Pilgrim-Platform

Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ

Last evening (4/28/05) President Bush held a televised news conference. He was asked to speak about whether faith was being politicized. In his response he said, “I view religion as a personal matter.” A few moments later he repeated this thought, “I believe faith is a personal issue.”

And of course it is! Who could argue with such a mundane statement?

Jesus can.

These statements pertain specifically to Christianity (because the President is a self-confessed Christian) and they convey so little of the truth that they are actually an obfuscation of the central concern of Christianity. But at the same time they are so commonly believed and used among contemporary Christians that very few people will notice the problem. Nonetheless, the problem is huge!

Is Christian faith personal? Of course it is. But is it merely personal? Does “personal” adequately describe Christianity? In order to answer this question we need to understand what the word personal means. The dictionary defines personal as: “concerning or affecting a particular person or his or her private life and personality,” and offers these words as synonyms: private, intimate.

The President is, no doubt, parroting the commonly used Evangelical idea of having a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ. Evangelicals place most of the weight of faithfulness on this idea of a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ in the sense that faith must impact our personal lives. In other words, faithfulness cannot be merely an outward confession, but must seriously and intimately impact our most intimate thoughts and actions. And, again, this is true. But it is not the whole truth, nor does it reflect the way that God relates to His people, according to the Bible.

How does God relate to His people according to Scripture? God relates to people covenantally. Scripture everywhere speaks of God's covenant with His people. For instance, first, there was His Old Covenant with the Jews and now we have His New Covenant through Jesus Christ. It is the central theme of the Bible.

And here's the rub with the President's statement: Is a covenantal relationship contained within a personal relationship? No, because the word personal is usually used to mean private. But is a personal relationship contained within a covenantal relationship? Yes, because a covenant involves a personal oath, but God's covenant is necessarily social. And it is the necessarily social and public aspects of Christianity that are obfuscated by the use of the idea of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

It would be much more honest and more complete testimony to say, “I have a covenantal relationship with Jesus Christ,” than “I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” Why? Because Christianity is not merely a private matter, but is necessarily social and public. In this regard it is like marriage. Marriage is private and intimate, but it is also social and public. Why? Because marriage is also a covenantal relationship. If it is not, then neither the state nor the church have any business involving themselves in marriage.

As I have argued elsewhere, “The wedding vows are more than promises between two individual people. They involve whole communities as the couple lives out their lives together as husband and wife. Marriages literally unite families, and families of families. Consequently, faithfulness to the marriage promise will effect the promise-keeping abilities of entire communities. Marriage is a public promise every bit as much as it is a personal affair. Marriage is personal, but not private. This is attested to by the public nature of the wedding ceremony” (www.pilgrim-platform.org/marriage.htm).

One of the best things that could happen to Christian witnessing and evangelism is for Christians to abandon the “personal relationship” view of faithfulness and take up the biblical understanding of “covenantal relationship.”

Phil

posted by PARoss @ 11:32 AM