In our school weight room, a former teacher friend of mine posted a sign on safety. Then, at the bottom of the sign he wrote: “Help and encourage each other, make your friend great.”
That last phrase to “make your friend great” has captivated my attention ever since as expressing the heart of what the scriptures want of us in relationship to one another. In fact, we read something almost identical to that phrase in Romans 12:10 — “Outdo one another in showing honor.”
Why? Precisely because such a phrase, as with any moral standard in the Bible, flows from God’s very nature. It is what is true of him. So, for example, the Father lives to make his Son and his Holy Spirit great. The Son lives to make the Father and the Spirit great. The Spirit lives to make the Father and the Son great. That is to say, they live to “lift each other up” and magnify the other’s importance and draw attention to the other’s activity as being incalculably significant. In short, they seek to outdo each another in showing honor.
That highlights the fact that God completely embodies and lives true to the words of Jesus: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” All that either the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit receive from each other or from angels or any other creature they immediately defer to the honor of the others.
That way of being also serves as a definition of humility. True humility lives to make others great. And this too flows from God. Listen to this phrase from Psalm 18:35. Speaking to the Lord, the Psalmist writes “…your humility makes me great.”
Doesn’t all this strike you as being stunningly beautiful? To think that the one and only God should be like that! He is not role playing humility or adopting such a posture for the time being. This is by nature who he is! Little wonder, then, that he insists that we be like that ourselves. It is the DNA, if you will, of what possessing eternal life, God’s life, is all about and of living a life of boundless joy. Make your friends great!
