Help each other to stand firm

We all know what it is to find new strength. You did not think you could go on, but someone comes alongside you—like Timothy did here—and says, Brother, you can trust the Lord. I’m going to pray for you. Let’s go. I’ll run with you for a while. And that is the kind of thing that must happen in the church. Do you see the pressing need that is forgotten by those who would turn the evangelical church into nothing but a worship center and a so-called—wrongly called, I think—convert-producing factory? The church is a community of relationships, of love—people who are afflicted in a way that salvation is on the line. God’s grace is, of course, sovereign over it—but so far as we can see, there is a real war going on. We are to be strengthened by faith, to be used by God to strengthen—to establish and exhort—one another.

Well, what is our goal in all this—in our tending to our faith and that of others in the midst of affliction? Well, the goal is made implicit, at least, in Paul’s concern that his labour would not be in vain—that is, by them falling into unbelief. Now in 1 Thessalonians 3:8, he is more explicit. He rejoices to learn that you are standing fast in the Lord. Now that is the goal. You see it all through the Bible, but especially in Paul’s letters. What is our goal? Simply this: to stand firm in the faith, to be unmoved, to be moved toward God, not away from God, to stand firm, to be steadfast in our faith, in the Word of God, in the gospel of Jesus Christ.¹

Richard D. Phillips