yet God still loves us. (138)
We were made for relationship and we find our true freedom within the frameworks of relationships. As John wrote in his first epistle: 19We love because he first loved us. 20If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother. (I John 4)