Love and Encourage One Another

February 18

“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, (2) has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; (3) who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, (4) having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they,” Hebrews 1:1-4.

“And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, (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,” Hebrews 10:24, 25.

The first passage of scripture describes what God has done for us through the laying down of the life of Jesus to save mankind from the penalty of sin. This is the profound act of love that is the Holy One’s “unspeakable GIFT,” II Corinthians 9:15, to everyone who’s ever lived.

The second passage encourages us to stir up love and its resultant good works among ourselves. We must fellowship together and urge one another to strive for the things that are eternal rather than for the things that are temporal. Paul stated unequivocally that placing our focus on the spiritual rather than on the temporal would be all the more important as the evidence of Christ’s soon return became more apparent.

None of us knows the day or the hour of the Second Coming of Christ; Jesus said that only the Father knows that appointed time (see Matthew 24:36, Mark 13:32), so we all must be ready at any moment.

The coming of Jesus for those who have put their trust in Him may be delayed for years, decades, centuries or millennia, but we know each of us will meet Him face-to-face at that hour when He calls us home. At that moment it will be too late to love as He has loved, to encourage as He has encouraged, to forgive as He has forgiven.

At that moment, our eternal fate will be sealed, depending on what we have done with the free gift God has given to us and we will have no further opportunities to do good works in His name.

The best way we can prepare ourselves to meet the Lord in the air (see I Thessalonians 4:17) or to slip earth’s mortal coil in death is by obeying Paul’s admonition in Hebrews 1:1-4, which admonishes us to love and encourage one another, even as our Savior has represented the Father to us by His love.