“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:”

Philippians 2:5 (NIV)

For the most part, human beings develop a personal model for their relationships during their most formative years. We receive input from our parents, relatives, teachers, and friends as to who is appropriate for us to welcome into our circle. A great number of

A great number of those guidelines are based on appearance. We are told not only who we can associate with, but also whom we cannot associate with. The suggestions that we receive can, and often are, superficial - skin color, wealth, clothing, neighborhood, religion, culture, and politics. Sometimes the associations are encouraged or discouraged based not on the individual, but on the individual’s parents - “You can’t be friends with Jimmy because his parents aren’t like us.”

These ideas, prejudices, and guidelines often follow us into adulthood, and affect our relationships at work and in our daily lives. We don’t think of ourselves as being prejudiced or selective in our relationships because what we are experiencing in the norm for us. Too often we do not feel the need to change these values because we are comfortable with them. We can even be surprised when we catch ourselves thinking thoughts that are dissociative. When this occurs, we can give ourselves permission to keep these boundaries even thought we know that they are not representative of our faith or our humanity.

In our faith, there is often a focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the salvation that God brought to us through His son. We tend to forget that Jesus also came to teach us how to live, how to separate ourselves from the bias, prejudices, and soulcial (maybe that should be a word) distancing that we have been taught.

Jesus came to change the model for relationships because the model that was being used was not reflective of the love and grace of our Heavenly Father. The model being taught by religious leaders was one based on human standards, and was pretty much devoid of mercy and grace. The first person to whom Jesus revealed his true nature was a despised Samaritan, the Woman at the Well. That should tell us something as we model our lives to better reflect the image of Christ.

When Paul tells us in Philippians that we should have the mindset of Christ when it comes to building and maintaining relationships, he is expecting us to model Christ and the way he lived, the way he loved everyone he encountered. When we accept the free gift of salvation, we should be striving to become more like Jesus every day, using Christ as our model for our behavior and our relationships.

We cannot reap the benefits of our relationship with Jesus without giving the entirety of ourselves to him and modeling our lives through his example.