Imagine an enormous building, five hundred stories tall. Each floor of this building has one million rooms. Each room is ten feet by ten feet, windowless, completely soundproof, and very comfortably furnished. Now suppose that every time somebody in the world becomes a Christian, God immediately locks him up in one of these rooms – in total isolation.

What's wrong with this picture of the Christian life? Obviously, there is no fellowship. There is no contact or relationship with other believers. The Bible tells us that God wants us to live our Christian lives in fruitful fellowship with others who share our Christian faith.

This is not surprising when we reflect on that eternal fellowship which still exists today among the three persons of the Godhead. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit have an abiding relationship of mutual helpfulness to one another. None of the three divine persons exists or labors independently of the other two.

What God himself constantly experiences perfectly in heaven (interpersonal fellowship), we may experience, albeit imperfectly, here on earth. In fact, God has given us some pointed guidelines to accomplish this very thing. One of those guidelines revolves around the Greek word allelon (pronounced al-LAY-loan), which occurs more than eighty times in the New Testament. It means “one another.”

According to the New Testament, our “one anothering” can be either positive or negative. A sad and still-abiding consequence of the Fall is that even as believers we have the capacity to hurt, as well as help, each other.

Negative One Anothering⤒🔗

Negative one anothering includes a hypercritical spirit in areas where God has granted us liberty with regard to different views or practices. (“Let us stop passing judgment on one another” – Romans 14:13. See the entire context of Romans 14.)

Our one anothering is negative when we envy what God in his providence has given to a fellow Christian, or when we provoke or unnecessarily challenge someone (Galatians 5:26).

Jesus' disciples practiced negative one anothering when they argued among themselves as to who was the greatest (Mark 9:33-34). Paul and Barnabas argued over the worth of a coworker to the extent that they ended up parting “from one another” (Acts 15:39 NASB).

Slander is another form of negative one anothering. “Brothers, do not slander one another” (James 4:11). The word slander literally means “to speak (someone) down.” Our speech, even as believers, can be highly destructive of others. The remedy for this is “to speak each other up” – to say good things both to each other and about each other.

According to the New Testament, negative one anothering can take some quite extreme forms: fist fights (Acts 7:26), homosexuality (Romans 1:27), verbal cannibalism (Galatians 5:15), and even murder (Revelation 6:4).

Positive One Anothering←⤒🔗

It has been said that when God forbids a negative behavior, he always provides for us a positive behavior to replace it. Positive one anothering – God's remedy for negative one anothering – is summed up in the frequently repeated command to “love one another” (for example, John 13:35). The practical expression of this mutual love is actually a process in which the Lord himself takes a very active role (see 1 Thessalonians 3:12 and 2 Thessalonians 1:3).

Positive Attitudes←⤒🔗

Positive one anothering begins with the development of positive attitudes toward our fellow believers. Paul reminds us that in the body of Christ “each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12:5). God has not isolated each of us in a ten-by-ten room, but rather has put us all into one body. He knows that since we are unperfected saints living in a fallen world, the blest tie that binds us together sometimes begins to chafe a bit. And so he says such things to us as to “have equal concern for each other” (1 Corinthians 12:25), to “be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2), to “consider others better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3), to “be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32), and to “submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).

Positive Speech←⤒🔗

Positive one anothering includes not only positive attitudes toward our fellow believers, but also positive ways of talking to each other. There is an interesting use of allelon in the account of the two men who encountered the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus. As the story opens, they are talking with each other about the baffling events that have so recently occurred (“about everything that had happened” – Luke 24:14). Jesus approaches them and questions them about what they are discussing (Luke 24:17). The word Jesus uses to describe their discussion literally means “to throw back and forth.” Positive one anothering involves a mutual exchange of ideas and questions. As this story ends, the two men are talking to each other about how their encounter with Christ has deeply touched not only their minds but also their hearts – “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32). Blessed are the believers who in the process of one anothering are able more and more to open their hearts to each other about how God has been at work in their lives.

According to Romans 15:14, verbal one anothering includes counseling each other when we have problems. The word which the KJV translates here as “admonish” and the NIV translates as “instruct,” literally means “to lay something on someone's mind.” One of the most helpful things we can do in our mutual relations with each other is to lovingly and carefully lay on each other's minds the specific teachings of God's Word which speak to the particular problems with which God in his providence currently has us wrestling.

Positive Actions←⤒🔗

Positive one anothering involves not only positive attitudes and positive speech, but also positive actions. The New Testament mentions a number of things that we can do that will be a blessing and help to our fellow Christians.

The apostle Paul understood that one important aspect of one anothering is mutual ministry (“that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith” – Romans 1:12). Each of the spiritual gifts that Paul mentions in Romans 12:6-8 (serving, teaching, giving, etc.) is given for the purpose of building each other up in our Christian lives. A major purpose of one anothering is to get our attention and our affections off of ourselves and on to the needs of those around us.

Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms.1 Peter 4:10

“Greet one another with a holy kiss” (Romans 16:16). After reminding us that this kiss is not sensual, John Murray (in his commentary on Romans) goes on to say:

It betrays an unnecessary reserve, if not loss of the ardor of the church's first love, when the holy kiss is conspicuous by its absence in the Western Church.

One anothering involves giving appropriate expression to the deep feelings of affection we should have toward the other members of the body of Christ. How powerfully antagonistic this is to the verbal cannibalism mentioned above!

A Lifetime Challenge←⤒🔗

This article has not exhausted the New Testament usage of the Greek word allelon, but enough has been said to make us see that one anothering does not usually come naturally for us, and even when it does, we never practice it perfectly. This one word from the Greek New Testament is enough to convince us of our ongoing need for a daily outpouring of God's grace and Spirit upon us even to begin to relate to each other in ways that are pleasing to God.

God has graciously built the remedy for our failures in the area of one anothering into the very pattern of one anothering itself –

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.James 5:16

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.Ephesians 4:32

God, in his wisdom, has not locked us up individually in ten-by-ten rooms. Rather, he has put us shoulder-to-shoulder and face-to-face with each other in the local church. As we relate to one another in the body of Christ, there will be many occasions when we fail to live up to the biblical standards of one anothering. Humble confession of our sins against each other, and forgiveness quickly extended to one who so comes to us, will keep the one-anothering process moving toward that day when we shall see the blessed face of him who made us members of one another.