Everyone is in a personal relationship with God. The question is, is it a relationship of hostility or of reconciliation? Today, R.C. Sproul calls us to assess our standing before our Creator.
A personal relationship to God is inescapable. Sometimes you’ll hear Christians give their testimonies of being saved or being born again, and they will explain it by saying something like this, “Well, now I have a personal relationship with Christ,” or, “Now I have a personal relationship with God.” You’ve heard that form of expression, and I think we understand what people are saying. But what is often overlooked in that discussion is, what kind of a relationship did that person have before they were born again or before they were converted to Christ? What is often overlooked is that we always have a personal relationship to God because we are persons and God is a person, and a relationship is established in creation between God and us—a relationship that is inescapable.
I can deny the existence of God. All that does is put me in an estranged relationship to God, which is still a personal relationship. It is a personal relationship of hostility, a personal relationship of denial, a personal relationship of estrangement, but it is still a personal relationship. That is inescapable. There’s nowhere that we can flee in this universe from our ultimate relationship to God. So the question is not whether there is a personal relationship, but what is the quality of that personal relationship? Is it a healthy one or an unhealthy one? A redeemed one or an estranged one?
