Commentary on "Social Support: The Tie That Binds"

 

 

Day 5: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 - Support One Another

 

Today's lesson title "Support One Another" (page 156 of the Teacher's Quarterly) contains a good list of texts to help the reader address the question: 

What do the following verses teach us about how we are to relate to one another?

Most of the verses in the list contain exhortation to love and forgive and care for one another--but the admonitions contain a caveat: we are to love, care, or forgive one another in the Lord as Christ has done for us. In other words, these instructions cannot be read merely as suggestions that we forgive, love, and care for one another. 

Treating each other as Christ treats us is not mere "tolerance" or peace-keeping or making the other feel good or avoiding friction. Rather, loving as Christ loves is sacrificial. It means we must consider one another as more important than ourselves (Phil. 2:3), not thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought (Rom. 12:2). This sort of sacrificial love means that our calling is to love others not for their sakes, not for our sakes, but for God. 

We may not even know how to handle difficult situations that arise, but if we submit the relationship to God and ask Him to show us how to love the other for Him, He will be able to touch that person through our submissive willingness to be His hands and heart. Supporting one another in a biblical sense does not mean we simply love, forgive, and care as we humanly understand these words. It means we submit our own desires and needs to the truth of God's word and allow Him to plant us in reality and truth. Only as we become filled with God's truth can we truly love another person. Moreover, loving as Christ loved can mean confronting sin or evil in another person's life, calling them to repentance.

Loving for God is not a concept natural man can express. True support is identified as acknowledging each other as "members one of another" (Rom 12:5), and this support and unity is accomplished only as we allow the Holy Spirit to equip us and build us up as the body of Christ "until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God" (Eph. 4:12-13). True support only happens in the context of submitting ourselves to the word of God, to His gifts to us in the members of His body, and to His discipline of us individually as we allow His word to teach us the truth and to transform our minds.

We must make a comment on the text 1 Thessalonians 4:18: 

"Therefore comfort one another with these words."

This text has literally been yanked out of context. It is not a text commanding us to speak words of comfort to one another wherever we find someone in need of any sort of comfort. This verse is the end of one of the New Testament's most powerful passages about the return of Jesus and the resurrection of the righteous. 1 Thessalonians 4:18 only makes sense in context with the rest of the passage, beginning with verse 13:

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren,about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive  and remain will be caughtup together with them in the clouds to meet the Lordin the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.

In context, verse 18 is saying this: When members of your congregation, your part of Christ's body, die, comfort each other with this certain knowledge. You do not need to grieve as most people grieve, because Jesus' resurrection guarantees that your loved ones who died in Christ will also rise again. And here's what will happen: We who are alive when Jesus returns will not go to be with Him before those who died go to him. God will bring those who have fallen asleep in Jesus with Him when He returns. The Lord will descend with a shout; the archangel and the trumpet will sound, and the dead in Christ will rise. 

In other words, the bodies of the righteous dead will rise and be reunited with their spirits which will be returning with Jesus (read verse 14 again). Then we who are alive will be caught up with them, together, and we will all be forever with the Lord.

This is the blessed hope we have; the righteous dead will return with Jesus; their bodies will rise, and they will be resurrected exactly as Jesus was, and all of us will meet Him in the air. 

This is the comfort we are to share with one another.

 

Summary

1. The texts in this lesson exhort us to love, care, and forgive one another in the Lord as Christ has done.
2. Caring for each other in the Lord is different from the natural human response to others' need.
3. Loving as Christ loved is sacrificial; it means considering others more important than ourselves and submitting our own needs and desires to God and allowing Him to give us His wisdom and insight as we care for one another.
4. Loving as Christ loved may mean confronting sin in another so he may come to repentance.
5. 1 Thessalonians 4:18 is not about generic comfort but is an exhortation to comfort one another with the truth that God will bring back with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him. The righteous dead will return with Jesus when He comes (1 Thess 4:14), and then their bodies will rise and they will be resurrected. At that point the living righteous and the resurrected righteous will meet the Lord in the air and will be with Him forever. It is this powerful truth with which we are to comfort one another.

 

GO TO DAY 6

 

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