Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.(Ephesians 4:32)
Did you know that the New Testament alone contains more than 100 “one another” verses and that 59 of those are direct commands?
They give us a clue that our Christian faith is about relationships – not only a personal relationship with Christ, but relationships with fellow believers. That’s right. Our faith-walk is a group exercise.
That was immediately evident in the first days of the fledgling Church, right after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit:
And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.
Acts 4:44-47.
Many years later, the Apostle Paul likened the Church to a body made up of interdependent parts – each with a distinct ability, role, and strength and weaknesses (see 1 Corinthians 12) but all working in conjunction with one another.
That is somewhat counterintuitive to the American culture which prizes individual freedoms, rights, and privacy. I remember moving into neighborhoods and trying to introduce ourselves to our new neighbors with a plate of cookies, only to find that the folks next door wanted nothing to do with us. That’s not the case everywhere, but more often than not, people don’t want to do life together. More and more, people want to stay in the privacy of their homes, turn on their various forms of entertainment, and be left alone. Our Western culture is also one where everything needs to be in writing for it to be accepted. We need contracts, agreements, terms and conditions, and legal wrangling to regulate our society and protect our individual rights.
That’s not necessarily wrong but not all cultures operate that way. In fact, most do not. In most of Africa, for instance, where culture tends to be tribal, oral communication is king even though electronic means like WhatsApp are vying for the throne. Not that contracts, agreements, and documents don’t exist (don’t get me started on the bureaucracy here!). Despite the existence of written agreements, oral communication, running through the fabric of relationships, can be just as binding.
That applies to work and ministry relationships also. As Westerners, we tend to say: Let’s do something together. A commonly shared activity or interest is what defines the relationship. In communal cultures like many African ones, they would say: Let’s be something together before we do something. That also involves giving each other the gift of time. A Kenyan is rarely punctual in the way we understand it, but when they are with you, they give you their complete attention and are rarely in a hurry. They are “in the moment” with you and not thinking about the next thing on their to-do list.
I find that a challenging but important aspect of my spiritual growth. Not only am I one of those “let’s do something together” Westerners, but my temperament veers toward being utilitarian in my relationships. True Identity Ministries has developed its own temperament inventory called TruePersonality, and it tells me that I am “Powerful,” akin to type A, choleric, task-oriented, and tending toward workaholism. My natural tendency is to not want a relationship with someone unless it’s useful to me.
Most of the time that doesn’t work here in Kenya. We have to have a relationship first – a meal, a kinship, a friendship. That often means waiting for someone to get back to you about a question or a task they were going to perform, being patient with people dropping the ball or getting side-tracked, and not judging or criticizing anyone for not doing what you thought they were supposed to do. A relationship may or may or may not result in collaboration, but when it is destroyed due to a lack of grace or patience, doing something together is not going to happen.
The same goes for the Church. In the Body of Christ, relationships are the lifeblood of ministry. God has designed for us to be together, share our resources, do life together, depend on each other, and work together by complementing one another’s gifts to help bring His Church to spiritual maturity.
Relationships are formed and maintained by being kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving to one another. Often that means lowering expectations, not rushing to judgment about why someone is behaving a certain way or saying certain things, and being quick to forgive when we feel slighted or wronged.
That behavior reflects God’s quickness to forgive us. Let’s be real – most of us deserve God’s forgiveness less than a fellow believer deserves ours!
Perhaps it also helps to remember that God Himself is a relationship: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Along with many other things, the qualities of love, tenderheartedness, and kindness run through their interaction. Out of the abundance of love that flows between the Persons of the Trinity, God created human relationships to reflect those qualities. Destroyed by sin that makes us self-centered, our tender Father seeks to restore them in His children reborn by His Spirit. The Spirit Himself restores the godly qualities of kindness, tenderheartedness, forgiveness, and unselfish love in us.
There is no question that relationships are often hard. Some people are hard to love, some don’t reciprocate kindness and tenderness, and we find that the woundedness within us makes it hard to fulfill the “one another” commands.
But there is good news. Where our flesh and natural tendencies fail, the Holy Spirit in us can love the unlovable, show patience, kindness, and tenderness, and give us forgiving hearts. I have often prayed: “Lord, my natural tendency is to walk away from this relationship because it’s not useful or this person is letting me down. But I can love them with Your love poured out in my heart, and that is what I choose to draw from because Your love in me is alive through my Spirit, and my natural tendencies have been united with Him in His death.”
So, I appeal to you as one placed in a culture and ministry that is counterintuitive to my natural tendencies because our Lord wants me to grow in love: Reconsider relationship. Make it your prayer to not just let “doing things together’ define your relationship. Rediscover the joy of companionship. Be a listener and enrich yourself with the stories and insights of others. Where you find it hard, rely on the Spirit in you to do it through you. Perhaps it will result in doing things for God’s kingdom together, perhaps not. Simply even being together and treating each other with kindness and tenderness is a greater ministry than completing tasks: you reflect the Father’s love to others, many of whom are unfamiliar with such traits. Like the first believers who openly had everything in common incurred favor and marvel, our greatest witness to the world is by demonstrating the art of relationship through Christian love.