God Is My “Next of Kin”

Christians often say they have a personal relationship with God--and that is essential--but the good news is that the obverse is true: God has a personal relationship with us.

God is my next-of-kin, my nearest relative. He is my Father, my Creator and Sustainer. No one, not even my wife, relates to me as well as God does. All his dealings with me are fitted to my unique personality and my immediate need at any given time; they are relative to me. In this sense of the word, at least, God is relative. His interaction with you is unique; it is relative to you.

Everything God says is relative: all commandments, warnings, perhaps even all promises. The Ten Commandments are not universal in their import. They were given to his covenant community, Israel, as part of their very formation and identity. They were not addressed to the Apache, the Yoruba, the Finn, nor the Indonesian. They were relative to God’s purpose of establishing a people through whom salvation would come to the Apache, Yoruba, Finn, Indonesian, and even the Anglo-Saxon–indeed, to his entire fallen human creation.

On the other hand, the Sermon on the Mount was not addressed to God’s entire covenant people, the Jews. It was specifically addressed to his disciples: “Seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set his disciples came unto him: And he opened his mouth, and taught them.”

He told neither Zachaeus nor the “rich young ruler” that they must be born again; only Nicodemus heard these words from Jesus. Zack and the sorrowful young man were addressed relative to their personal situation. Even the Great Commission, with its accompanying promise, is given to the Apostles, relative to the imminent departure of their Lord.

Jesus is our relative, if we have chosen to relate positively to him; he is our brother:

For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren. . . .
. . . .
Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, ...
--Hebrews 2:11 & 17

Everything he did and said is relative. Each healing, each parable, each question/answer is relative to the particular situation and person. If there is an ethic involved in the Jesus Way, it is a situational ethic (whether it can be identified with Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics, is another matter).

The book that tells his story is relative. Each of its parts relates to a particular actual occasion in the history of God’s covenant relation to the descendants of Abraham–both the biological and the spiritual descendants. The Bible is relative, its sixty-six component books are relative, and it is about a relative God–our nearest relative.