And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works. Hebrews 10:24
The legal profession has an interesting word to refer to changes that are made to property that is being sold. The word is ‘damage’, and it refers to any type of changes. If you dig a hole on the property, that is damage. If you build a garage on the property, that is damage. If you dump garbage on the property, that is damage. If you install a drainage ditch, that is damage. When you or I use the word damage, it always means something bad. But to lawyers, damage could be good or bad, depending on what the damage is. In fact, sometimes damage can be very good. It’s an example of the context being critical to the meaning of a word. That’s what we have in today’s text, with the use of the word ‘provoke’. Normally, provoking somebody is not a good thing, so please don’t do it. But in the meaning of our verse, provoking is a very good thing, and please do it as much as you can!
To provoke someone is to urge or cause them to do something or to behave in a certain way. As Christians, we are to provoke one another when it comes to love and good works. That sounds good, but how do we do that?
There are three ways to provoke each other unto love. The first way is to study and follow the example of the Lord Jesus. Everything that He did in His life among us was motivated by His love to us. He genuinely cared about people as demonstrated by the care that He took with them, the tears that He shed for them, the great distances He travelled to reach them. The second way is to be an example of love ourselves, in the face of rejection and hatred. If we can show the love of Christ in times and places where the world would retaliate and react with anger, we will encourage other Christians to do the same. The third way is to learn what the Word of God has to say about love, and to pass on what we learn. We can start with 1 Corinthians 13, an entire chapter devoted to the right way to love. Life would be so different if we all lived according to the love described in that chapter.
Provoking to good works according to our text is not the same as the good works that the world and religion use. Most people see good works as a means of gaining favour with God or of advancing themselves in their organization or community. For the Christian, good works are not needed to gain favour with God because the Lord Jesus provided all of the good works to do that when He died for our sins. For us, good works are the response to God’s love, the outflowing of gratitude for our salvation and for God’s blessings for us. So if we provoke one another to good works, we remind each other of all of what God has done for us, and urge each other to respond with worship and service. The apostle Paul often referred to himself as a bondslave of Jesus Christ. It was a service that he willingly and wholeheartedly threw himself into. Over and over in his epistles, he urges us to do the same. He provokes us to good works.
I hope today’s message is provoking, that it provokes you to love and good works. – Jim MacIntosh