TEXAS GOSPEL VOLUNTEER

A familiar passage in the tenth chapter of Hebrews urges believers to keep gathering and to encourage one another all the more as the day draws near. Some people say it’s a reason to attend church regularly, and that reading matches what the writer intended. The call to keep assembling highlights how much a believer needs time with people who share the same precious faith.

The passage also describes what happens in those gatherings. Believers are stirred toward love and good works as they encourage and hold one another accountable. The New Testament is full of commands built around the phrase one another. We are are told to admonish, exhort, confront, pray for and love one another, and each of those instructions plays out in the fellowship of the body of Christ.

Isolation makes the Christian life hard. A person who withdraws from other believers will struggle to be effective, to walk as a Christian should walk, and to live a holy life. Close, intimate fellowship with God’s people draws a believer in and keeps him near the Lord. It keeps him answerable to the teaching of Scripture and strengthens him, so that he becomes useful in the kingdom and to those outside the faith.

Isn’t this the exhortation at the heart of Hebrews 10?

and let’s consider how to encourage one another in love and good deeds, not abandoning our own meeting together, as is the habit of some people, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

Hebrews 10:24-25