Painful Relationships

A Few Thoughts on Relationships and Pain

There are two major perspectives from which we need to view relationship.

1) The spiritual perspective—relationship with God. Some call this vertical relationship.

2) Earthly relationship—relationship with other people. Some call this horizontal relationship.

Earthly relationships do two primary things.

1) Relationships, primarily marriage but also family relationships, model the kind of union Father (God) wants to have with us.

2) Relationships teach us and improve us.

Father created us for relationship. From the beginning it has been His desire that we get to know Him personally and enjoy a relationship so intimate that we could be said to be one spirit with Him. (See 1 Corinthians 6:17)

Father set up marriage as a picture of the deep relationship He wants to have with us. There is no deeper or more powerful relationship on earth than marriage (though the relationship of a mother and child is very close).

The Bible teaches that married people become one flesh. That does not mean that they become one person, but they become a team that together is greater than both could be separately. Believe it or not, this is true of our relationship with Father too. We are certainly made better by being in Christ and having the Holy Spirit in us, but Father is also glorified, and His love is perfected in, and because of, His relationship with us. (See 1 John 4:5)

Our human, earthly relationships also demonstrate the relationship we have with Father, but since we live in a fallen world, they are imperfect. Even in this imperfection, however, Father is at work for good.

Through our relationships with others—especially those who can tell us the truth about ourselves—we learn a number of very important things.

Perhaps most painfully, we learn about our weaknesses.

More rewarding and exciting, we learn about our strengths.

We also learn how to love others.

Loving people when they are acting loveable is easier than loving them when they are acting in ways that are unloving and perhaps even hurtful. Even so, learning to love people when they are acting poorly helps us better understand the immense and unconditional love Father has for us.

When we better understand Father’s love for us, we become more compassionate, just like He is. We begin to see the good in people instead of only the bad. We begin to see that they are deserving of love not because of what they do, but because they were created by Father and He loves them—even in their sin.

He loves you and me in this way. When we realize that He loves us when we are acting in unloving and hurtful ways, we begin to glimpse just how wonderful He is.

The Bible tells us that God loved the world very much. He demonstrated that great love by sending Jesus. (See John 3:16-17) It also says that His love, expressed in Jesus, was given to us while we were His enemies and deserving only of His wrath and punishment.

Fortunately, Father is merciful and did not give us what we deserved. Instead, He was gracious and gave us what we did not deserve. We deserved what we had earned—death. He gave us blessing—eternal life.

We often find great pain in relationships. Father does too. He is heartbroken over those who reject His gift of righteousness. He is grieved over the bondage into which the enemy (Satan) has put people. Jesus (God) bore all the same hurts that we face when He came to earth. Hebrews 4:15 & 5:8 talk about that.

Jesus learned through suffering. Jesus is God, so He already knew everything, but He learned by experiencing. He knows exactly what it feels like when we go through pain in our relationships. He did that for you, and He did that for me.

In this way we can see the value of relationships even though pain will come.

Earlier I said that we grow and learn from relationships. That’s true. The others in relationship with us are growing and learning too. So, the blessing goes both ways.

My wife and I have been married for 45 years. We have had some very difficult times in our relationship, but I can tell you that I am a much better man because of her. Some of the things I found most difficult to accept have become the most beneficial to me. I cannot imagine life without her, nor she without me. We are our individual selves, yet we are mysteriously one.

1 John 4:7-19 is a very good passage about love.

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.” (NIV)

Being alone and apart sometimes seems very attractive, but we are just not built for that. We need relationships because that’s how Father made us.