His Whole Life Is Transactions and He Cannot Picture Anything Else

He can tell you what he is worth to every single person in his phone.

Not in money. In usefulness. He knows who calls him when their car will not start, and who calls him for the other thing, and who has not called in a while and roughly why. He keeps all of it without effort, the way some people keep song lyrics.

And every one of those is an exchange. He gives something, he gets something, and when the exchange stops working the relationship goes quiet, and he has never once been surprised when it does.

He would not describe this as sad. He would describe it as how things are, and he would be slightly puzzled by anybody who found it bleak.

The problem only shows up when somebody talks about God as a relationship, because he can process that perfectly well and he processes it in the only machine he has, and that machine wants to know what he is bringing.

God says the machine itself gets replaced

There is a sentence in Ezekiel that does not ask anybody to run their machine better.

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26, King James Version)

A new heart also will I give you.

Read who does every verb. Give. Put. Take away. Give again.

He is not saying try to feel differently about relationships. He is describing an exchange of parts, performed by somebody else, on a man who cannot manufacture the replacement.

Which is the only useful thing to say to somebody who has no category. A man cannot reason his way into a category he has never had.

You are not being asked to run the machine you have better. Ezekiel 36 puts every verb in that verse on God's side, and it is His Spirit, named in the same sentence as what gets put in, who does the changing.

The son tried to reprice himself and was interrupted

In the story about the son who came home, there is a moment where he does the exact thing.

And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. (Luke 15:19)

Make me as one of thy hired servants.

That is a repricing. He is moving himself from one category, where he was a son, into another, where he would be staff, because staff is a category he understands and can operate in.

Hired servants have terms. There is work, and there is pay, and everybody knows where they stand.

And that offer is never accepted, because it is never heard. The father cuts him off before he can make it.

You are not going to be allowed to reprice yourself as staff. Luke 15 has the offer interrupted before it can be made, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes the placement of that interruption reach a man who knows what he is worth to everybody.

Jesus named the change of category out loud

There is a sentence in John where He tells His friends what they are, and He does it by naming what they are not.

Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. (John 15:15)

Henceforth I call you not servants.

He rules out the transactional category by name, and then He gives the reason, and the reason is about information.

A servant is told what to do. A friend is told what is going on. That is the difference He picks out, and it is a difference about access rather than about workload.

You are named out of one category and into another by somebody who explained why. John 15 rules out servants by name and gives the reason in the same verse, and it is His Spirit who makes an old change of terms land on a man with a phone full of ledgers.

Paul puts the timing where it settles this

There is a sentence in Romans where the timing is the argument.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

While we were yet sinners.

That is the moment specified. Not after an improvement and not at a point where anybody was bringing anything.

Paul chose the timing deliberately, because timing is what settles the question of what the transaction was based on. There was nothing on the table from one side.

You were priced at a moment when you were bringing nothing. Romans 5 specifies the timing rather than the sentiment, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a point in a sequence do what an argument could not.

And the reason given is not about the item

There is a sentence in Ephesians where Paul says why the adoption happened, and the reason is deliberately not about the person adopted.

Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will. (Ephesians 1:5)

According to the good pleasure of his will.

Not according to need. Not according to fit. Not because a gap needed filling in the household.

He wanted to. That is the reason on the page, and it is a reason located entirely in the one doing it.

You are inside something whose stated reason has nothing to do with what you bring. Ephesians 1 puts the reason on His side of the sentence, and it is His Spirit who makes an old phrase reach somebody who has never had a relationship that was not an exchange.