Religion or Relationship
After having been in the body of Christ for more than 30 years its evident to me that religion isn’t what I was searching for. I have discovered that relationship is greater than religion. In religion I found myself performing. What I mean is I was doing things to make God love me and this is what powers religion. Religion keeps you working to earn your place.
It wasn’t until I read the story of the prodigal son for the one-hundredth time. This time when I read the story something really unique took place. I read it from both of the son’s prospective. I had never realized that the son that stayed home with his father was the one with the religious issue. The one that left didn’t understand relationship until he was separated from his father’s embrace. When he realized that his greatness was back home grafted in relationship. This was the idea that caused him to return home.
The son that remained home was very troubled by his brother’s return. He could not embrace the fact that his bother had returned and his status as a son was not revoked due to his careless living. Although his careless living cost him to lose all that he had even his dignity but his position as a son was still very much intact. On the other hand his brother thought that because he stayed at home and maintained the fields. He contended with his father that his work should be recognized over his brother’s careless living.
He truly believed that his brother’s life style should have disqualified him from being treated like a member of the family when he returned from his escapade. In religion when judge relationship by one’s actions. When we live out of relationship, we learn to do what is right from a relational prospective and we stop trying to be good. We just live because the key here is learning to embrace proper relationship with the Father.
In an improper relationship we tend to over look that we are sons. We lose identity because we lack the knowledge of our position as sons. Remember when we where yet in error He sent His son to die for us and through His death He brought many sons into proper relationship. We were purged in our conscience from dead works. What is dead works? All that stuff we’ve been taught to do to make us good enough. He has already perfected us through His son all we need to do is live out of what He has finished for us. “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. Who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to call himself equal with God”. What’s meant here is that He simply called himself the Son of God. Sons are not religious sons are relational.