Real Relationship: Setting Boundaries

From the beginning, God has allowed us to choose who we are in relationships with – including Him. We see this from the presence of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” in the garden of Eden – the one tree that the humans were not to eat of (cf. Gen. 2:9, 16-17). God gave His image-bearing humans a choice: they could trust Him to define good and evil – trust that had been more than earned by the “very good”-ness of their lives with Him – or they could disobey Him, elevating their own desires above their relationship with Him. We know how that turned out: “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12). We made our choice.

So, God made a choice, too: He set a boundary, driving man out of the garden – “lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever” (Gen. 3:22-24). Before sin, this boundary wasn’t needed: there had been no prohibition against eating from the tree of life, just from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet, sinful people living forever would have been disastrous. There had to be a limit – for the world’s sake and for humanity’s sake.

It is sin that makes such separation necessary. When questioned about why Moses commanded divorce if God didn’t really want it, Jesus’ response was all about boundaries: Moses allowed it to protect from a spouse whose heart was so hardened by sin that they committed sexual immorality (cf. Matt. 19:1-9). That’s also why Paul instructed the Corinthians to break fellowship with “anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler” (1 Cor. 5:11). Without a boundary, such influences could cause great harm as they wronged their fellow Christians or led others in the church astray. Separation helps to protect us from sin’s devastating effects.

Setting such boundaries is painful for the setter and the receiver, but that pain can be redemptive. For the Corinthians, Paul hoped that by removing the sexually immoral man, “his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord” – that the pain from the loss of relationship might motivate repentance (1 Cor. 5:5, cf. 2 Cor. 7:8-10). As Henry Cloud and John Townsend, authors of the incredibly helpful book Boundaries, say, We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing.” This should challenge us as boundary setters, though: the goal of our boundaries is to heal the relationship. We aren’t being coercive or trying to hurt them back. Our hope is that one day the boundary can be removed because the sin has been removed: repented of and forgiven, allowing us to go a new direction. Just like God has done for us through Jesus.

It is not good to be alone. Through Jesus Christ, God gives us a way to experience real relationship. Learn how to experience it along with us at https://www.georgetownchurchofchrist.com/real-relationship.