Stir Up One Another
“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (Hebrews 10:24-25)
These verses are perhaps most famous for their encouragement to gather regularly with other believers (“not neglecting to meet together”). That is a fine point to emphasize, as a previous edition of Project 18:15 did. However, there is more than one remarkable detail in this passage, another one of which is the word translated “stir up.” Here are two notable points.
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1. It’s A Noun
The way it’s translated in English makes it appear that “stir up” is a verb (an action), but in Greek it is a noun (a thing). We could perhaps translate it as “a stirring up” — specifically, “a stirring up of love and good works.”
We can hardly fault English translators for using a verb instead of a noun, as a more direct translation would be awkward and confusing in English: “Let us consider one another to a stirring up of love and good works.”
2. It Means Sharp Disagreement
The noun translated “stir up” (παροξυσμὸν / paroxysmos) also means “sharp disagreement.” It appears in Scripture only one other time, in Acts 15:39: “And there arose a sharp disagreement so that they separated from each other.” This is the famous moment in which Paul and Barnabas part ways after disagreeing about whether to bring John Mark on their next missionary journey.
So, as Pastor Aaron Wojnicki of Faith Community Church says, this is “an extremely strong word,” “a very forceful word” for the author of Hebrews to use. But what could it possibly mean to have a “sharp disagreement” of “love and good works”?
Wojnicki says it means Christians are called to “stir the pot” with one another—
not to provoke one another up towards controversy, but…to be the kind of person who chooses very carefully their words so as to help and to prompt the believers of [one’s] church to love God supremely and others sacrificially.
This text is inviting us to give real thought, to flick the switch from autopilot to manual, and to give thought every time we come to church… “How can I help the people of this church love God the most and others sacrificially? How can I help them please Jesus rather than themselves?”
In an American culture where many fear offending or confronting others, and where niceness is often considered a virtue—sometimes even the highest virtue—Hebrews 10:24 calls Christians to godly provocation and confrontation with other believers, sometimes even to disagree openly with them (cf. Galatians 1:11-14) and risk offending them (cf. Matthew 16:23) for the sake of helping them love better and do what’s right.
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