Weekly Word Archives

One Another Series

Encourage One Another

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This is the result of a challenge issued by a very godly, older man who has been in the ministry for 40 years. He challenged us to do a study in the New Testament of the “one another” passages. I did that study and came up with quite a list of ways God calls us to relate to each other. The study made a real impact in my life and I hope that it will in yours as well. I would encourage you to look up the Scriptures in your Bible and see how God may want you to apply them to your circumstances in life.

As we look at specific attitudes and actions that God says we all are to do for each other, let’s look at what God says about "encouraging one another". In the King James it is translated "exhort" or "comfort". Regardless of the translation they are all from the Greek word "parakaleo" which means "to admonish, exhort, to urge one to pursue some course of action, conduct, looking to the future."

Each passage I found which says "encourage one another" has to do with the idea of living the Christian life in view of Christ’s second coming. They seem to imply something like this "Keep living a life that glorifies Christ, stay away from sin because He is coming back for us, even though we get discouraged at times and He seems far away." The word "encourage" is not used in our contemporary way of telling someone how great he is doing or how wonderful he is. It is not that we should not tell people how great or wonderful they are but the word "encourage" is not used that way in the Bible.

Therefore, encourage each other with these words… I Thessalonians 4:18 (It is speaking of our rapture to Heaven)

Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. I Thessalonians 5:11 (still in the section on the rapture)

But encourage one another daily as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. Hebrews 3:13

Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10:25 (both Hebrews passages are looking to the "Day" of Christ’s return)

The last passage is especially significant to me. It emphasizes that we need to keep coming together as Christians for the purpose of exhorting each other toward godly living in light of Christ’s return. Do we think about that today as Christians? Is our purpose for going to church to see what we can get, how we can be fed, what we can receive or is it to "encourage one another"? We need that kind of exhortation from each other.

I have expressed before and would like to emphasize again that I believe if we as Christians would seek to follow these "one another" verses, we would have little demand for counselors. These are things that God calls us to do but He also empowers us, enables us, and equips us to do them.