1 Thessalonians 5:11

“Wherefore exhort one another, and build each other up, even as also ye do.”

“Wherefore”: Because of all the encouraging truths just mentioned! “Exhort”: Comfort, exhort, entreat, encourage, implore. “Build”: Confirm, edify, embolden. “Even as also ye do”: Credit where credit is due, and again we find Paul always encouraging God's people to do more, or to do it today.

God wishes that we look out for each other (Romans 14:19; Romans 15:1; 1 Corinthians 10:23; 1 Peter 2:3). We often forget what being. "brother" really means, it includes the idea of looking out for your fellow brothers and sisters. God expects Christians to act like. loving family, because that it what we are supposed to be (1 Timothy 3:15). “We are not to leave it to an elite of professional comforters or counselors” (Stott p. 115). “The tense of the imperatives is the present continuous, and it conveys the thought that this is something that they should do habitually” (Morris p. 162). The word "build up" suggests that the Christian life is not supposed to be static. Christianity should be much more than merely hanging on. it is supposed to be. life of continual growth, success and victory (2 Peter 1:5), and who else is going to exhort and build us up? Stott reminds us, “The world can be. tough and unfriendly place, as we all know to our cost” (p. 114).

Closing Observation

“It is worth observing that Paul's teaching underlines the importance of moral and spiritual preparedness. There is. final wrath from which people need to be saved, and there is the implication that those who are unprepared will miss out on final salvation. Right and wrong matter in the end. Many people fight shy of this, adopting. relativistic view of morality and an ultimate universalism that claims that all mankind will finally be saved, no matter how they may have lived. So far, then, from this passage being time bound and no longer tenable in. Christian understanding of life, it has in fact. vital contribution to make to it” (Marshall p. 144).