What Is the Best Way to Help Each Other Rise?

With a view toward honoring that God-given personhood—intellect, emotions, and volition—of another, only essential help is offered while friendship is generously applied. And the help is offered with humility that only God is the perfect counselor (John 14:26)—all believers being priests with entry into his holy throne room of grace (1 Peter 2:5). So, God might lead another person on a different righteous way than another might immediately envision—and that is not only okay, but good evidence of Jesus being sought.

Is this uplifting kind of help not like him? Jesus sees in us people worth building into (Ephesians 2:21), people made in his image (Genesis 1:27) of great value in his sight (Matthew 6:26) who are capable of a holy calling as his Spirit overtakes us more and more (2 Timothy 1:9). He sees us in this refreshing way, as he accepts us in space and time. In love, his total acceptance pairs with good truth so that the forward work can take place.

In this way of approaching us, Jesus enables the truth to be received by us—for we know that grace, and not condemnation, is in his heart toward us (John 3:17). What falls short in the inner person is not “make or break” for our relationship with him—we won’t lose him. He already knows (Romans 5:8).

We know he speaks to us as a kind friend and Father. More, he speaks as a lover of our souls, calling us to rest in a beautiful abode of adoring him, and telling others how good he is through word and actions that duplicate the kind of goodness we have received.

If the weaker is made to believe opposite kinds of messages—that he or she is to be viewed according to his or her missteps, that he or she is not able to make wise choices anymore because some have been revealed to be failures, that he or she lives under the weight of condemnation felt by the downward glances of those around who do not see as God sees (1 Samuel 16:7), or that he or she will never be able to freely pursue the fullness of who God has created him or her uniquely to be again but will likely live subject to others’ “help” or to others’ glances of shame—these messages are debilitating and not of Jesus.

He helps us grow to show others grace as we have received it, and to each take our own places alongside the weak and lowly—since weakness is the entry point into gospel faith and lowliness the entry point into God’s presence each and every day (Matthew 5:3; James 4:6).

If we do have opportunity to help a weaker soul, it is not so far off—is it?—from imitating the help we receive each day from Jesus. That is how I have come to understand it, as I have learned to bring my weakness to Jesus for his help morning by morning.

Jesus shows us how: he teaches us to lift one another to our holy callings in Christ as we are created in him for good works that he has prepared in advance for each of us to do (Ephesians 2:10). Perhaps it could be best expressed that good helping, then, does not set oneself over the other, but beside or even beneath—that we might prop another up for a time, keep another from falling, nudge another to the next work on the journey, and encourage another in his or her power in the Spirit to stand and walk independent of help when the time is right.

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Lianna Davis is author of Keeping the Faith: A Study in Jude and Made for a Different Land: Eternal Hope for Baby Loss. She is also a contributor to We Evangelicals and Our Mission with Cascade Books. Lianna is a graduate of Moody Bible Institute and a student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. She lives in Illinois with her husband and daughter. You can learn more about her writing at her website.