New Covenant Patriarchy

Sunday, October 14, 2007

New Covenant Patriarchy and Relationships

Relationships with other people make us richer. Well, I should qualify that. Those relationships based on God’s Law make us richer. Those that are not make us poorer. All the relationships where all the parties to the relationship are in accord with God’s LawWord are win-win relationships. It is in this respect that I will use the terms lawful and lawless.

People become hermits and loners when they have been hurt too many times by lawless relationships.  Healing is needed and is available through Christ who bore the consequences of our lawlessness on Himself so we could be restored into a meaningful relationship with God.

People who are lawless find themselves quite lonely when they engage in lawlessness and thus destroy any meaningful relationships they have. The items in a garbage can are likewise meaningless in their relationship to anything else.  They no longer have a place or function in service to others.  This is hell.

The way of life and health and peace is one of meaningful service to others as ordered and regulated by the Guide to Relationships we know as the Bible.  This Guide will tell you how you are to relate to those who don't live by it as will as those who do.  It will tell you how to handle any type of relationship by giving you core principles (the Ten Commandments) as well as examples of how to implement those core principles (the case laws).

To bring home to your life just how this works you need to continually review the Guide in the light of those relationships you are involved in with your family, fellow church members, friends, and co-workers.  All of these reflect the most important relationship in your life, the one you have with God.  You have to get your relationship with God straight before anything else is going to get straightened out.

There are a huge number of aspects to our relationship with God but some are so fundamental that they deserve special consideration here:

1. Authority/Subject - I am the Lord your God Exodus 20:2a - Being under lawful authority (as opposed to being under a lawless tyrant) means being under God's authority.  You may safely discount the authority of anyone whose authority is not based on submission to God's authority.  A rapist may coerce his victim to do his bidding but that does not make him her husband.  The state may make laws and regulations that fill many new volumes each year but that does not make it God.  God is the author of creation and history.  We are his subjects.
   
   
2. Rescuer/Hostage - which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Exodus 20:2b - Our God is the one who rescues us from the criminal gangs who tyrannize us (coerce us lawlessly).
   
   
3. One/Many - Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Exodus 20:3 - God insists that He is God alone, the ultimate and singular source of authority.  Thus we live in a universe, not a multiverse.  We are many but God is one.
   
   
4. Jealous/Unconditionally Trusting - I the LORD thy God am a jealous God Exodus 20:5 - God names Himself Jealous, not that He is insecure, but that He will not share us with another.  Will a husband share his wife with another?  Neither will God tolerate any allegiance to competing authorities or competing loyalties.
   
   
5. Judge/LawBreaker - visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; Exodus 20:5 - This means households where 3 and 4 generations are affected by the evil of the fathers who hate God.
   
   
6. LawGiver Redeemer/Covenant Keeper - And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:6 - The order of God makes for a blessed realm where His citizens love and obey Him and thus enjoy peace with each other.

As our relationship with YHWH, our loving father, is healed and whole we spread healing to every relationship in our lives.