Yeshua has made an awesome, eternally powerful, one-time sacrifice for our sins. He has purified us, made us perfect, and set us apart as holy so that we may enter forever into God’s presence. In this, the author of Hebrews wishes us to have “full assurance of faith” so that we may “draw near with a true heart” to God (Hebrews 10:22). He wants us to “hold fast to the unwavering profession of the hope” (Hebrews 10:23), so that we will have an unshakable confidence in Yeshua, and never fall away. So in order to strengthen us to hold onto Yeshua as tightly as we can, the author invites us to consider something vital that most believers today know little about:

“…how to provoke one another to love and to good actions” (10:24).

It is essential for us as Messiah-followers to seek the edification of our faith. Our hope will naturally weaken when we are not being challenged in or motivated toward its deepening. Usually such edification is sought through preaching, teaching, praise and worship, or other religious activities. Yet contrary to Christian conditioning, the mode in which the Scriptures tell us to operate for this upbuilding cannot be achieved in the context of the modern worship service. Instead, the author’s remedy is for us to provoke one another. Plainly stated, as fellow disciples of Yeshua, we are not meant to let each other just coast along, lazily resting on our “blessed assurance.” We are called to be actively involved in one another’s lives.

At no time do the Scriptures suggest that we can or should rely on Saturday or Sunday sermons, or on any kind of unidirectional instruction, for this crucial aid. Quite the opposite, in order for us to be moved to love and good actions—which build our faith—it is our mutual responsibility to poke and prod one another. Passively receiving from professional clergy will not fully prepare us to persevere in Yeshua. We will be prepared to hold fast to the unwavering profession of hope only when we, as fellow believers in Yeshua, take that hope seriously enough to act.

Yet for such provocation to take place, this presupposes that we actually have real, meaningful contact with other believers. This is the sole reason why the author exhorts us to “not forsak[e] the gathering of ourselves together, as is the custom of certain people” (10:25).

Despite the common anachronistic interpretation that this means “you have to go to church,” Hebrews is actually calling us to something far too uncommon in today’s Body of Messiah—which explains the current shape we’re in. Nowhere does the author say or imply that we are not to forsake meeting in a special building, or being fed the word from a pulpit, or group worship through singing, or anything of the sort. The text simply does not address whether those things are of any value or not, and we shouldn’t read into it as if it does.

Rather, the author tells us to not stop gathering ourselves together explicitly for the sake of provoking one another to love and good actions—for the strengthening of our faith. We are not told to keep meeting together so that we can sit in rows staring at the back of each other’s heads while one man on a stage speaks at us. It is so that we may come together in what has become a most foreign and uncomfortable way: face to face as fellow-believers. This is the biblical prescription for how we are to be exhorted and provoked to keep acting upon our faith in Yeshua.

As we wait for and work toward the coming of Messiah, it can be far too easy to lose hope. The exhortation to not forsake the gathering of ourselves together is so that we will rely not on religious mechanisms, but on one another—mutually urging each other on to love and good actions, so that we will hold fast to and persevere in our hope in Yeshua. If we will gather in this specific way and for this particular purpose, then we will be properly built up in Yeshua. We will be able to pull together in our push toward the hope of the promise, remaining strong in our faith and confidence in the Master.

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