Home Sweet Home: What Kindness Looks Like

Nurturing a Christian Home with the Kindness of All the One Another‘s.

“Become kind to one another, and tender-hearted, gracing each other as God in Christ has graced you.” (Ephesians 4:32).

The training ground in the home for how to treat each other is wherever all the members of the home mingle and interact.  One might say that the Biblical “one another’s” are learned first at the homefront. Jesus’ word to the wise is to simply love one another, to have lovingkindness for one another. But what does that look like on a daily basis? In any home or community in which we live, whether at work, at home, in church, in a small group, with a cadre of friends, we need help and heavenly knowledge on how to get along, how to thrive with each other. And this is when the One Another’s come into play. The epistles love to unpack what lovingkindness looks like. Scripture explains that love is when the Spirit of Jesus is put into practice, especially with one another.

If a thriving home is a shiny diamond containing many facets, the One Another’s are those facets. The One Another’s reveal what it looks like to lay down your life for your family and friends, to put yourself on the shelf in a daily martyrdom, sacrificing yourself for someone else’s benefit out of love. These One Another’s described below describe what it takes to live in a kind community. With the transforming power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, we can indeed enjoy a life together that reflects the eternal Kingdom of God, a home community that has a heart for one another.

1. Bear One Another’s Burdens: To lift up and carry; to take up and walk with; to intercede for someone else, whether through prayer or caregiving, whether tangible or intangible; to relieve someone of something that weighs heavily on them.
2. Build Up One Another: To edify; to strengthen; to empower; to affirm certain qualities; to help someone or a group to grow to maturity; to construct a building, an edifice, of faith and character in another person or group.
3. Warn One Another: To admonish; to caution; to place into someone’s awareness; to reprove gently; to call attention to; to alert another person’s thinking; to offer sound advice and guidance.
4. Encourage One Another: To “paraclete” each other: Called to come alongside someone in need, in order to help and bear burdens by Pointing to God, Advising, Reminding, Advocating for, Comforting, Listening, Exhorting, Teaching and E
5. Restore One Another: To set right; to repair; to refit; to mend; to rejoin; to bring back to its original state; to heal.
6. Honor One Another: To show deference to; to prefer over oneself; to highly esteem; to greatly respect; to revere; to focus on the importance of another.
7. Bear With One Another: To put up with; to make allowances for; to willingly endure; forbearance; to tolerate; to have patience with; to accept someone despite their weaknesses.
8. Exhort One Another: To urge to continue in the Faith; to beseech in strong terms; to come alongside to offer encouraging guidance; to inspire courage and hope; to call upon someone to act; to give affirming words that strengthens others.
9. Confess to One Another: To acknowledge openly; to freely admit to wrongdoing; to announce one’s guilt; to concede one’s shortcomings; to repent of sins; to agree with God that one’s sin is a sin.
10. Wash One Another’s Feet: A simple act of hospitality; a house servant’s task; involves placing someone else’s dirty, smelly feet into a bowl of water and carefully using one’s hands to cleanse those feet of all dirt, grime and sweat, and then drying the feet with a clean towel; a common, menial act of service and humility; exercising the ministry of touch to the untouchable; the powerful sacrament of servanthood.
11. Harmonize with One Another. When separate parts intentionally combine into a beautiful whole; to reconcile apparent differences into a combined unity; to adjust in order to fit together; to be of the same mind; to unite in the same direction in will, affection and conscience; to join together in unity of spirit and purpose, with one heart and one passion; to be agreeable and get along; mutual understanding.