1 Thessalonians 5:11 (NKJV)
11 Therefore comfort each other and edify one another, just as you also are doing.
Believers, followers of Christ, do not live in isolation. Each believer is a member of the family of God. We are to encourage each other. Exhort, comfort, and lift each other up.
Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 4:18, “Therefore comfort one another with these words.” God has delivered us from the wrath to come and has given us a glorious hope of living with Him.
Throughout history Christians have gone through tribulation. Jesus says in John 16:33, “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
Christians do not encourage each other through separation, but in coming together. The place we come together is in the church, the body of Christ. That is why the writer of Hebrews says, in Hebrews 10:24–25 “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” Followers of Christ do not find love in the world or the things of the world.
The church is the body of Christ and He is the head of the church. Jesus paid the ultimate price for the church. His death on the cross was the price He paid for us to not only have eternal life, but to have life more abundantly (John 10:10). Satan will do everything he can to bring discord and division in God’s church.
There should never be discord in the church. Solomon writes in Proverbs 16:28, “A perverse person stirs up conflict, and a gossip separates close friend.” One of the things God hates is found in Proverbs 6:19, “A false witness who speaks lies, and on who sows discord among brethren.”
The church is to build up and strengthen one another.