Growing into love

In any relationship there is a sense of progression.

At the beginning the love relationship between God and man was a little bit like a parent / child relationship. God connected with man, and was an inseparable part of his existence. God gave him the task of looking after the garden. Adam and Eve enjoyed God’s presence, God’s protection and safety. Psalm 91 describes it as ‘living under the shadow of His wing’. Living within His perfect love, living in un-marred and delicious relationship with God, touched with the breath of God, living within the parameters of God’s design for human life.

But there is also sense in which God does not cocoon man. He is there at the cool of the day, to talk with man. But he also allows man the freedom to develop and grow and work things out for himself. God’s intention was for man to mature into His love, to allow man to learn to express his love for God as he deepens in his love for God, and to grow into a place where man is ready to really partner with God and enter into that circle of Love.

Relationship is the context in which love is experienced, and so God sets relationship at the heart of human experience. At the dawn of time God already reveals what sort of relationship He intends with man through the relationship he set up between Adam and Eve. God creates Eve, “a helper suitable for him (man)”. The relationship is to an extent unequal in attributes. He creates Adam (man) first, makes him stronger, gives him unique knowledge. Similarly, he gives Eve (woman) attributes that Adam does not have. But He calls them equally, empowers them equally and defines their relationship as co-helpers on this extraordinary project. “God blessed them and said to them: ‘Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28) Not Adam with the power and his little wife giving a helping hand – but equally gifted, equally called, mutually adapting and submitting in the light of the bigger picture. (This is also what a healthy marriage is all about!)

God’s intention for his own relationship with mankind is reflected in this. The parent / child relationship is not God’s full and final plan for man. If the Father / child relationship with God is a recurring theme in Scripture, the picture of lover and beloved or bride and groom is even more so. God wants man to mature in such a way that he becomes part of God’s circle of love, part of who he is. Not to be God in his attributes and his God-ness. Yet to be partner to God, having grown into a maturity that enables this to be so. Eventually man will become his “bride”!

This is not something that happens automatically or effortlessly. Jesus later on would talk a lot about the cost of discipleship. Discipleship is all about becoming like the 'master'.  Essentially it is the growing into a maturity in terms of relationship with God, growing into the place where even as humans in all our weakness we can partner with God in his purposes. Discipleship is a process just as relationship is a process. Nor is it something we ever get to the end of. Growing into maturity is not easy and is very much dependent on  our response to God.