“Basic Christianity, Part 19” by Romans
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As we began to do in previous Installments, we are continuing in our review and examination of the two words “one another” as they occur in the New Testament either consecutively or in the same verse. I will continue to quote an excerpt from Jesus' prayer on the night before His crucifixion: “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:20-21). Jesus wanted then, and wants, now, His followers to be one.
Tonight,we'll be looking at the words “one another” as they occur in the Book of Hebrews. This Book is a masterpiece of doctrine and teaching, on par with the Epistle to the Romans, but written to Jewish believers in Christ. The identity of the author is open to speculation. Personally, I lean toward the Apostle Paul being the author. Some say Apollos may have been the author. He was described in the book of Acts as “an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures” (Acts 18:24).
So let's go, now, to the Book of Hebrews to read and examine, one at a time, the three occurrences of “one another” that are there. The first is found in Hebrews 3:13: “But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.”
Albert Barnes comments: “But exhort one another daily - This is addressed to the members of the churches; and it follows, therefore: (1) That it is their duty to exhort their brethren; and, (2) That it is their duty to do it “daily;” that is, constantly; While this is the special duty of the ministers of the gospel, it is also the duty of all the members of the churches, and a most important, but much-neglected duty.
This does not refer to “public” exhortation, which more appropriately pertains to the ministers of the gospel, but to that private watch and care which the individual members of the church should have over one another. But in what cases is such exhortation proper? What rules should regulate it? I answer, it may be regarded as a duty, or is to be performed in such cases as the following:
(1) Intimate friends in the church should exhort and counsel one another; should admonish each other of their faults; and should aid one another in the divine life. (2) Parents should do the same thing to their children. They are placed particularly under their watch and care. A pastor cannot often see the members of his flock in private; and a parent may greatly aid him in his work by watching over the members of their families who are connected with the church.
(3) Sunday School teachers may aid much in this duty. They are to be assistants to parents and to pastors. They often have under their care youthful members of the churches. They have an opportunity of knowing their state of mind, their temptations, and their dangers better than the pastor can have. It should be theirs, therefore, to exhort them to a holy life.
(4) The aged should exhort the young. Every aged Christian may thus do much for the promotion of religion. His experience is the property of the church; and he is bound so to employ it as to be useful in aiding the feeble, reclaiming the wandering, recovering the backslider, and directing the inquiring. There is a vast amount of “spiritual capital” of this kind in the church that is unemployed, and that might be made eminently useful in helping others to heaven.
(5) Church members should exhort one another. There may not be the intimacy of personal friendship among all the members of a large church, but still the connection between them should be regarded as sufficiently tender and confidential to make it proper for anyone to admonish a brother who goes astray. They belong to the same communion. They sit down at the same supper of the Lord. They express their assent to the same articles of faith.
They are regarded by the community as united. Each member sustains a portion of the honor and the responsibility of the whole; and each member should feel that he has a right, and that it is his duty to admonish a brother if he goes astray. Yet this duty is greatly neglected. In what church is it performed? How often do church members see a fellow member go astray without any exhortation or admonition! How often do they hear reports of the inconsistent lives of other members and perhaps contribute to the circulation of those reports themselves, without any pains taken to inquire whether they are true!
(6) How often do the poor fear the rich members of the church, or the rich despise the poor, and see one another live in sin, without any attempt to entreat or save them! I would not have the courtesies of life violated. I would not have any assume a dogmatical or dictatorial air. I would have no one step out of his proper sphere of life.
But the principle which I would lay down is, that the fact of church membership should inspire such confidence as to make it proper for one member to exhort another whom he sees going astray. Belonging to the same family; having the same interest in religion; and all suffering when one suffers, why should they not be allowed tenderly and kindly to exhort one another to a holy life?
While it is called Today - While life lasts; or while you may be permitted to use the language “Today hear the voice of God.” The idea is, that the exhortation is not to be intermitted. It is to be our daily business to admonish and exhort one another. Christians are liable every day to go astray; every day they need aid in the divine life; and they who are fellow-heirs with them of salvation should be ever ready to counsel and advise them.
Lest any of you be hardened – see the notes at Hebrews 3:8.” The Notes there say, “Harden not your hearts - Do not render the heart insensible to the divine voice and admonition. A hard heart is that where the conscience is seared and insensible; where truth makes no impression; where no religious effect is produced by afflictions; where preaching is listened to without interest; and where the mind is unaffected by the appeals of friends.
The idea here is, that a refusal to listen to the voice of God is connected with a hardening of the heart. It is in two ways: (1) The very refusal to do this tends to harden it. And, (2) In order to resist the appeals of God, people must resort to the means of “voluntarily” hardening the heart.
This they do by setting themselves against the truth; by the excuses which they offer for not becoming Christians: by plunging into sin in order to avoid serious impressions; and by direct resistance of the Holy Spirit. No inconsiderable part of the efforts of sinners consists in endeavoring to produce insensibility in their minds to the truth and the appeals of God.
As in the provocation - Literally, “in the embittering.” Then it means what embitters or provokes the mind - as disobedience. Here it refers to what they did to “embitter” the mind of God against them; that is to the course of conduct which was adopted to provoke him to wrath.
In the day of temptation - In the time of temptation - the word “day” being used here, as it is often, to denote an indefinite period, or “time” in general. The word “temptation” here refers to the various provocations by which they “tried” the patience of God. They rebelled against him; they did what put the divine patience and forbearance to a trial. It does not mean that they tempted God to do evil, but that his long-suffering was “tried” by their sins.
In the wilderness - The desert through which they passed. The word “wilderness” in the Scriptures commonly means a “desert.” “One provocation was in demanding bread at Sin; a second for want of water at Massah or Meribah; a third time at Sinai with the golden calf; a fourth time at Taberah for want of flesh; a fifth time at Kadesh when they refused to go up into Canaan, and the oath came that they should die in the wilderness. A like refusal may prevent us from entering into rest.” - Dr. John P. Wilson, Manuscript Notes.
Back to the original Commentary: “It is possible for Christians to become in a sense hardened. Their minds become less sensitive than they were to the claims of duty, and their consciences become less tender. Hence, the propriory of mutual exhortation, that they may always have the right feeling, and may always listen to the commands of God.
The deceitfulness of sin - See the notes at Ephesians 4:22, which says, “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;” For this Albert Barnes writes: “That ye put off - That you lay aside, or renounce. The manner in which the apostle states those duties, renders it not improbable that there had been some instruction among them of a contrary character, and that it is possible there had been some teachers there who had not enforced, as they should bare done, the duties of practical religion.
Concerning the former conversation - The word “conversation” here means conduct - as it commonly does in the Bible.” The meaning here is, “with respect to your former conduct or habits of life, lay aside all that pertained to a corrupt and fallen nature.” You are not to lay “everything” aside that formerly pertained to you. Your dress, and manners, and modes of speech and conversation, might have been in many respects correct.
But everything that proceeded from sin; every habit, and custom, and mode of speech and of conduct that was the result of depravity, is to be laid aside. The special characteristics of an unconverted man you are to put off, and are to assume those which are the proper fruits of a renewed heart.
The old man - This is described in the Notes from Romans 6:6: “Paul uses the expression to denote our sinful and corrupt nature; the passions and evil propensities that exist before the heart is renewed. It refers to the love of sin, the indulgence of sinful propensities, in opposition to the new disposition which exists after the soul is converted, and which is called “the new man.”
Is crucified - Is put to death, as if on a cross. In this expression there is a personification of the corrupt propensities of our nature represented as “our old man,” our native disposition, etc. The figure is here carried out, and this old man, this corrupt nature, is represented as having been put to death in an agonizing and torturing manner. The pains of crucifixion were perhaps the most torturing of any that the human frame could bear. Death in this manner was most lingering and distressing.
And the apostle here by the expression “is crucified” doubtless refers to the painful and protracted struggle which everyone goes through when his evil propensities are subdued; when his corrupt nature is slain; and when, a converted sinner, he gives himself up to God. Sin dies within him, and he becomes dead to the world, and to sin; “for as by the cross death is most lingering and severe, so that corrupt nature is not subdued but by anguish.” (Grotius.)
All who have been born again can enter into this description. They remember “the wormwood and the gall.” They remember the anguish of conviction; the struggle of corrupt passion for the ascendency; the dying convulsions of sin in the heart; the long and lingering conflict before it was subdued, and the soul became submissive to God. Nothing will better express this than the lingering agony of crucifixion: and the argument of the apostle is, that as sin has produced such an effect, and as the Christian is now free from its embrace and its power, he will live to God.”
Which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts - The meaning is: (1) That the unrenewed man is not under the direction of reason and sound sense, but is controlled by his “passions and desires.” The word “lusts,” has a more limited signification with us than the original word. That word we now confine to one class of sensual appetites; but the original word denotes any passion or propensity of the heart. It may include avarice, ambition, the love of pleasure, or of gratification in any way; and the meaning here is, that the heart is by nature under the control of such desires.
(2) Those passions are deceitful. They lead us astray, They plunge us into ruin. All the passions and pleasures of the world are illusive. They promise more than they perform; and they leave their deluded votaries to disappointment and to tears. Nothing is more “deceitful” than the promised pleasures of this world; and all who yield to them find at last that they “flatter but to betray.”
The original Commentary continues: “Sin is always deceitful. It promises more than it performs. It assures us of pleasure which it never imparts. It leads us on beyond what was supposed when we began to indulge in it. The man who commits sin is always under a delusion; and sin, if he indulges it, will lead him on from one step to another until the heart becomes entirely hardened. Sin puts on plausible appearances and preferences;
it assumes the name of virtue; it offers excuses and palliations {or, alleviations}, until the victim is snared, and then spell-bound he is hurried on to every excess. If sin was always seen in its true aspect when man is tempted to commit it, it would be so hateful that he would flee from it with the utmost abhorrence. What young man would become a drunkard if he saw when he began exactly the career which he would run?
What young man, now vigorous and healthful, and with fair prospects of usefulness and happiness would ever touch the intoxicating bowl, if he saw what he “would be” when he became a sot? What man would ever enter the room of the gambler if he saw just where indulgence would soon lead him, and if at the commencement he saw exactly the woe and despair which would inevitably ensue?
Who would become a voluptuary and a sensualist, if he saw exactly the close of such a career? Sin deceives, deludes, blinds. Men do not, or will not, see the fearful results of indulgence. They are deluded by the hope of happiness or of gain; they are drawn along by the fascinations and allurements of pleasure until the heart becomes hard and the conscience seared - and then they give way without remorse.
From such a course, the apostle would have Christians guarded by kind and affectionate exhortation. Each one should feel that he has an interest in keeping his brother from Such a doom; and each Christian thus in danger should be willing to listen to the kind exhortation of a Christian brother.”
The second and third times “one another” is used in this Book is in two consecutive verses:Hebrews 10:24-25: “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.”
The Sermon Bible writes of this: “I. "Works." Work is the condition of life in the world. The law of both kingdoms alike is, "If any man will not work, neither should he eat." Work has been made a necessity in the constitution of nature, and declared a duty in the positive precepts of Scripture. Idleness is both sin and misery. Every thing is working. A non-productive class is an anomaly in creation. Christ was a worker. He went about doing. The world is a field. It must be subdued and made the garden of the Lord.
II. Good works. It is not any work that will please God or be profitable to man. A bustling life will not make heaven sure. The works must be good in design and character. The motive must be pure, and the effect beneficent. Good works rendered by Christians to Christ, put forth upon a needy world, are not dangerous things. Christians should not be jealous, but zealous of good works. The Lord requires them; disciples render them; the world needs them.
III. Love and good works. Verily good works constitute a refreshing stream in the world wherever they are found flowing. It is a pity that they are too often like Oriental torrents, waters that fail in the time of need.
IV. Provoke unto love and good works. All the really effective machinery for doing good in the world depends for propulsion on the love that glows in human breasts; with all the revival of our own favoured times, the wheels, clogged with the thick clay of a predominating selfishness, move but slowly. Up with the impelling love into greater warmth, that it may put forth greater power.
V. "Consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works." It is the considerer, not the considered, who is provoked unto love. What attitude must we assume, and what preparation must we make, in order that love by the ministry of the Spirit may he kindled in our heart? Here is the prescription short and plain, "Consider one another." W. Arnot, Roots and Fruits, p. 51.
Mutual Consideration is to be a cultivated influence. By that I mean, that consideration is not necessarily natural to children, although it is to some. There is an inborn selfishness in most children; yet some little folks seem to be dowered with thoughtful faculties which they have inherited. Even children can be like Christ, living in others...
II. Mutual consideration is to be a provocative influence. "Consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works." Why has the word "provoke" got to have an ugly meaning? Why, in the same way that the word "retaliation" has. Because men oftener retaliate injuries than benefits!
If I were to announce a sermon on "Retaliation," most people would think that I meant to preach against the retaliation of injuries, forgetting the fact that a man can retaliate a benefit just as well as an injury! How can you provoke unto love? It cannot be done by speech, unless that speech is translated into deed. So the Apostle says, "Provoking one another." When you see the speech translated into the deed, then you have the provocative power.
The attractive power of life is in character, not in word only; and be thankful, those of you who are engaged in mission work, that you do not know all the results, for the might of influence has provoked some people you have never seen. This is the grandest thought to take away with us; that something which occurred twenty years ago may be provoking another invitation today, for good deeds never die; they walk the earth when we are dead and gone.
III. Mutual consideration is to be a Church influence. Consideration is the element that is to change the world. The cross living in us, and transfiguring us, will take away all those elements in our life which make us Pharisaic towards sinners, proud of our virtues, selfish in our thoughts and aims, hard in our judgments, and vulgar in our manners.
W. M. Statham, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxv., p. 92.
References: Heb_10:24.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 135; T. G. Bonney, Church of England Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 225. Heb_10:25.—C. P. Reichel, Ibid., vol. xiii., p. 133; Homilist, 2nd series, vol. i., p. 588; Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxvi., p. 216; W. Scott, Ibid., vol. xxix., p. 56; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. x., p. 289. Heb_10:26.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 465.”
We have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way; and we have in the heavenly sanctuary a great Priest over the house of God. On this foundation rests a threefold exhortation. (1) Let us draw near with a true heart, in the full assurance of faith. (2) Let us hold fast the profession of hope without wavering.
(3) Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works. Faith, hope, and love—this is the threefold result of Christ’s entrance into heaven, spiritually discerned, and a believing, hoping, and loving attitude of heart corresponds to the new covenant relation of Divine grace.
II. In times of persecution or lukewarmness, Christian fellowship is specially important; it is likewise a test of our faithfulness. The Hebrews, it seems, needed this word of exhortation; and the Apostle confirms it by the solemn addition, "Forasmuch as ye see the day approaching."
The Apostle refers, doubtless, to the approaching judgment of Jerusalem, connecting it, according to the law of prophetic vista, with the final crisis. Because the Lord is at hand we are to be patient, loving, gentle,—exercising forbearance towards our brother, while examining with strict care our own work.
III. The second advent of our Lord is the most powerful, as well as the most constraining motive. Called to eternal fellowship and love in joy and glory, let us fulfil the ministry of love in suffering and service, and let every day see some help and consolation given to our fellow-pilgrims. Christians see the day approaching, for they love Christ’s appearing; and to them the day of light is not far off. Jesus said, "I come quickly." A. Saphir, Lectures on Hebrews, vol. ii., p. 219.”
This concludes this evening's Discussion, “Basic Christianity, Part 19.”
This Discussion was originally presented “live” on February 3rd, 2021.
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