Hebrews Lesson 162                                                                                                       June 4, 2009

 

NKJ Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.

 

We have been studying in Hebrews 10 and we have come to the end of the section that deals with this 4th section within the book of Hebrews dealing with the implications of the high priestly ministry of Jesus Christ, His completed work on the cross, and His present session. So what is happening in the time of His present session is He is building for Himself through the Holy Spirit a body on earth (the body of Christ), which is the church. He is at this time seated at the right hand of the Father waiting for His body to be completed. Upon the completion of the body, He will receive the kingdom from the Father. He’s in that position of waiting. 

 

The Old Testament picture of this is the picture of David and Saul. When David was anointed to be king, that didn’t mean he was king. Saul was still the king. Saul is a type of Satan in this particular illustration from the Old Testament. Saul continues under divine discipline to reign in Israel for approximately another ten to fifteen years during which time David is out in the wilderness most of the time being chased after by Saul, being abused, mistreated. Saul feels threatened by David because David is the anointed future king and so David is out in the wilderness of Judea most of the time forming for himself a body of his mighty men. That’s a picture of the church so that when David then came into his kingdom and David became the king, those whom he appointed to reign with him and his administrators within his kingdom were taken from his group of mighty men. They became his appointees in various positions. 

 

That is a picture of the church, that Jesus Christ is forming a body of believers. There are certain things that are incumbent upon believers in the Church Age that are part of our spiritual life, part of our spiritual growth that is part of the building up of the body of Christ in preparation for that future role to rule and reign with Jesus Christ in the kingdom. 

 

So we have these three commands that come at the end of this teaching section in verses 22, 23, and 24. You have these three first person plural hortatory subjunctives: let us draw near, let us hold fast, and let us consider. 

 

It is verse 24 that we have been looking at the last couple of weeks and drawing out various implications and applications of the mandate that is here. This is indeed a command. It’s not in the imperative; there is no first person imperative in Greek. What they would use was a first person subjunctive called the hortatory subjunctive. It should be translated with a little more force than “let us” which sounds like a nice little invitation; but it has the force of a command. So we could translate it:

 

We must consider one another in order to or for the purpose of stirring up or provoking love and good works. 

 

The first word, katanoeo and stirring up is paroxysmos, which has the idea of inciting action. That’s the idea. We are to think; we are to meditate; we are to brainstorm how we can incite others to push on in the Christian life. That is part of the function of the body of Christ. If you think about it in terms of many analogies that we could think of (of a team in action), this is not something that is foreign to any of us when we think about a team. You think about a football team or a baseball team, any kind of sports team: basketball, anything like that or a military team (a group of men that train together and then they’re going into combat together. When they are in training, they’re constantly encouraging each other, stimulating each other, coming up with ideas, playing off of each other, learning how to push each other to the limit to perform to their very best, to perform at a level of excellence. You can apply this in just about anything. If you have a troop of dancers or singers or any group of people where there is a group dynamic, there is often this sense of esprit de corps and comradery that is built within that team. 

 

And it is not something that is artificially generated. My biggest complaint the way this passage is applied in a lot of different churches is you get various programs that churches come up with to try to get people to do certain things. The most silly and superficial that I’ve seen (is that you’ll often see in some churches) is they’ll have visitors. They’ll have everybody stand up and then the visitors sit down. Or they’ll just have everybody who’s a member of the church stand up so the visitors are left sitting down. 

 

Then everybody crowds around them and says, “Now tell them you love them and give them a hug.”

 

It’s forced. It’s just artificial whereas the commands that we are going to be looking at tonight are to flow out of our relationship with God and the spiritual growth that we have and the motivation that comes as a result of our own walk with the Spirit and our own spiritual life. It comes out of this inner dynamic of the Holy Spirit and our spiritual growth. 

 

You can’t force that on people through various artificial means and say, “Let’s go do this or let’s go do this and try this program so we can be a friendlier of the church.” 

 

I was a pastor at a church in Irving that was called Fellowship Bible Church. That was already in existence when I went there. It was a group of churches that had been actually started by a Dallas Seminary professor in the early 70’s. He had great success with a certain format that he used at a church in Richardson. That church spun off or spawned off several other churches and they all had that name of Fellowship Bible Church. One of the things that made them a fellowship church was that there was this emphasis on fellowship. 

 

But I’ve been in churches that had a reputation for not being very friendly and I’ve had a greater fellowship and greater social life at churches like that than I had a church that was supposed to be known for its fellowship because it ultimately boils down to the people. It boils down their spiritual life and it boils down to those real spiritual factors that are intangibles that can’t be manufactured and they can’t be imposed on people from the outside. This has to come from people who are serious about their own spiritual lives and they have their own internal excitement and enthusiasm about the Word of God. 

 

You see that if you think about some of the analogies that we could use other than the body to portray that kind of team operation. As we’ll see when we get into some of the passages in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans that Paul uses this analogy of a body for a couple of different reasons. I think one reason is that because it’s alive. You could talk about some sort of inanimate object that has many different parts that all work together. But he chooses an analogy that is living, that is dynamic, and that is interactive because that’s the nature of the body of Christ and the church. It’s a living organism. It is dynamic and it receives its real energy from God the Holy Spirit and from the Word of God. It’s not just as it impacts individuals but as that then plays itself out within this interconnected relationship between believers. 

 

Now that’s not saying that our spiritual lives are dependent or even produced by those relationships. But man was created in the image of God and God Himself is a social being. So we can’t deny that social aspect of our nature. We’re created to be that way. 

 

As I pointed out last time one of the problems that I think we’ve seen that I’ve seen in reading a lot of literature about the nature of the church is that too many people look at the church as a social organism as opposed to an educational organism. If you look at it as primarily social and emphasize fellowship, you don’t understand fellowship in the first place. Fellowship in the Bible in the New Testament ultimately almost always relates to fellowship with God and the fellowship that believers have with one another is a by-product of that primary walk with God and fellowship with God. But if you put your focus there on social activity in the church then what happens as I’ve observed in churches that I’ve been associated with is all of a sudden your leadership becomes focused on building the social life of the congregation – how to somehow increase their social interaction, their friendships in the congregation things like that; and the education aspect of the local church gets somehow lost in the need for all these warm fuzzies and social interaction. 

 

But when you put the focus on education, which is the focus, the objective as stated in Scripture that the focus is to learn the Word of God to renew our thinking to be equipped for the ministry through the teaching of the Word of God; you see these mandates listed over and over again related to thinking, related to study, related to concentration. Then the by-product of that is going to be in the social life.

 

When I went to college I think I had a pretty good (probably too good) social life. But I don’t think that was at all the concern of the trustees of the university except to maybe want to figure out ways to restrain the social life of the college kids rather than promote it because they are naturally going to get involved in social activities. So if they did anything it was trying to curb all that energy into productive areas. The primary focus was on education knowing that the fellowship, the friendships would develop as a result of that. 

 

That’s the idea that you have in the Scriptures. The focus of the church is on education. It is a classroom, not sort of stale sterile classroom; but it is a classroom related to learning about life ultimately – how to live and think about everything that we encounter in life from the framework of the Word of God. That is going to impact relationships. There is a dynamic that takes place within the body of Christ between believers that is something distinctive that will stand out, that is going to be different from that you will encounter in the pagan world.

 

So the main command here to consider or to think, to brainstorm, says:

 

NKJ Hebrews 10:24 And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works,

 

Then there are going to be two participles. The main verb is going to be modified or clarified by two participles that come up in verse 25. The first one is a negative. The second one is a positive. The first one is “not forsaking.” The second one is exhorting. What we’ll see is these two words are participles that indicate they are related in the category of means to the main verb.

 

So the verse reads:

 

NKJ Hebrews 10:25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.

 

Now the context of the “assembling together” is not in just any format. It’s not assembling together down at Starbucks. It’s not assembling together in an internet chat room. It’s not assembling together to go on a shopping day. It’s not assembling together on MySpace or Twitter any of these other social networking things that happen on the internet. I’m not putting those things down; but there are some good things that happen as a result of these as believers get together for various reasons; but that is not the meeting of the church. That’s the context here of Hebrews 10. It’s the meeting of the body of Christ and the focal point of the meeting of the body of Christ is the Word of God. It is the teaching of the Word of God that is the dynamic under the teaching ministry of God the Holy Spirit that then produces this as a by-product.

 

So the first participle that’s used is “not forsaking.” It’s the Greek word enkataleipo, which means to leave something behind or to forsake or to abandon something. It is something that is intentional. It’s a present active participle and it modifies the command to think or to concentrate or to reflect on or to meditate on ways to stimulate, to excite one another to action. So you are not doing that by not meeting together, by avoiding, by not being involved in a local church. Now a local church can be anything from a family in some cases to two or three families (house churches), which is frankly what you have in a lot of the history of the church. You think about frontier circumstances. You think about people in various third world countries that have had very little other believers around where they may be very small. 

 

In fact there is man who uses material from the church here who has I think 40 or 50 house churches that he works with in Indonesia. They have seen a number of Moslems convert, believe on Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior including an Imam and they are teaching them the Word. This is happening in Indonesia. They meet in these very small groups because they can’t really call a lot of attention to themselves otherwise the authorities may come down on them and they may come under persecution. 

 

So when I talk about meeting in a local church don’t get a sticks and bricks concept of a local church in your head. It can be many different formats. If you’re not large enough to have your own pastor, which is true in some cases; then thankfully we have electronic means to accommodate that. But the negative of that is we’ve seen people and we all know people like this who have gone to the extreme of saying, “Well, even though there is a church 5 minutes from my house and I agree with everything that they teach there, my pastor is 3,000 miles away so I’m going to live my whole Christian life in front of my tape recorder.”

 

That is not the idea that we have in Scripture. We have in Scripture that the normative pattern of believers meeting together in real time, not virtually so that there is this framework for interaction among members of the body of Christ. That circumstance is if you’re truly in isolation, like you are in the outback in Australia or someplace like that where there are no other—or even in some of the major cities of Australia from what I understand—believers that you can have any kind of meeting with; then of course the only thing you are left with is some kind of interaction with; thankfully you have a computer and there can be some interaction with other believers that way. But that is an exception. That is not to be normative.

 

 So when I get a little bit irritated about some of these things. I’m not thinking about people who have legitimate reasons to be home. I know there are always people who have a tender conscience and when I’m talking about something like this and they are out there live streaming and they’re 6 blocks from here and they have a legitimate health reason for not being here; they feel guilty because they’re not. I’m not talking to people like that. I’m not trying to make them feel guilty. I’m really talking about people that I run into every now and then. I know of one case where I know a man lives within a mile of here and he doesn’t get involved with any other believers. It’s just him and his tape recorder because that’s sufficient.

 

That’s not the normative pattern. It doesn’t mean that by being involved with the local assembly that you can’t listen to your favorite Bible teacher for ten or fifteen hours a week. Of course you can. But you can’t replace being involved with a local church because that’s where your spiritual gift functions.  That’s where you can meet in the local church with other believers for the Lord’s Table. The normative pattern in Scriptures is meeting together physically. So we are:

 

NKJ Hebrews 10:25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another,

 

This Greek word is episunagoge which is an intensified form of the noun sunagoge, which to a Jewish believer would bring up the whole idea of the synagogue. That’s where the word synagogue comes from, this Greek word meaning an assembly or a gathering together. So the use of this word in Hebrews, as in James—the word church or ekklesia, does not occur in the epistle of James either. In place of it you have the assembly of believers in the use of the word sunagoge. The idea here in the use of the word indicates the meeting of believers together. This would be the meeting of the church.

 

So we’re not to forsake or abandon the meeting of the local church with other believers, as is the manner of some. Instead we are to be able to fulfill this mandate by coming together and encouraging one another. This is the Greek word parakaleo meaning to summon or to invite. It has a range of meanings from the root is kaleo meaning to call and it has a prepositional prefix para indicating an intensification of that. It means to encourage, to implore. The noun form parakletos is what’s used of the Holy Spirit as a comforter, assistant as one who comes along side to strengthen. This is the range of meaning in this particular word, and then it has a certainly future orientation because we are to do this:

 

and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.

 

Meaning it’s preparation for the future dynamic of the body of Christ ruling and reigning in the Millennial Kingdom, not a bunch of individuals doing their own thing. Can you imagine what it’d be like to take 9 men who don’t know each other and they’re not allowed to talk to each other and they’re told to get out on the baseball diamond and they are going to play against another team? When somebody does something good, they can’t scream and shout for them and tell him how great he did. If he drops the ball or messes up, commits an error they can’t say, “Well, that happened. Come on. You can do better the next time,” and encourage him. They can’t talk like that at all. They just have to stick and focus on their particular arena of operation. That would be silly. But yet there are people who think that’s how the local church can operate. That’s just not the team idea that we have in the Scripture. 

 

So I have expanded the translation here to give us a little greater sense of what this text means.

 

You must thing about how to rouse one another to love and good deeds;

 

(which summarizes the spiritual life)

 

but this is not accomplished by staying away from the assembly of the church, as is the manner of some; but by encouraging each other when you come together in the assembly of the local church as you see the Day drawing near.

 

So the focus here is on this command to think about how to incite, to rouse, to encourage one another. This brings us to a very important doctrine within the Scripture, the Doctrine of One Another. The phrase is used many times in Scripture. I have around 20 points or so related to the Doctrine of One Another.

 

Doctrine of One Another

 

  1. The Greek word that’s used here is allelon. Allelon is in a genitival form the way it appears with the omega and nu ending. It indicates the idea “of each other” or “of one another” indicating a certain connectiveness even in the grammar – a belongingness. The genitive often has that idea of possession or ownership or relationship. So that is part of the format of this word that we are of each other, of one another, belonging to one another. The word indicates one person’s relationship to others within a group. Now most of the New Testament context where this word is used, it’s related to congregations. Now there are places where you have the Pharisees conspiring with one another and other contexts like that. But within the epistles the word is used numerous times to express the relationship of one believer to another so that the idea is how believers within a congregation as the local representation of the body of Christ how believer’s within a local body should treat other believers in that congregation.  So it describes that dynamic that should take place within a group of believers as a result of their spiritual growth. It applies to how one believer relates to another believer. That’s the context, believer to believer; not believer to unbeliever, not talking about how you relate to those at work. Not that these principles can’t apply, but that’s not what the context is in the New Testament. The New Testament is talking about how individuals within the body of Christ relate to one another specifically within a local congregation, a local manifestation of the universal body of Christ.  
  2. The most frequent command related to “one another” that we find in the Scripture is to love one another. In fact as we look at these, what we’ll see is that most of the other commands simply describe different facets of what it means to love one another. So 15 times in the New Testament we have a command to love one another. It’s repeated over and over again by three different writers. So you’d think the Holy Spirit wanted us to pay attention to this. John emphasizes it both from the teaching of Christ in the Upper Room Discourse (John 13 through 16); but also in his epistles in 1 John and 3 John I believe. Paul also reiterates this several times as does Peter. It is a primary focus of the writers of the New Testament in the epistles, which are designed to teach Church Age believers how to live, how to operate, how to handle every circumstance in life during the Church Age. We also see that the last point there is that the 18 “one another’s” are all just manifestation of this one command. It involves humility. We can’t be narcissistic. We can’t be focusing on ourselves. We can’t be self-absorbed and love others. Love drives us to think about other people, not just to think about what’s going on in our own lives. 

 

It involves forgiveness because there are always going to be times whenever we’re working with other people because other people are sinners just like we are that whenever we’re dealing with other people there are going to be times we get on each other’s nerves, when we irritate each other, when we make each other angry. Yet we have to come back and recognize that none of us has offended anyone else in life to the degree that we all offended the Lord’s righteousness. Let me say that again. You have not offended anybody in life and no one in life has offended you – that makes it a little more personal—no matter how you’ve been hurt, no matter how you’ve been betrayed, no matter how you’ve been mistreated or abused, no human being has offended you to the degree that each of us as fallen sinners had offended the righteousness of God. Yet God because of the payment that Christ made on the cross for sin has forgiven us. That then becomes the basis for the fact that we in turn can and are to forgive others. So this is part of what it means to love one another. 

 

It involves being kind. This is just an application of grace orientation – good manners, being kind, being nice to other people, being gentle even if they’re a customer service person on the phone, putting up with each other in various situations because we know that we all face different challenges, different problems, and different frustrations in life. So we are willing to put up with each other because we understand the broader picture of our spiritual lives. 

 

Then in terms of negative commands we’re not to judge which means to malign one another mentally based on assuming we know other people’s motives, gossiping about one another, and these kinds of things. We are to have a certain mentality towards one another because we’re all members of the royal family of God. There is a certain behavior code that goes along with being a member of God’s family in treating others who are in that family even if they’re like the prodigal son and they’re out wallowing in a pig trough and throwing the garbage at us. We have to handle them in a certain way. 

 

Now the foundational command on this is found in John 13:34-35. I’m not going to have you turn to look at every verse that we look at, but I would like you to turn and look at this verse because it is central to all the other commands that we have related to loving one another. This is the starting point, the foundation. Now as we’ve done many times as we’ve gone through John 13, we went through it not long ago in our study of Hebrews as we talked about forgiveness and cleansing and washing and all the imagery there. The context of these verses (John 13:34-35) is a context of the Passover meal: Jesus' instruction to the disciples at the end of the Passover meal after He has sent Judas away. This is when Jesus begins to teach His disciples about the standards of behavior (the protocols if you will) of the Christian life, just laying down the foundation. Now if you look at the context here we are told in verse 1:

 

NKJ John 13:1 Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.

 

Now that is really a summary statement of this section that is going to extend through the end of the gospel. It is showing that Jesus is going to teach and then demonstrate what He means by love. That includes not only the crucifixion, but also His instruction afterwards. 

 

Hold your place here just a minute. I want to connect a couple of dots for you. Love is one of the primary words that you find at the end of John. You find it a number of times up through John 17, which is the high priestly prayer. Then in John 18 and John 19 you don’t find the word. Hmm. How interesting! Why is that? Because when Jesus is arrested and crucified, that’s when He is demonstrating what love is. 

 

Then after the resurrection He appears to the disciples. Look at John 21 down to verse 15. Jesus has this little this interchange with Peter. He’s trying to teach Peter something about forgiveness. There’s a connection here between forgiveness and love. 

 

The last time Peter had spent time talking or interacting with Jesus, Peter had said, “I’m not going to betray you. Nobody cares more about you than I do.” 

 

Then of course he betrayed the Lord before the cock crowed the next morning. Peter is feeling guilty because he betrayed his Lord despite his braggadocio that he would not do that. So the Lord has to teach Peter a little lesson in humility. That is tied up with understanding love and understanding forgiveness. 

 

So the way the story unfolds after the resurrection is that the disciples go back to Galilee and they’re out fishing. They’re not having any luck. So Jesus appears on the shore and tells them that they need to cast their nets on the other side of the boat and they will pull in as many fish as the net could possibly hold which is what they do. At that point they suddenly recognize who this is on the beach. They come into the beach and Jesus starts cooking breakfast for them. It must have been a good breakfast. He has this little conversation then with Peter after breakfast.

 

He looks at Peter in verse 15 and says:

 

NKJ John 21:15 So when they had eaten breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?"

 

Meaning more than anyone else—a little reminder of Peter’s braggadocio before the cross that he loved the Lord so much he wouldn’t betray Him. 

 

Peter responds and says:

 

He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You know that I love You."

 

So Jesus says:

 

He said to him, "Feed My lambs."

 

He goes on in verse 16.  He repeats it.

 

NKJ John 21:16 He said to him again a second time, "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?" He said to Him, "Yes, Lord; You know that I love You." He said to him, "Tend My sheep."

 

There are a lot of things going on in this passage that I’m not going to address because there’s all kinds of synonyms used here to get across a number of different points. There are two different points love both phileo as well as agapao. But Jesus is driving home the point to Peter that love means to obey Him. 

 

Now that comes out of this whole discourse that begins in chapter 13. So from 13 when Jesus introduces this new commandment that we’re to love one another all the way to the end of the gospel, love is a major theme that everything relates to in terms of the teaching as a core element in the Christian life. 

 

In John 13 itself he starts off in the Upper Room as we’ve studied so many times, washing their feet. A lot of times people will hear sermons or Sunday school classes on the importance of being a servant, taking care of each other. In fact there are some denominations that take this very literally. Whenever they have the Lord’s Table they literally wash each other’s feet. I’ve never been to one of those services and I’m sort of glad that I haven’t. I can’t image that. I guess you have to make sure you have clean socks on that morning. But they do that literally. The focus here isn’t on washing people’s feet. The washing of the feet as we’ve seen in our study is a picture of that partial washing that occurs with confession of sin that comes after the complete washing that occurs at salvation.

 

Remember the original picture of this that lies behind these two words that are used for washing. One word means a partial washing; another word means a complete washing or a bath. When Jesus began to wash Peter’s feet using the word nipto meaning a partial washing, Peter said, “No Lord. You’re not going to wash me.” 

 

The Lord said, “Well Peter, you don’t understand what I’m doing now; but you will understand this later on.

 

Then Peter said, “No. I’m not going to let you wash my feet.”

 

The Lord said, “Peter if I don’t wash you, (nipto, partial washing) you will have no part with Me.” 

 

Here the word for part is that Greek word meros. It’s also used for share of an inheritance, a portion of one’s inheritance. It has to do with our inheritance in Christ, the rewards that we receive are predicated on our spiritual growth. Spiritual growth occurs when we are in fellowship with Christ, fellowship with God, walking by the Holy Spirit. When we are walking by the Holy Spirit, we have been cleansed of our sin. When we sin we’re out of fellowship. There has to be that partial cleansing again. Total cleansing is what occurred at salvation when we are positionally cleansed, washed by means of the Holy Spirit washing of regeneration (Titus3:5). We are completely clean. But then we dirty our feet along the way and we have to use 1 John 1:9 to confess our sins in order to have that cleansing restored so that we can continue to grow and move forward. The washing of the feet has to do with a picture of forgiveness. 

 

So in verse 10 Jesus said:

 

NKJ John 13:10 Jesus said to him, "He who is bathed

 

That is he who is completely washed referring to a believer, one who is totally cleansed. 

 

needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you."

 

See we recover that full cleansing when we confess our sins. Then we are back in fellowship. The picture of the cleansing, the foot washing, is a picture of forgiveness. It begins. Its foundation is Jesus is cleansing us. We are cleansed at the time of confession of sin; we’re cleansed by God.  

 

Then Jesus says if you look down a few verses to verse 15. He says:

 

NKJ John 13:15 "For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.

 

Now that’s that other kind of forgiveness. That’s the forgiveness toward one another. Jesus is modeling the fact that what precedes forgiveness for one another is forgiveness from God. That pictures for us how we are to forgive one another. Now that portrayal of forgiveness is within the broader context of the concept of love. That’s why the chapter begins reminding us that having loved his own who are in the world, having loved him to the end. He talks about love all the way through the chapters. 

 

So then we come down to verse 34, 35. Jesus says:

 

NKJ John 13:34 "A new commandment I give to you,

 

This is the Greek word akaine indicating a change, a new kind of commandment that Jesus is giving to us.

 

that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

 

Now Leviticus 19:18, we have a commandment in the Old Testament that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. That is a command within the Mosaic Law – love your neighbor as yourself. Who are you supposed to love in that example? Your neighbor. Well, your neighbor may be a believer or an unbeliever, but it could be an unbeliever. The pattern for loving the unbeliever is yourself, as you love yourself. Now there are some people who will say that not everybody loves themselves. 

 

“Some people have a bad self image and they don’t love themselves.” 

 

But that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says that every man loves himself, Ephesians 5. It’s presented as a standard principle. Everybody loves himself. Even if you hate yourself or even if you think you hate yourself, you really don’t hate yourself. You just disappointed yourself because you love yourself so much. The reason you hate yourself is because you haven’t lived up to the high standards that you think you should be living up to because you love yourself. But the natural orientation of the fallen human soul is to love itself. It is self-absorbed and in love with itself.

 

The Old Testament pattern is to love everyone, believer and unbeliever, like you love yourself. But Jesus changes that. He says you are to love one another. The “one another” does not include unbelievers. It doesn’t mean we are to be nasty to unbelievers. But He’s focusing on the dynamic within the body of Christ. You are to love one another (That is other believers.) “as I have loved you.” Not as you love yourself; but as Jesus loved you. Now that ratchets the standard up extremely high, and the only way that we can do that is if God the Holy Spirit is producing that kind of love in us. That’s why love is the first fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5. In broader context Galatians 5:13 all the way down to the end of the chapter grows out of a command to love. So Jesus gives a new commandment that you love one another “as I have loved you.” 

 

Then He repeats it,

 

NKJ John 13:34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

 

That is by this love for one another. It’s not by the doctrine that you know. It’s not by how many doctrinal notebooks you have. I’m not putting that down.  That’s the means to the end; but it’s not the end. It’s not how much you know. It’s not the extent of your theological vocabulary. It’s not any of the other things that people want to emphasize that somehow are barometers for their spiritual life. It has to do with character. It is love for one another because that is the ultimate sign and indication of spiritual growth and spiritual maturity. It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens only because we have spent a tremendous amount of time studying the Word under the filling of the Holy Spirit and applying it consistently in how we think, how we act, what we do, just applying the principles of Scripture. 

 

As we go through that process of spiritual growth, failure, recovery again and again down through time, then a capacity for love develops within our souls that is unique and distinct. It can’t be manufactured. Unbelievers can’t do this. Maybe here and there they might rise to an occasion and have a semblance of unselfish love, but this cannot be produced by energy of the flesh. This kind of love can only be produced by God the Holy Spirit. 

 

So it becomes the sign Jesus says:

 

NKJ John 13:35 "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."

 

Not just believers, but disciples. A disciple is a distinct category of believer that has decided to push on beyond simply being justified so they have eternity in heaven; but someone who wants to grow and mature to the fullest extent that they can. This indicates that someone has grown and matured if they have love for one another. 

 

So how many times are we told to love one another in these two verses? Three times, as if it’s important. 

 

Then in John 15:12 just two chapters later within the context again of the Upper Room Discourse, Jesus says:

 

NKJ John 15:12 "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

 

So again the commandment is reiterated. He is the standard so we have to understand how Jesus loves us. That takes a lot of time. That takes a lot of investigation and study of the Word of God to understand how Jesus loved us, how the God the Father loved us and all that’s involved in that love. At the very core of that is understanding the whole concept of grace; that that love is unmerited. It’s unearned. It is based totally and exclusively on the character of God and who He is and what Christ did on the cross. It means that we have to fully investigate and understand all the dynamics that went into salvation.

 

So Jesus said:

 

NKJ John 15:12 "This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

 

Again just 5 verses later:

 

NKJ John 15:17 "These things I command you, that you love one another.

 

So all through John 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 there are various other mandates, statements made by the Lord related to love. For example, in John 15:13 Jesus said:

 

NKJ John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.

 

…which is what He is going to do on the cross.

 

The next time we have this mentioned as we go through the Scripture is in Romans 13:8.  Paul says:

 

NKJ Romans 13:8 Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.

 

Here he’s not talking about the Mosaic Law as this is the plan of God. This is going back to Jesus’ command as this new commandment to love one another. He’s not talking about how to get saved. He’s talking about the outworking of a justified person’s spiritual life. The concept there of owe no one anything is an imperative. In these slides I put a little exclamation point by the main verb, which expresses that this is a command, a mandate for the spiritual life. 

 

Now I’ve heard a lot of people teach using this verse as an economics verse that we’re not supposed to get in debt. That’s not really the idea here. I don’t think that’s a legitimate application. What Paul is talking about here is that we should not be indebted to anyone else, which means that we owe them something. We are indebted to them not financially, but in terms of behavior. Maybe we have not forgiven them, something along those lines. Or we have sinned against them. In contrast we are not to be beholden to any one in any way. But we are to love one another. That is the primary command for the spiritual life. 

 

Then as I mentioned earlier in Galatians 5, Paul states:

 

NKJ Galatians 5:13 For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh,.

 

That is, opportunity to fulfill the sin nature.

 

but through love serve one another

 

There’s a command. This really comes up a couple of different ways in the “one another” lessons. We are to love, but that love is exemplified through serving one another.

 

Then 1 Thessalonians 3:12 states:

 

NKJ 1 Thessalonians 3:12 And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all, just as we do to you,

 

Here the verbs are infinitives, but they are imperatival infinitives. Again the emphasis is on the mandate to increase in love and abound in love. May the Lord make you increase and abound in love through spiritual growth, spiritual maturity. 

 

NKJ 1 Thessalonians 4:9 But concerning brotherly love you have no need that I should write to you, for you yourselves are taught by God to love one another;

 

Again you have an imperatival sense there to the syntax of the passage. This is not an option. 

 

2 Thessalonians 1:3 Paul says:

 

NKJ 2 Thessalonians 1:3 We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is fitting, because your faith grows exceedingly,

 

Now faith grows exceedingly because you study the Word and you apply the Word. 

 

and the love of every one of you all abounds toward each other,

 

It continues to grow. There is this genuine care and concern for each other because of the spiritual growth that precedes that. 

 

Peter writes:

 

NKJ 1 Peter 1:22 Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit

 

That should be understood in the instrumental sense. The idea again is cleansing, being in fellowship. 

 

in sincere love of the brethren,

 

Then we have the command again.

 

love one another fervently with a pure heart,

 

Then we have several passages in 1 John and then 2 John.

 

NKJ 1 John 3:11 For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another,

 

Again with an imperatival sense.

 

NKJ 1 John 3:23 And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment.

 

NKJ 1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

 

It’s a result of spiritual growth. You only know God as you grow spiritually after salvation. 

 

NKJ 1 John 4:11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

 

Again with an imperatival infinitive there.

 

NKJ 1 John 4:12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.

 

Then:

 

NKJ 2 John 1:5 And now I plead with you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the beginning: that we love one another.

 

So those are the fifteen different uses of this command to love one another. The reason I wanted to go through all of that is because this isn’t something that is just stated one time or two times. It’s again and again and again. Even when it’s not stated precisely as “love one another”, it is stated in other ways.

 

  1.  The third point in our Doctrine of One Another is that we are to encourage one another. We are to encourage one another. We find this in three passages in Romans 1:12, 1 Thessalonians 4:18 and 1 Thessalonians 5:18.  In each of these passages we have a slightly different word in Romans 1:12; but it is a form of the other word. The 1 Thess. 4:18 and 5:11 we have the word parakaleo, which is the same word we have in our passage in Hebrews 10, to comfort, to encourage, to come alongside, to strengthen, to exhort or challenge. Then the intensified form sumparakaleo is used in Romans 1:12. 

 

In Romans 1:12 Paul says:

 

NKJ Romans 1:12 that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.

 

It doesn’t translate well in English; but you don’t have the “one another” come across in most English translations so I’ve put it in there to give you a sense of where that word is. Paul is saying that he wants to be encouraged. Here is the Apostle Paul; and he is encouraged and strengthened by being with other believers and this mutual ministry that we have in one another’s lives by being together with them by the other’s faith, by their positive volition, by their encouragement in the Word that we gain great encouragement when we understand that there are other believers that are positive. It’s not just you and I and a few others; but that there are many others who believe the same way we believe and are studying the Word and the Word is a priority. That is encouraging us to meet with a group of believers just by the virtue of numbers. 

 

That’s not a sign of weakness. That is normal in life. When you go to a class and there’s only one person there and you never see more than maybe two or three others, you may be a little concerned that things aren’t going very well. When there’s a large number, the numbers do encourage you. It’s not that you are putting the emphasis on numbers or using those as a barometer. It’s just that we become encouraged when we see others responding to the Truth. 

 

In 1 Thessalonians 4:18 Paul uses the word parakaleo. 

 

NKJ 1 Thessalonians 4:18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.

 

So the comfort comes from doctrine. The priority is always on doctrine. It is not on social relationships or dependence on people that there’s no sense of that anywhere in Scripture. But we are to comfort one another with the words of Scripture. 

 

Same thing in 1 Thessalonians 5:11. This is also in the context of grief.

 

NKJ 1 Thessalonians 5:11 Therefore comfort each other and edify one another,

 

So there are two different words here used for the “one another” activity – comfort and edify or build up one another. 

 

just as you also are doing.

 

So we have these two different Greek words that used in these passages – sumparakaleo and parakaleo emphasizing that d imension of our “one another” ministry. 

 

Now that’s the first three points.  We’ve go 17 more to go. A lot to this so we’ll come back next time to start on point #4.

 

Illustrations