Being Holy, Responsible Children and Siblings, part V

2. Accordingly, humbly equip and maintain the faith of your fellow believers Hebrews 12:12–17

You know verse 12 begins then with my favorite word, therefore. I love this word in the Scriptures, because every time we see it, it tells us something really important is coming next. We’ve seen in verses 4–11 that God disciplines us, or orders our circumstances in such a way, that we may grow and mature as citizens of the kingdom of God. This next section then says to us, THEREFORE….as God disciplines us for our own good, we must now engage with one another by whatever means necessary to ensure that we all finish the race. If God as our Father is committed to our growth, so, too then the local church, brothers and sisters in Christ must be committed to the same thing. God commands you to not only care about the spiritual well–being of those sitting around you this morning in the pews, but to also do something about it. Simply put, in verses 12–17 we see number two, humbly equip and maintain the faith of your fellow believers.

Now, we’ll go through the particular exhortations briefly, as they are largely self–explanatory; it’s pretty straightforward here what we are supposed to be doing. But one thing I just want to note first is this adverb I use, “humbly.” Some of us do not have a problem passing judgment and correcting others, because we think we have it all figured out, we know what’s important, we live up to those standards, and thus have no problem correcting others when they fall short of those standards we have artificially constructed. Ironically, such a person is usually so stuck in their ways that they ignore these very kinds of warnings. Nonetheless, some of us know that this kind of judgmentalism, legalism is where we struggle, and so, we need to be reminded of the importance of humility.

But such persons are not the only people who need to be reminded of humility, I would argue those who are too timid to engage others, perhaps those who are too self–conscious or feel too unqualified, such people are equally in need of humility. You see both the judgmental legalist and the self–deprecating quiet person suffer from the very same thing, and that is a focus on self. The legalist says you need to be more like me; the insecure person says who am I to say anything. Both kinds of people miss the fact that this sibling obligation that we have in the church has nothing to do with us, but stems directly from our Father.

This is what I mean then by humbly equipping and maintaining one another. We can only do these things of verses 12–17, if we recognize that we are merely instruments of our heavenly Father. In other words, the legalist must stop emphasizing those behaviors that the Scripture are relatively quiet about; the insecure person must realize that one does not have to be perfect to proclaim the Word of God. And so, as we as a church think about then, our duty to one another, we need to humble ourselves and view ourselves not as holy experts, but as co–ministers to one another.