“It is not good for the man to be alone.” – Genesis 2:18
We often hear, “All you need is God.” However, Scripture and neuroscience suggest a more nuanced perspective: God is sufficient in Himself, but by His design, we need one another. He created us to grow, heal, and thrive through relationships. If anyone had a close relationships with God, it was Adam. He walked with God in perfect communion. Yet God looked at him and said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Even in the presence of divine perfection, God declared something was missing—a relationship with another human.
God Designed Humanity for Relationship
Neuroscience now confirms what God revealed to us in the Garden of Eden and through Jesus. Our brains are wired for connection. Emotions, identity, and healing don’t happen in isolation. They are forged in the fire of relationship, with faces, voices, touch, and presence. God made your nervous system so that it literally requires others to regulate emotion, form identity, and even experience His love more deeply. After all, we are created in His image. God is three in one, so relationships are the quintessential essence of reality. The primary relational experience God has with His Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is one of grace-filled love.
Love Completed Through Others
Knowing God loves you is not the same as experiencing His love through someone else’s smile, empathy, or kindness. I John 4:12 says: “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”God’s love is made complete (i.e., experienced to the fullest), not alone on a mountaintop, but in relationship. We can only experience God’s love for us to the extent we experience others’ love for us. Click here for a fun video that illustrates the importance of relationships as we face life’s challenges. This is a perfect way to visualize Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 – “two are better than one and can help each other up when one falls down.”
Jesus Modeled Relational Living
Jesus modeled this. He didn’t disciple through downloads of information. He formed a group that lived life together, which afforded him many relational experiences for them to internalize his love and truth alongside each other’s. But more than that, when he was overwhelmed with anxiety and sadness after the last supper, he did not take off to be with his father alone. He asked the disciples to come with him; he needed their presence, their relationship. Then, when he arrived in the Garden, he asked Peter, James, and John to be even closer. And he needed it so much that he went back twice and vulnerably asked for closeness again when they fell asleep.
Paul’s Example: Comfort Through Connection
Paul needed Titus when he was overwhelmed upon entering Macedonia (2 Corinthians 7:5-7). God was not enough, but he was comforted by this human relationship (i.e., “God with skin”) with Titus. But the other significant part of this interaction is that Titus reminded him of past relationships with the Corinthian church and how their “longing for me, your deep sorrow, your ardent concern for me.” Then Paul said the most profound thing, “my joy was even greater.” Even a memory of past human relationships can comfort us in our “fears within” and when we are “downcast.”
A Relational Plan of Redemption
When Adam and Eve sinned, giving a foothold to evil, they marred God’s creation. God immediately put a relational plan in place to restore His creation and reconcile the broken relationship between Himself and humans (Adam and Eve). He always chose to do this through humans instead of doing it himself. First, Adam and Eve were given the mandate to steward God’s creation; then, Noah, Abraham, and the Israelite nation were tasked with blessing all mankind. When that failed, he still used a relationship—the incarnation of Jesus and his death and resurrection. The perfect combination of God and human relationships. When he ascended, he left the newly created church, the people of God, who were the new covenant people, destined to restore his creation, enabling humankind to love and seek justice “on earth as it is in heaven.” Relational experiences have always been central to God’s purposes.
Healing Through Safe Relationships
You were never meant to “white-knuckle” your spiritual life alone, even with just God as seen in these 40 “one-another” verses that reflect this truth. You were made to receive His love through people and to give it back to them in the same way. Real comfort or healing doesn’t happen as powerfully through new insights, willpower, or doing all the right things. It happens through relationships. Safe relationships that love you even with the bad and ugly parts. This not only strengthens us but also reduces the shame we might experience from past, painful relationships. God designed our brains with “neurological grace.” When you have relational experiences that are different from previous painful relational moments, the current ones begin to replace the shame and other toxic feelings associated with those past moments. This is how our minds are “renewed” (Romans 12:2), and we become a “new creation” — in real time.
Why the Church Must Be Deeply Relational
We need both an intimacy with God to feel his love, and we need the same from safe, human relationships. We were designed to handle life’s challenges and to mature in our faith only by having both kinds of relationships. When we don’t, life will be more difficult, and our growth will not be as powerful. This is why Jesus designed the church to be relational – God’s family and Christ’s body, not God’s building or a set of rituals or even focusing just on a book (i.e., the Bible). As Paul states in Ephesians 4:16, growth occurs when each person is doing their part in fostering intimate relationships with one another.
Conclusion: Where Divine Love Meets Human Presence
Jesus designed the church to be more than just worshiping God or studying His Word. It was a place to deepen relationships with God AND others so we could boldly change the world together!
