Peaceful Spurring

Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.

Hebrews 12:14

These wonderful thoughts of peace and holiness do not stand alone in the Bible, and it is important to realize this.

Just prior to these words, the inspired author of Hebrews wrote of faith, courage, commitment, discipline, and vision. He commanded us to keep our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, and run with endurance the race marked out for us. He commanded us to strengthen our feeble arms and knees so that we can do the work of God. One important work of the pastor is to get the church of Christ into fit condition so that she can become who Christ is calling and enabling her to become, and so that she can do what Christ has commanded her to do.

So to make every effort to live in peace with everyone cannot mean to avoid challenging us to be who God calls us to be. It cannot mean to be so weak and non-offensive that we never “spur one another on to love and good works” (Heb. 10:24), because the author has already made his case for those matters. Paul wrote that “speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, namely. Christ” (Eph. 4:15). To live in peace in this passage means to be gentle and gracious as we challenge ourselves to be bold and daring. If we are on either side of this matter, to the neglect of the other, we are out of balance.

If we provoke to love, if we spur one another on to love, then there should be a gracious manner about us as we do so. “Spurring” — the digging into the sides of a horse by the rider with sharp implements on his feet — pictures pain and agitation to the horse, but the idea is not that we do that to the body of Christ, to our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Rather the image is of gentleness and graciousness. But neither are we to avoid challenging one another.

And holiness in the Bible does not describe someone who is meek, mild, non-offensive, and passive. Holiness has the image of the foreboding presence of God that must condemn sin as well as the sinner. Holiness is an attribute Christ bestows on believers through His sacrificial death for our sins and His resurrection from the grave. “To be holy” means to apply the work of Christ to our hearts, to let the gospel have its full effect in our souls, that we would root out every vestige of sin and impurity, and seek to stand in His righteousness alone. We cannot by our own efforts become holy, but we can through Christ apply His holiness to every thought and action, taking them all captive to Him.

Trying to balance boldness with gentleness is challenging, and it is something we will never be able to do in our own strength alone. We need God to do it in us and through us. But through the holiness bestowed on us in our salvation, through the work of the Spirit in our lives, we take on the character to Christ, and we will find that this trait of “peaceful spurring” is exactly what He does best in our lives and through our lives. The inclusive gentleness of our Master, who challenges in love all of His people, makes Him to our hearts someone we love to follow. If we will lead like Him, we must love like Him.