A Christian Philosophy of Relationship aims to help Christians engage in relationships with others according to the standards and principles God has made plain in his word. First and foremost, this means finding your satisfaction in Christ alone before you even attempt to have a relationship with another person. Before you try to relate well with your husband, wife, children, parents, neighbors, friends, or co-workers, you must first learn to relate well to God. God can give you things that no one else has the power to give, like salvation, eternal peace, settled joy, full acceptance (in Christ), and so on. Thus, CPR principle #1 urges Christians to constantly go to Christ and find full satisfaction, identity, and security in him alone.
Once you are doing that regularly, you can then move to CPR #2, which helps Christians understand the place other people have in our hierarchy of relationships. They are second—far second. In fact, in an ultimate sense, you don't need them at all. If you have Christ, and he is truly your all in all, then you have everything you need. You don’t need more than your all in all! Well, if that's true, why should we have relationships with other people at all? Because, even though we don’t need them ultimately, we do need them secondarily and socially, and this is critical to God’s plan. He made human beings to be a society and to live before him as a church, a community. Heaven is a city, not a "solo-ville."
After the Holy Spirit helps you understand CPR #1 and #2, it’s time to move on to principle #3. This one takes us from the theoretical structure of a Christian's relationships with God and others and moves us into the practical. How do we actually relate to people? What are we supposed to do for them, to them, or get from them? The broad answer is given in CPR #3, which says we are to follow Christ in the pattern of "my life for yours." This is like the bumper sticker of CPR—My Life for Yours. It is the overarching command of God for us in how we relate to others: we are to lay our lives down for their good.
"My life for yours" is such a powerful, glorious principle because it is the pattern set for us by Christ himself. He came into the world ready to lay his life down for the people he loves. He was willing to die for us, and indeed, he did die for us. Thus, we must be willing to lay our lives down for others as well. This is our modus operandi as Christians. To reinforce this concept in your mind, meditate on the following verses and challenge yourself to follow your Lord in saying to all the people you’re connected with, "my life for yours."
John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
Philippians 2:5-8 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who... humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
1 John 3:16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
Ephesians 5:1-2 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us...
Mark 10:45 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Matthew 16:24-25 If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
2 Corinthians 5:14-15 For the love of Christ controls us... that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
Romans 12:1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God...
Galatians 6:2 Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
1 Peter 2:21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.