Transcript & Slides: Relational Fitness

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Relational Fitness
By David Feddes

How do we flourish in our relationships? When we think about relational fitness, there are many different things that could be considered, but I'm going to focus especially on eight.

Relational fitness

• Real: honest, sincere, communicative
• Caring: love, empathy, interest
• Stable: steady, faithful, reliable
• Respectful: honor and serve others
  
• Spiritual: sharing inner Christ-life
• Helpful: connect, affirm, expose
• Militant: battling evil together
• Gracious: apologize, forgive, restore

First of all, a relationship that is fit or flourishing is real. There is honest, sincere, communicative interaction between the people involved.

Secondly, you're relationally fit when you care—when you love, when you have empathy or a sense of being in somebody else's shoes and how they feel, and an interest in their well-being.

Also, a fit relationship is a stable one, where you're steady, you're faithful, you're reliable—you can be counted on.

A relationship is healthy when it's respectful, when you honor and serve others rather than just being in it for yourself.

Relationships that are fit are spiritual, where you're sharing the inner Christ life that you have as a child of God.

You're helpful. You have an approach to transformation in which you connect with others—where you affirm what's valuable and good in them, where you help to expose and to change some of the things that might need changing. As the Bible says, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another" (Proverbs 27:17).

You help each other to become better, and that's part of a fit relationship.

Also, when we're relationally fit, we stand up for each other. We're militant. We're battling evil together, and we're side by side in doing that.

And a final thing that I want to emphasize is that every relationship needs grace. We need to be gracious in relationships, where we apologize when we're wrong, when we forgive when we've been wronged, when we seek to restore relationships by the grace and forgiveness and mercy of God.

So let's look at each of these in more detail.

Real: Honest, sincere, communicative

A fit relationship is real. You're honest with each other. You're transparent. You're not pretending. You're sincere. You're communicating together. The Bible talks about speaking the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).

A good relationship is one where you care about each other and where you're truthful with each other. "Put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor" (Ephesians 4:25).

Romans 12:9 says, "Love must be sincere" (Romans 12:9). The Greek word there is anhypocritēs, which is almost literally translated "not hypocritical"—not fake, not pretending. You're loving in a way that's genuine, not hypocritical. You're not putting on a false front in your love. You're not pretending to be somebody you're not. And you're not conveying feelings that you don't really have. You're not pretending to like somebody when you don't, and you're not hiding things, but you're being sincere or non-hypocritical.

"Now that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart" (1 Peter 1:22). Many relationships, I'm afraid, are based on pretense. You wear a mask. You put on the kind of mask you think somebody else wants to see from you, and you hide the things you think that they would disapprove of or that they might not like.

A relationship isn't very deep if it's based on masks. If you're wearing a mask, and the other person's wearing a mask, and you both pretend to like each other's mask, how much do you really like each other? You don't even know each other. All you know is the masks. And when you send the mask that you're pretending to like them when you don't, then how do you know they really love you or you love them? You've never let them see the real you—the real you with its faults or with its yearnings that are too sensitive for them to know.

We wear masks, and behind those masks are the things we're ashamed of. And some of the things we're ashamed of—we're ashamed of because they're bad or rotten. But some of the things we're ashamed of maybe are yearnings for God, and we're ashamed of those because we think somebody else might not approve.

Now when we're dealing with people, we all have a certain way of relating to them. And there may be a certain amount of mask where you don't let everything about yourself be exposed in the first conversation. But in really deep relationships, there's no hypocrisy. And the less mask there is, the more you know you're loved.

When people know your faults, sometimes that's one of the most beautiful things about a good marriage. When your spouse really knows you—really knows the things that aren't that likable about you—and they love you anyway, then you say, "Wow. I'm loved. The real me is loved because this person knows the real me with all my faults and she loves me anyway."

So there is something wonderful about real communication, real sincerity, because they know you and they love you the way you are. And by the same token, when you're not faking your love—when you're real in the way you express affection toward a friend or toward a spouse or towards somebody you're getting acquainted with and have a real liking for them—then they're blessed by that.

Fakery and flattery are not helpful in relationships. We need our relationships to be real.

And a real relationship is a communicative one. In order to know the real person, you need to listen to them. You need to be "quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry" (James 1:19). If you get angry right away, that shuts off their communication.

You're quick to listen, you're slow to speak, and you don't get mad right away. And that way you learn so much more about the other person. And when you speak, you're vulnerable, you're transparent, and you're also wanting to say things that are helpful to them.

"Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen" (Ephesians 4:29). The way you speak has a tremendous impact on a relationship. And so if you speak words of concern, of love, of kindness, of sharing something of yourself, it blesses the relationship. If you insult and degrade, then it wrecks relationships.

And as we're listening and speaking, let's not forget the doing part. We don't listen and speak only in order to understand each other better. But when you understand somebody's need, then do something about it if you can. Maybe listening is part of the doing, because some people benefit just from being heard. But sometimes there really is something you can do. So in that case, "let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth" (1 John 3:18), and let our communication lead to the kind of action that will help somebody else.

And that's how you have a relationship that's real. You're understanding each other better and better, and you're helping each other as needed.

Caring: Love, interest, empathy

A fit relationship is one where you're caring. You're relationally fit when you care about other people. "Love your neighbor as yourself" is the second greatest commandment in God's Word (Mark 12:31). Love God above all, and then love your neighbor as yourself. And those words "as yourself" mean that you have an interest in them. You care about them—not just about yourself, but you care about their needs the way you'd care about your own. You share some of their feelings. You have empathy with them. You feel with them. That's what happens when you love your neighbor as yourself.

"Do to others as you would have them do to you," the great Golden Rule given by Jesus (Luke 6:31). You think about: what if I were in their shoes? What would I want done? Well, then do that for them. You're thinking about their interests. "In humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others" (Philippians 2:3–4).

There's no relationship at all if all you're looking to is your own interests. The only thing you're doing then is trying to suck them into your orbit of relationship so you can get what you want from them. That's not a relationship. That's just using somebody. When you really care, then you use things to help people rather than using people to help yourself.

Caring involves identifying with them, with their well-being, and wanting to do what blesses them.

Stable: Steady, faithful, reliable

A healthy and fit relationship is stable. And when you're relationally fit, you're somebody who's steady. You're faithful. You keep your promises. You're reliable. People can count on you. The Bible says that people who are grounded in God and in his truth are "no longer infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching" (Ephesians 4:14). There's being doctrinally unstable and blown all over the place, or being steady—faithful. There is such a thing as being steady in your friendships. "Many a man claims to have unfailing love, but a faithful man who can find?" (Proverbs 20:6).

One of the words that describes God more often than almost any other word in the Bible is: he's faithful. He's faithful. He's the Rock. He's unchanging. You can count on him. When he makes a promise, you can bring it to the bank. And if you're a person who is in tune with God and you're relationally fit in the way that God is, then you're faithful in your friendships, in your marriage. "Do not break faith with the wife of your youth" (Malachi 2:15).

I had an uncle—my Uncle John—who was a steady, stable person. Uncle John started working at a hardware store when he was 16 years old. He worked at that hardware store for the next 75 years until the day he died. He literally worked there in the morning at age 91 and went home and died while planting flowers in the afternoon. So he worked at the same place for 75 years. He was married to the same woman for 66 years. He was married to her until the day he died.

My Uncle John grew up in a church and he was part of that church. Then when that church was getting too full and there was a need in another part of town, he and some other young families got together with the blessing of his previous church, and they started a new church. He served in that church for over 50 years and was a Sunday school teacher there for over 50 years. His funeral was held in that church. He belonged to two churches his whole life—the one that he was born into and then the one that he and some others from that church had helped start. He was a stable person.

Now, not everybody is quite that stable, where they have the same job for 75 years, the same marriage for 66 years, and only two churches in their entire life. But think about it nowadays. Instead of being married to only one person, people have serial relationships. Many young people don't even bother getting married till they're 30 because they have a whole variety of relationships, and they don't want to commit to any one of them. So they live together. They don't make promises. They just live together.

When it comes to church life, people don't commit to a church. They don't join a church. They don't become members of a church. They don't belong to a church. They attend a church—until they want to attend a different one. So you get a bunch of attenders, but not members, not people who are committed, not people who are in it for the long haul with each other.

When it comes to jobs, people flit from this to that. And partly it's a function of the economy and the job—the employers maybe not being as faithful—but part of it is we're pretty mobile and we just want to keep trying different stuff. Now that doesn't mean you have to stay in the same job the rest of your life—although it's not bad. I don't think anybody else is going to match my uncle's record of 75 years working in the same place. But he loved working there because he loved helping people with needs to be fixed. And my uncle loved to talk to people about Jesus. Working in a hardware store was a great place to do that because he met all kinds of people.

Just the stability of being there, of being steady, of being there for his wife, of being there for his church. You get long deep roots when you're a steady person—when you're faithful, when you're reliable. People know they can count on you and your relationships. You have stronger and deeper relationships with that. So become like the Lord. Be a steady, faithful, reliable person.

I know that in our age and in our culture, sometimes that's not valued as much. We want personal autonomy to do whatever we want. But to be a stable person, and to be a less lonely person, have some long-term relationships where people really count on you and where you're committed.

Respectful: Honor and serve others

Another element of healthy relationships—of fit relationships—is to be respectful. You're honoring others. You're respecting them and you're serving them. Scripture says, "Love does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking" (1 Corinthians 13:5).

Jesus himself put it this way: "Those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them" (Mark 10:42). They love to be the boss. They love to feel important. They love to push other people around. But it shall not be so among you. Jesus says, "Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all" (Mark 10:43–44).

If you're fit—if you're healthy in your relationships—you respect people as people. If you're in a position of authority and importance, you're there in order to serve others, not use them or push them around or exploit them. And so you shouldn't just demand that they honor you because of your important position, but you must honor them and serve them.

Now that might sound a little strange to you, because sometimes we understand respect only in one way. But respect can mean different things. Respect sometimes just means treating somebody like a person. And then sometimes it means treating someone like an authority.

Now there are some people who want to be treated as an authority. You're a father or a mother and you want your kids to respect you as an authority—and that's okay. You're somebody in a position of government, and you need to be able to exercise your authority as a judge or as a governor, and so people need to respect that position and that authority that you have—and that's okay. You might be a teacher or a coach, and people need to respect that position that you hold—and that's okay.

But if you hold a position of authority, why do you hold it? And how do you treat the people under you? Do you treat them as people under you, beneath you, below you—who are almost subhuman? Well, if you insist on being treated like an authority—"I want to be respected as an authority"—but you don't treat someone like a person and really treat them as a valued person whose well-being you're seeking, then you're abusing that person and you're abusing your authority.

I say more about abuse in a different talk, but here I just want to say it's so important in a healthy relationship to show respect.

When I'm a father or I'm a coach or I'm a pastor, I have a position with some authority, but it exists to serve others, and I need to respect them as persons.

I'll just give one example of a not very pleasant way I learned that. I coach basketball, and a couple of my teenage boys are on the team that I coach. One day we were going through some drills and my son threw a bad pass behind somebody else that was hard to catch. I said, "Hey, pass it right, you know—pass it in front of him. Don't throw it behind him." And he said to me, "Why are you yelling at me? I don't like being yelled at." I said, "I'm your coach, you got to listen to me. You can't ignore me just 'cause I happen to be your dad too."

But I got to thinking about that later on, and I thought, you know, he's right. Because he said to me, "Well, you don't yell at the other boys like that." And sometimes when you're around somebody too much or you have a position of authority, you stop treating them almost like a person. Or you get a little too comfortable with rebuking pretty harshly.

So I got to thinking about that, and I owed him an apology, because I wasn't treating him like the other boys. I didn’t get on other boys like that. It's not a sin to throw a pass behind somebody. It's going to happen. Sometimes you're going to throw a bad pass. Sometimes you're going to miss a shot. And you don't need to be scolded every time that happens.

So when you're treating somebody like they're almost just a thing, rather than respecting their value as a person—hey, if you're a parent, your children are persons. Would you deal with a colleague at work the way you just dealt with your child? Some of us treat our colleagues at work better than the way that we treat our own kids. Some of us who are in positions of authority at work don't treat other people very well. But in all of these, respecting people as a person is a key to having your authority as a person also respected.

At any rate, respect for people—their value, honoring them as people made in God's image—is vital for healthy relationships.

And as you do that, that doesn't mean you have no self-respect. A nice balance comes in Paul's advice to Timothy. Timothy is a young pastor, and some people might not take him very seriously. The Apostle Paul says, "Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity" (1 Timothy 4:12). And he talks even about rebuking some people with all authority. So don't let them look down on you. Respect yourself. Respect the calling you have from God.

But then the apostle also gives this piece of advice: "Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity" (1 Timothy 5:1–2). That’s excellent advice for healthy relating. You relate to different people at different stations in life in slightly different ways with wisdom. But you notice the thing that’s in common with all of these: you’re treating them all as family. You’re treating them all as people who are cherished and close to you.

So if there’s an older guy in your congregation, you don’t go yell at him and treat him as though you can just rebuke him harshly. You’ve got to relate to him more like he’d be your dad—he’s older than you. Show some extra respect for him. Treat the younger men as brothers. Be careful how you treat the younger women. This is a danger for people in ministry. They view women as objects. In our pornographic age, they look at women as things that exist for them to look at or to enjoy for their own bodily pleasures. But that's not how you look at your sister. So treat younger women as sisters and have respect for them, and keep some healthy boundaries with them—with absolute purity.

And relate to guys your own age as brothers. You're guys along with them. Don't think you're some big hotshot. So you have your authority, you have respect for yourself, you have respect for others. And that's part of healthy relating—just a good sense of who they are, who you are, who you're called to be, and treating each other as family.

So be real, be caring, be stable, be respectful.

Spiritual: Sharing inner Christ-life

The next thing I want to highlight—and here we're getting to the real core of what's most important—is: be spiritual. When you're relating to others in a really healthy and fit way, you're sharing the inner Christ-life that you have. It's spiritual.

"I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees" (Ezekiel 36:27). That's God's promise to his people—that he'll put his Spirit in us.

And the Apostle Paul says, "He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" (2 Corinthians 3:6). If you're only laying down the law, if you're only giving commands, if you're only dealing with orders and written things in relationships, that kills relationships. It is the Spirit within who gives life. And so new covenant relating is relating out of the Holy Spirit of God who lives in you—Christ in you, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).

And this all goes back to the divine fellowship—to who God is. God is Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit relate in perfect love and in the union, the oneness of the Trinity.

And redeemed people are "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). Redeemed people partake of and fellowship with and express the Trinity's love and unity.

Jesus says that people will know we’re his disciples by the way we love one another (John 13:35), and we make God known by being one (John 17:23).

God dwells within each believer individually. Each one is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). But then together, God's people as a whole are a temple of God, indwelt by God (Ephesians 2:21–22).

So the basis, the foundation, for spiritual relating is the fact that God indwells each of us who belong to him. Christ lives in us. The same Lord Jesus Christ lives and reigns in all believers by the very same Holy Spirit. So there's one Christ, one Spirit.

But at the same time, Jesus the Messiah is so richly glorious that he can't be fully expressed in any one of us. He expresses himself in many different ways. He displays himself in believers with different personalities, different domains, different areas of calling in their life, different ways that they serve. And so they're showing different facets, different elements of the one Jesus and his glory and his reign.

So when Christ’s people have all these different personalities, different areas that they're serving—one person really has a heart for ministering to the poor, another has a heart for spreading the Word of God, another is called into the medical field, another one is called to do this—we have different domains. And we're wired differently. We don't all have to try to pretend to be exactly like each other. But it's still the one Christ. And he's showing different things about himself in these different personalities, these different gifts, these different domains. And you're seeing more and more of the one Christ.

And that's why in the Bible there's a prayer "that you may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ" (Ephesians 3:18). You can't know all of God's love just on your own. You can't know all of who Christ is just on your own, because so much of Christ is shown in different ways in different persons.

Obviously, we look to Jesus himself and to the Word to know the ultimate true Christ as he became incarnate among us. But then in his body, the Church, he's showing many, many wonderful things about himself—Christ in us, displaying himself.

And so, fit relationships—healthy relationships—involve spiritual connecting among people indwelt by Christ. As you connect with other believers, you display the unique glory of Christ that's in you, and you delight in the unique glories of Christ displayed in others. Christians connect in order to share what Christ is doing within us, to battle together against hindrances to Christ within, and to strengthen each other. And as Christ in you connects with Christ in me, together we grow up in Christ.

One of my favorite books on this whole theme is just called Connecting by Dr. Larry Crabb. Connecting—and spiritual connecting—is an amazing and wonderful thing. And as we have this spiritual connecting, then it very much shapes how we help each other, how we're transformed.

The way we connect involves affirming and exposing. And I'll explain what I mean by that. There are three approaches to helping. Dr. Crabb’s book on Connecting talks about these.

One is what you might call a moralistic approach, where you command or you order what's right. Sometimes there's an approach to Christian counseling—it's labeled nouthetic—that can sometimes verge a little bit on this, where the goal is to find out where somebody has been disobedient, then straighten that out and give them the biblical order for how to do what's right. Then they will be transformed, and that will help them.

Now obviously, there are times when we need to be told what's right, and we need to have identified where we've been disobedient and need to be corrected. But if that's our approach to helping and transforming, it's probably not going to get very far. Because as we've already seen, "the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" (2 Corinthians 3:6). Giving commands is not the new covenant way of transforming people.

Another approach to transformation or to helping is what you might label a therapeutic approach—an approach taken in the counseling profession as it's practiced by psychologists and by many others. Their aim is to find out what went wrong or something in your history and then to heal what's sick. The goal then is to listen and maybe dig around a little bit until you find out what a person's wounds are or what their mental illness might be, and then to find ways that that can touch that and heal that.

And there's a place for that too—for listening carefully, for knowing what somebody's history is, for dealing with the sicknesses that are within. So it's not that the moralistic approach has no value or that the therapeutic approach has no value. But the spiritual approach says the real key to major transformation is to identify and nourish the new life that's in somebody else—to help that new life grow and develop and flourish by the power of the Holy Spirit who lives in them. And as that's happening, maybe some things that are sick will be healed as a byproduct. Maybe some things that are wrong will be corrected almost without giving any orders, because they'll get more in tune with the Spirit and with the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16).

So, you can give orders of what's right, or you can try to heal what's sick. And sometimes an element of that is okay. But the core of really healthy spiritual transformation is to nourish the new life in somebody else.

Helpful relating: Connect, affirm, expose

In healthy relating, you connect. You affirm. You expose.

The apostle puts it this way: "You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness" (Ephesians 4:22–24). So you see what's going on: there's a new self. And that new self is something you keep putting on. It's been created. It's put in you. And now you keep living more and more in tune with that new self and counting yourself alive to God and dead to sin (Romans 6:11).

The Spirit, of course, is the key person doing that transformation. The Spirit is helping us. How does he do that?

Well, first of all, he connects. The Spirit shows me Jesus. I see that Jesus is delightful. I see the wonders of Jesus—of his love, of what he did on the cross to save me, of his power and his resurrection and his triumph. And so I see that he's delightful. And I see that he delights in me—that he loves me, that he cares about me.

And really, that's what faith is. The Spirit shows me Jesus. I embrace him. And I know that he embraces me. I accept his embrace.

And then, when the Spirit has shown me Jesus, he begins to reveal and affirm the goodness of what he's doing in me—the glory of my new heart, of my new identity, my destiny in Christ.

The Bible says, "You are the light of the world" (Matthew 5:14)—not just Jesus, but you, because Jesus lives in you. "You are a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and you will reign on the earth" (Revelation 5:10). "You are the salt of the earth" (Matthew 5:13).

It says all these amazing things. Jesus says that the one who produces good fruit is "the one with a noble and good heart" (Luke 8:15). And so part of the way the Spirit helps me is to realize what's noble and good in my new heart, and builds up that new life in me.

And the Spirit also has a work of convicting. Sometimes he does some of that convicting before ever bringing us to Jesus—showing us our darkness and our sin and our pain—so that we'll be driven to the Lord.

But sometimes also the Spirit shows us many things after we've come to the Lord—after we've received the new life, after our sins have been forgiven. He'll keep exposing things that he wants to change. He'll show you some areas of darkness, of sin, or of woundedness and pain that you didn't know, or maybe that you knew but hadn't dealt with when you were converted. But he keeps exposing those areas so that you can be healed, so that you can enjoy forgiving love and healing mercies.

So you're connecting with Jesus. He's affirming what's good and glorious in your new heart, and he's exposing the areas that still need to be cleaned up and forgiven and transformed and healed.

In helpful relating, the Spirit is doing that through one another. Christ in me connects with Christ in you. And I show that I delight in you. And as I delight in you, you get a taste of the delight that Jesus has in you. And as you delight in me, I'm experiencing something of Jesus' delight.

That's why it's so important for parents not to just tell their kids, "I love you," or to tell them what to do or give them a correct upbringing, but to just know: I am so happy to have you as my child. The Father in heaven said of Jesus, "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased" (Mark 1:11). Let other people in your life know how well pleased you are to know them—that you're just glad they're in your life. And as you're doing that, then Christ in me is connecting with them and giving them the sense of God's delight in them.

Then find and praise the good and glorious things in each other's new heart and passions. Too often we can focus on the things that bother us or the things that aren't convenient for me in another person's life. But we need to see what God’s doing in them—what's good and glorious in that other person's heart, in the passions that they have, the desires that they have.

And then we also need to realize that everybody we meet, as well as we ourselves, still have sin. We still have pain and hurt. And we need to meet each other's sin and pain with honesty—not pretending that it's no big deal or not pretending that it doesn't matter—but with honesty and with grace, forgiveness, acceptance, with love and affection, and with high hopes.

Even if there is sin, that sin isn’t going to have the last word. Even if there is a wound, that wound is not going to have the last word. It can be healed. And so we meet each other’s sin and pain with high hopes as well as with honesty and grace and love.

And if you’re in relationships like that—where people are looking for the best in you and building on it, where they're taking pleasure in you and showing you something of God’s own pleasure in you, and when they're honest with you about the hurts or the wounds that you have and the sins that you still have—but their goal for that is to show you grace and love and help you get beyond it, well, that's truly transformational relating.

Many people who won’t be helped by being ordered to change, who maybe won’t be helped enough by simply seeing a therapist who can identify a few things, could truly be transformed with connection—with helpful, transforming relationships.

Larry Crabb says that a careful exploration of the redeemed heart is like mining for gold in a dirty cave. Anytime you’re in a relationship with somebody else, there’s going to be some dirt. And it’s not always going to be pretty. But there’s gold there too. And in that relationship, you’re always looking for the gold. You’re always—and I don’t mean trying to get money from them—I mean looking for what’s precious and valuable and God-given in them, and affirming it and building it.

Because sometimes they don’t even hardly know the precious things God’s put in them, and you need to recognize it and affirm it so that they can embrace and rejoice in that too.

And you’re doing it in a dirty cave. There’s going to be the dirt. But as you get through some of the dirt and deal with that, don’t forget that the gold is coming. And in your own life, realize that you’ve got plenty of dirt too. And as you're dealing with others, try to give them something of what’s of value in you to bless their life.

In helpful relating, then, we're going to realize that it's not going to be pure gold all the time. But we're mining for gold, and we're trying to bless and help and transform each other. And we do it by the Spirit, as I said—not simply by giving orders, because that’s the old way, the way of the letter. “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). “The flesh counts for nothing,” says Jesus (John 6:63). We can’t transform ourselves just by our own effort.

But when the Spirit gives life, and when the life that’s in me is connecting with the life that’s in you and empowering that life that’s in you, then things happen.

Sometimes we forget that, and then we need to hear the apostle’s question: “After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law or because you believe what you heard?” (Galatians 3:3,5).

You believe. You beheld Christ. You believe that Jesus died for you, that he rose again, that his Spirit comes and lives in you. You believe that, and that transforms you. Now don’t go back. Live by the Spirit. And then by the Spirit, you help others to live by the Spirit. Because the flesh—human effort—that’s not going to do it. It’s got to be the Spirit. The new life that God has put in you.

Militant: Battling evil together

And another element in relating is to be militant. You’ve got to realize there are enemies. It's not just the Holy Spirit of God working on your behalf—there's an enemy. And so we need to battle evil together.

"Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes" (Ephesians 6:10–11). We're fellow soldiers together. And so we need to be able to individually count on God's armor, but we also need to work together in arming ourselves against the evil one.

Just a couple of snippets from Paul's letters: he speaks of Epaphroditus as "my brother, coworker, and fellow soldier, whom you sent to take care of my needs" (Philippians 2:25). In another letter, he speaks of "Archippus our fellow soldier" (Philemon 1:2). Paul had this sense of being soldiers together in God’s army. And if you talk to veterans who’ve been in the military, sometimes they are very close to each other. They were part of a bigger cause, but then they were also part of a smaller platoon where they’re looking out for their brothers in arms and defending each other and trying to rescue each other. And so they're fellow soldiers in a very deep sense of relating.

In a healthy relationship, we're fighting for each other. We're fighting to help each other against all that the devil would send our way to destroy. We're battling evil together. The old Roman formations would have shields on top to prevent the arrows from raining down on you and shields in front to prevent attackers from the front or from the sides. Each individual had their own shield and weapons, but together they worked in formation. That’s what healthy relating in the Lord can do. As we fight the power of evil, we’re protecting each other and helping each other out. When Satan comes against one, then others band together and build each other up.

So if you’re relationally fit, you know that you’re in a fight. You know that others are in a fight, and you band together with your fellow believers to resist the devil and to put on the whole armor of God.

Gracious: Apologize, forgive, restore

And then the final thing is: in relational fitness, we need to be gracious. Because we’re not relationally fit. There are degrees of relational fitness, and none of us is at a degree of perfection. And so we always need the grace of God. We need God to forgive us, and we need to be quick to forgive each other.

If we've done wrong, we need to be quick to apologize. If we've been wronged and somebody else repents and asks forgiveness, we need to be quick to forgive. And then we need to seek to restore those relationships.

"Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold" (Ephesians 4:26–27). Again, we just talked about being together against the devil. When you stay angry with a brother or sister in Christ, you’re giving the devil a foothold—and it can turn into a stronghold. So get rid of the anger where you can, and with the Spirit’s help, do it.

"Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God" (Ephesians 4:30). Again, refusal to forgive—an insistence on continuing in bitterness—grieves the Holy Spirit. So two bad things happen: the devil gets a foothold, and the Spirit of God is grieved and pulls back.

"Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger… Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you" (Ephesians 4:31–32).

This is a big subject. Sometimes abusive and wicked people will use forgiveness and abuse forgivers. And we need to understand how to forgive wisely and appropriately. We'll talk about all of that in another talk. But for now, I just want to say that any relationship—if we're thinking about relational fitness—has to be gracious, because we all need forgiveness, and we're all hurt by others and need to be ready to forgive them.

So that’s the basic overview of some of the key elements in relational fitness:

Be real. Be genuine. Be non-hypocritical. Be communicative so that you understand each other better and better and can relate more and more deeply.

Be caring. You don’t relate well to somebody who doesn’t give a hoot about you. You relate well when they love you, when they feel some of the things you feel, when they're interested in your well-being. Well, turn it around. Then you need to be caring about them—loving them, feeling what they feel.

Be stable. I know it's considered boring or it's considered not a glorious thing in our culture, but to be faithful like God—to be like a rock, to be somebody that your kids can count on, to be somebody your spouse can count on, to be somebody that your fellow workers can count on because you're there, you're steady, you keep your promises.

Be respectful. You honor and serve others—even if you're in a position of authority. You still respect them as persons. And realize that the only reason God gave you that position of authority is to bless and to help those who are in your sphere of authority.

Be spiritual. You're sharing the inner Christ-life that's in you, and you're building up the inner Christ-life that's in others. And you're benefiting from their life in Christ.

Be helpful. You transform and you help by connecting with fellow believers, by affirming what God’s doing in them and what's wonderful in them—what the new life and the new heart look like in them—but also then exposing the things God still wants to change, and doing that in a kind and loving and gracious manner.

Be militant. You're facing enemies, and you don’t want to do that alone. You want to battle them together. You want the shields up. You want all of us with our shields defending each other against the attacks and the arrows of the evil one.

Be gracious. Quick to apologize when you’re wrong. Quick to forgive when you’ve been wronged. Eager to restore a relationship where you express your love and receive love from another.

May God give each of us a greater and greater degree of relational fitness—that we can benefit from others and their relationship to us, and that they can truly be blessed as we relate to them in Christ.

Relational Fitness
By David Feddes
Slide Contents

Relational fitness

• Real: honest, sincere, communicative
• Caring: love, empathy, interest
• Stable: steady, faithful, reliable
• Respectful: honor and serve others
  
• Spiritual: sharing inner Christ-life
• Helpful: connect, affirm, expose
• Militant: battling evil together
• Gracious: apologize, forgive, restore

Real: Honest, sincere, communicative

… speaking the truth in love…

put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor (Ephesians 4:15, 25)

Love must be sincere. (Romans 12:9)

Now that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. (1 Peter 1:22)

Communicative

• Listening: … quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. (James 1:19)
• Speaking: Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. (Eph 4:29)
• Doing: Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. (1 John 3:18)

Caring: Love, interest, empathy

Love your neighbor as yourself. (Mt 22:39)

Do to others as you would have them do to you. (Luke 6:31)

In humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but to the interests of others. (Philippians 2:4)

Stable: Steady, faithful, reliable

No longer tossed by waves and carried about by every wind. (Ephesians 4:14)

Many a man claims to have unfailing love, but a faithful man who can find? (Proverbs 20:6)

Do not break faith with the wife of your youth. (Malachi 2:15)

Respectful: Honor and serve others

Love does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. (1 Corinthians 13:5)

Those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them… But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. (Mark 10:42-44)

Respect can mean different things:
1. Treating someone like a person.
2. Treating someone like an authority.
If you insist on being treated like an authority but don’t treat someone like a person, you are abusing that person and abusing your authority.

Respect self and others

Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity… Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity. (1 Tim 4:12; 5:1)

Spiritual: Sharing inner Christ-life

I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees. (Ezekiel 36:27)

God has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (2 Cor 3:6)

Christ in you, the hope of glory (Col 1:27)

Divine fellowship

• Father, Son, and Spirit relate in perfect love and union of the Trinity.
• Redeemed people partake of and express Trinity’s love and unity.
• God dwells within each believer and among his people as a whole.

Christ in us

• The same Christ lives and reigns in all  believers by the same Spirit.
• Christ is so richly glorious that he cannot be fully expressed in any one of us.
• Christ displays himself in believers with different personalities and different domains, showing different facets of the one Christ’s glory and reign.

Spiritual connecting

As you connect with other believers, you display the unique glory of Christ in you, and you delight in the unique glories of Christ in others. Christians connect in order to share what Christ is doing within us, to battle together against hindrances to Christ within, and to strengthen each other. As Christ in you connects with Christ in me, we grow up in Christ.

Three approaches to helping

• Moralistic: Order what’s right.
• Therapeutic: Heal what’s sick.
• Spiritual: Nourish new life.

Helpful relating: Connect, affirm, expose

You were taught… to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteous-ness and holiness. (Ephesians 4:22-24)

Spirit’s helping

• Spirit shows me Jesus. I see that He is delightful and that he delights in me.
• Spirit reveals and affirms the goodness and glory in my new heart and destiny.
• Spirit exposes my darkness, sin, and pain so I can enjoy forgiving love and healing mercies.

Helpful relating: Connect, affirm, expose

• Christ in me connects with Christ in you. I show that I delight in you.
• Find and praise the good and glory in each other’s new heart and passions.
• Meet each other’s sin and pain with honesty, grace, love, and high hopes.

Relate by the Spirit

The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. (John 6:63)

After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? ... Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?  (Gal 3:3)

Militant: Battling evil together

Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. (Ephesians 6:10)

Epaphroditus, my brother, co-worker and fellow soldier… whom you sent to take care of my needs. (Philippians 2:25)

Archippus our fellow soldier. (Philem 1:2)

Gracious: Apologize, forgive, restore

Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold… And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God… Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger... Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Eph 4:26-32)

Relational fitness

• Real: honest, sincere, communicative
• Caring: love, empathy, interest
• Stable: steady, faithful, reliable
• Respectful: honor and serve others
  
• Spiritual: sharing inner Christ-life
• Helpful: connect, affirm, expose
• Militant: battling evil together
• Gracious: apologize, forgive, restore