Four Key Relationships: A Framework for Christlike Living (1)
At our deepest core, we humans are relational beings. We are created in the image of the Triune God—a God of perfect relationship, a God of perfect love. Both in the eternal Godhead and in all His gracious relationships with creation, our God teaches us what it means to relate well—to relate in love. Jesus demonstrates what this kind of life looks like.
Four Relationships: The Relational Diamond
To live a life that is pleasing to God, there are four main relationships that must be set right and transformed from brokenness into Christlikeness. We may understand these through the mental picture of the “relational diamond.” We can picture ourselves at the center of the diamond, not because we are the most important (God is!) but because this model illustrates our four main relationships as people who are in Christ. Of course, we also have other important relationships, including our relationship with non-human creation, but addressing these four goes a long way in explaining what it means to follow Jesus and to take on His kind of life as our own.
Three of these relationships—the UP, IN, and OUT relationships—are relationships of love. One, the DOWN relationship, is a relationship of authority over evil. As we see from the life of Jesus, the order of these relationships is important, though His life also demonstrates how all four are interconnected. In respect to each relationship, we will celebrate what God has done to heal brokenness, be inspired by Jesus’ model of restored relationship, and hear His invitation to follow Him. Let’s consider each of these relationships in turn.
The UP Relationship with God: Solitude
We begin with the most fundamental and significant relationship—our upward relationship with God. Since the fall of humanity into sin, this relationship has been broken, marked by alienation, estrangement, and even hostility. But God, out of His great love, has taken the initiative to restore this relationship with His human enemies (Rom. 5:6–10). Through His perfect saving work—in its prophetic, priestly, and kingly dimensions—Jesus Christ has reconciled us to the Father, making peace through His shed blood and resurrection. By faith in Him, we are justified, accepted by God, and sanctified, freed from the bondage of sin. We may boldly approach the throne of God (Heb. 4:16) and live in union with Him by His indwelling Spirit.
Jesus Christ showed us what a flourishing UP relationship with God looks like. In one of many passages speaking of Jesus’ prayer life, we read in Luke 6:12 (ESV): “In these days he went out to the mountain to pray, and all night he continued in prayer to God.” Jesus’ intimate communion with His Father, cultivated in such times of solitude and silence, was His ongoing mode of operation in life and ministry. As He says in John 5:19 (ESV), “The Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.” Contrary to the Western ideal of self-reliance, Jesus lived a life of dependence, free from self-initiative and self-sufficiency. His relationship with His Father was the source of all His security, direction, courage, and love. Everything Jesus did and said flowed from His “beloved identity.” Jesus received perfect love from His Father and overflowed with that love to His disciples and the world. As Mike Breen says, Jesus “inhaled his Father’s presence so he could exhale his Father’s will.” He invites and enables us to do the same.
This is what Jesus’ teaching about abiding in John 15 is all about. As Henri Nouwen says, “It is in solitude that we discover being loved by God,” just as Jesus did. We can always receive God’s perfect, unconditional love (see John 15:9; 17:23, 26) and this becomes the source of sustainable fruitfulness. In utter dependence, we recognize that apart from Jesus, we can do nothing (John 15:5). Through Spirit-empowered, intimate union with God—nurtured in solitude—we can become like Jesus, loving others freely. This is the fruit of a life grounded in worship, scriptural meditation, and prayer. This is the life Jesus models and invites us into.
The IN Relationship with Fellow Believers: Community
We now turn to the IN relationship that we can enjoy with fellow believers—the inward relationship of Christian community. As with our vertical UP relationship, God’s redemptive work makes this restored horizontal relationship possible. Fallen, sinful humans are deeply divided, requiring reconciliation at every level—marriages, families, villages, cities, ethnicities, and political nations. The good news is that Christ’s saving work on the cross restores not only our relationship with God but also our relationships with one another. For all who believe, the “dividing wall of hostility” is broken down, whether socio-religious divisions (Jew/Gentile), class divisions (slave/free), gender distinctions (male/female), or any other (Eph. 2:11–22; Gal. 3:28). In Christ, we are all made one and freed to enjoy a mutual love relationship with fellow believers.
“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
In His incarnation, Jesus models this ideal loving community in His relationship with His disciples—those who believe in Him. Right after Jesus prayed all night in solitary communion with His Father (Luke 6:12), He called His disciples, forming this new community (Luke 6:13–16). Mark clarifies the purpose of this community “that they might be with him and that he might send them out” (Mark 3:14). Though not a perfect community (as Judas’ presence reminds us), it was a community shaped by Jesus’ loving presence. Rooted in His Father’s love, He loved His disciples freely and unconditionally, despite their sins and faults. He called his disciples to do the same. We are invited to love others as Jesus and the Father love us (John 13:34–35; 15:12).
To borrow Nouwen’s words, loving our brothers and sisters well means “to allow the other person not to be God.” It means telling those who love us, “I know you love me, but you don’t have to love me unconditionally, because no human being can do that.” At the same time, it means that, whenever necessary, we must “keep asking others for forgiveness because [we] give only a little love.” Yet we can hope that, through the transformative power of the Spirit, we can live in Jesus’ way of love. As the apostle John says, it is possible to truly “love one another” and thus know that “God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12). Likewise, just as “one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other” (A. W. Tozer), so also being united with Christ unites and harmonizes us with one another (see John 17:20–26).
This is the kind of community that is possible in the Body of Christ. It is not merely an ideal or a dream, but a reality forged through the concrete, Christlike love given as a gracious gift. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer says in Life Together, “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.” This community—the true church—is possible in Christ. Such a community overcomes the culture of disconnection and loneliness in our contemporary world.
As John declares, “as he is, so also are we in this world” (1 John 4:17), emphasizing our call to embody His love. Being this loving presence in the hurting world is the focus of our next relationship.
In Christ, we are invited into a rhythm of relationships modelled after His own life—a relationship upward with the Father and inward with the community of believers. These two relationships form the foundation of a life transformed by love, calling us to abide in God and live in unity with one another. Yet the life Christ calls us to is not confined within the church walls. It flows outward to a world in desperate need of His love. In the next part, we will explore how this love reaches beyond the community of faith and engages the wider world in mission.
