June 12, 2026

There was a question that I heard a few years ago that truly made me stop in my tracks. I had been a Christian most of my life but had never heard this question. There is a point, I think, in every follower of Jesus’s life where one is faced with a jarring reality. We have to confront whether our faith is based on beliefs, morals, traditions, and Bible knowledge or if it’s based on a formational intimate relationship with Jesus. The former asks questions like, Am I more obedient? Am I more knowledgeable? Am I better? The latter asks a much more probing question based upon intimacy: Am I more loving? Am I a more loving person than I was a year ago? Am I growing in love? That is the mark of a follower of Jesus. That’s the litmus test of spiritual formation.

This is why, at White Oak, we’ve spent that last couple months talking about how our life with Jesus impacts our relationships with others. Tim Keller says, Christianity itself is actually an interconnected set of radically altered relationships. A new relationship with God creates a new relationship with yourself, creates a new relationship with others. They can’t be separated. They rise and fall together, and you can’t have one without the others.

Father Thomas Keating says this: Every time there is significant growth in our spiritual development all our relationships change --- to God, to ourselves, and to other people… We become a new person… Then, we begin to view and serve other people from the experience of the divine indwelling --- from the Spirit living and at work within us. It is God in us serving God in others.

In Christ, every Christian is living a new reality. This is more than a change of personal beliefs, ethics, habits, or even identity… this is a seismic shift in how we engage with other people.

My heart for this sermon series (culminating this weekend) is that we take this to heart. Jesus is in the process of shaping a new human reality. In Exodus 20 (The 10 Commandments) God is establishing a new relationship with his people. The first table of the 10 Commandments deal with how we relate to God: You will serve only me, you will not have any other gods but me, I will be the priority of your life. The second table (commandments 5-10) deals with how we relate to one another.

Two of the largest consecutive pieces of Jesus’s teaching we have is from Matthew 5-7, commonly known as The Sermon on the Mount, and Luke 6, which is often called The Sermon on the Plain (each referring to the geographical arear from where Jesus is teaching). Most scholars believe that Jesus is taking the same basic outline of teaching and he is delivering it a few different times in different places. Jesus is determined to show his audience that he is brining God’s Kingdom to earth and establishing new Christian ethic… a new way of being with one another. He’s addressing how we relate to one another in this new human community.

The crowning driver of this new ethic is radical love and forgiveness.

As followers of Jesus, he is our highest priority and our most important relationship. When Jesus comes into your life he doesn’t ask for your religious life, or your spiritual beliefs, or your moral decisions… he asks for your whole life! That means, your marriage is shaped by his grace. Your parenting reflects his primacy in your life. Your friendships are directly impacted by your transformation in Christ, the way that you view yourself, those you date, how you view human sexuality, and how you treat those whom you don’t like or understand… all of these are shaped by Jesus’s life and teaching.

You and I are chosen and adopted sons and daughters born into the New Humanity Jesus has established…

 His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity (Eph. 2:15).

Therefore, the question that should be foremost on our minds and hearts as we live out of that new identity… as we are formed more into the image of Jesus for the sake of others… this question is this: Am I growing in love? 

Well, are you? Let’s trust Him to do that work in us today.

Being formed,

Nathan

Nathan Hinkle

Lead Pastor

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