A good word spoken in the Spirit brings new life. Now let us consider how this plan, of one individual speaking personally to another for the serious purpose of edifying, fits into God’s scheme of things. Especially, we will see how individual encouragement and teaching belong in the life of a local church fellowship.
Both public ministry and the various forms of private, individual edification are needed in any living church. God’s Word furthermore indicates two manners in which each type of ministry is to be performed, namely, spontaneous and planned.
Missing the development of the personal discipling ministries, some churches rely on organizational skills and platform expertise. This takes much invested effort while producing little lasting return. Pity the church whose output is mechanically determined by its input. Even a perfect machine can put out no more than its input.
True edification, in contrast, cooperates with the laws of life. Living seed invested in good ground “produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown” (Matt. 13:23).
Nor can any amount of very spiritual public efforts care for all the needs of a church family. Thank God for any hopeful trends along this line, but there is yet more in his plans for us.
Still further, evangelism, whether public or personal, cannot bring to the church the quickening needed today. Scripture very plainly requires the average church member to be involved in strengthening other individuals in a personal manner.
The Scripture Teaches Personal Edification
The New Testament presents a startling array of texts on this theme. Passing by our Lord Jesus Christ’s very personal ministry with numbers of individuals, let us move into the book of Acts and see how individual teaching, training, and exhortation played a vital part.
You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. (Acts 20:20)
So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears. (Acts 20:31)
The New American Standard Bible translates the last part of verse 31, “I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.” Clearly, the apostle devoted much effort to individuals.
The same Greek words for “each one” are found in 1 Thessalonians 2:11, which Phillips translates, “You will remember how we dealt with each one of you personally, like a father with his own children, comforting and encouraging.”
Imagine the apostle’s heavy burden of work. Yet he could write to this young church and say that he had ministered to them one by one. The next verse reveals what he hoped to accomplish by this dealing with individuals: “We told you from our own experience how to live lives worthy of the God who is calling you to share the splendour of his own kingdom” (1 Thess. 2:12 Phillips).
Many other texts set forth the same very personal ministry and also make abundantly clear that this is a work assigned to each believer.
Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. (Rom. 14:19)
We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. (Rom. 15:1-2)
I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another. (Rom. 15:14)
We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me. (Col. 1:28-29)
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. (Col. 3:16)
Therefore encourage each other with these words. (I Thess. 4:18)
Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. (I Thess. 5:11-14)
Notice how the last passage above clearly distinguishes between the leadership responsibilities and this more general obligation of mutual edification assigned to all members of the church.
We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat. And as for you, brothers, never tire of doing what is right.
If anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him. Do not associate with him, in order that he may feel ashamed. Yet do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother. (2 Thess. 3:11-15)
Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. (I Tim. 4:13)
Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. (2 Tim. 4:2-3)
Since an overseer is entrusted with God’s work, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.
For there are many rebellious people, mere talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision group. They must be silenced, because they are ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach—and that for the sake of dishonest gain. (Titus 1:7-11)
Notice that the bishop, or elder-pastor, is told how (Titus 1:9) he is to overcome those whose words are spreading error among individuals in the congregation. The wholesome, defensive weapon is authoritative, individual exhortation. Continue now to the next chapter and note God’s chain of individual training: Paul to Titus, Titus to mature women, mature women to younger women. This kind of instruction is best done in face-to-face encounters.
You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. (Titus 2:1-5)
This chapter contains much on individual exhortation. Study carefully verse 15:
“These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you.”
See the authority that belongs to the personal edifier. Directly, however, the apostle moves on to caution Titus that such a ministering one always ought “to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men” (Titus 3:2).
Also notice: “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (Heb. 3:12-13).
Notice here the effects of sin and what is God’s instrument to prevent its malignancy from developing. Individual exhortation is the chosen tool: “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Heb. 10:24-25).
God’s Plan for the Church Involves Personal Edification
God gives spiritual equipment to each believer. These gifts are manifested and used for the profit of all others. God does not always work with a vertical strike. One believer in your church may be having trouble simply because another believer has not exercised his or her equipment to benefit the first believer. A troubled man may be calling on God and hoping for some heavenly visitation in his private praying, but the real problem is in the life of a brother who does not minister to others as he should. There is the holdup.
In figure 1, fellow believer number 1 needs your help. Furthermore, believer number 3 receives his or her needed encouragement, instruction, or added insights from number 2, but this spiritual uplift might never take place if number 2 receives no input from you. This is the nature of body life as expressed in Ephesians 4:16: “The whole body . . . grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
Now notice John 7:37-39: On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
Fig. 1. Paths of encouragement in the church
A thoughtful study of this text will show that the Spirit himself is the vital flow Jesus had in mind, as verse 39 indicates. Next, note that the believer’s intake is mentioned in verse 37. Thirsting for comfort, refreshment, or the like, he or she comes to Christ, and this believer receives in the Spirit. Then in the next verse the Christian is shown as an intermediate supplier of vital edification to those beyond. Verse 38 depicts output. The believer therefore is a channel of the Spirit’s work within Christ’s assembly.
A little reflection makes clear that a channel can be blocked at either end. Many believers labor hard and long to get their input straightened out. They are much concerned about their life from God and wish to take in more from him. However, we need to consider our output as well. By this, I do not mean routine religious work. Rather, it is essential that we make definite arrangement for a spiritual output that touches other lives directly. This outflow might take the form of kind words to a distressed one or perhaps practical suggestions to one bogged in indecision—all based on Scripture. In any case, the output must be of the same quality and quantity as the input. If not, something is clogging the works.
For this reason I believe so much in personal edification and deeper involvement with fellow workers of the local body where we are. If we do not “deadend” any truth but continually pour life and deeper truths into others, then we may expect God to be faithful in supplying more meaningful input to us. We will gain new insights into his depths as we serve. This truth means that, in the matter of structuring a church in a spiritual way, leaders must see to it that members have such a meaningful output.
Average church members are grotesquely shriveled from lack of spiritual functioning. They are repeatedly challenged to deepen their spiritual life with God. This advice is painfully futile unless they are also offered deeper forms of expression for this new life. It seems ludicrous to challenge a man to seek a deep spiritual experience on the input side of his life and then deprive him of any meaningful outlet.
Surely the Scriptures not only teach us how to obtain divine equipment and deeper spiritual power but also gives definite directions as to how we are to share this valuable intake. Individual admonition and upbuilding are imperatives for each life for the following reasons:
1. This upbuilding is God’s plan for perfecting his church.
2. Such upbuilding, in both direct teaching and example, is found all through the Bible.
3. God’s authority and his special blessings belong to those who practice personal admonition.
Each one must take in privately from another. Still further, you and I need the outflow to others. I need it, and my Christian brothers and sisters need it. May the church recover this forgotten art of personal edification!
(Taken from my book, “People Helping People,” available for order here.)