Encourage One Another Daily

We must Encourage One Another Daily. In life, there are always challenges waiting to seize us. Those challenges may be physical, relational, financial, vocational or the like. All of those challenges serve as minions to the greatest challenge that every human will ever face – sin. In Genesis, we see God proclaim that to Cain, thus to us. “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Genesis 4:7 Rule means to have dominion or to reign.

In Psalm 51:5, David reveals or conveys that we all were born into the world as sinners: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” Likewise, Paul reinforces that point in Ephesians 2:3 which states that “All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath..” If we are all “by nature children of wrath,” it can only be because we are all by nature sinners–for God does not direct His wrath towards those who are not guilty. God did not create the human race sinful, but upright. But we fell into sin and became sinful due to the sin of Adam. (Matt Perman)

In Cain, God presents the human paradox. How can those who are born in sin rule over sin? Only in Jesus Christ. We see this throughout the bible but particularly in Romans 6.

We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with,[a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

As believers in Christ, we are dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Consequently, sin shall no longer be your master.  It is in Christ Jesus that we can rule over sin. As with Cain, sin is crouching at our door. With Christ, we can master or rule it. In the post Turning Away from the Living God, I communicated that our hearts are sinful and unbelieving. This is why we are told to Encourage One Another Daily in Hebrews 3.

12 See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end. 15 As has just been said:

“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts
as you did in the rebellion.”[c]

It is sin that is our enemy which is why we must Encourage One Another Daily. Sin will turn our hearts away from the living God. If we don’t want to be turned away or have another brother or sister turned away, we must Encourage One Another Daily. We do that by reminding each other what God has said in His Word. In Romans 10:17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.