Untitled article by James White

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, March 24, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXXI, No. 15

EDIFICATION.

By James White

Many speakers in religious meetings, and writers for religious papers, make a great mistake in regard to edification. They express a fear that they shall not be able to edify any one, as though it was necessary to give much instruction, or even to make a brilliant display, in order to edify their brethren and sisters. We wish to correct this mistake.

It is very generally supposed that to edify means to instruct. This is only a secondary or remote meaning; its true meaning is to build up. The original in the N. T. is οἰκοδομή (οἰκοδομε) from “οἰκία, a house,” (edifice). Οἰκοδομέω is defined by Robinson, to build a house; and generally to build, to construct, to erect. 2. Spec. to rebuild, to renew. 3. Trop. to build up, to establish, to confirm; spoken of the Christian church and its members, who are thus compared to a building, a temple of God, &c. Greenfield says: The act of building; met., edification, improvement in piety. It is rendered buildings, Matt. xxiv, 1; Mark xiii, 1, 2; 2 Cor. v, 1; Eph. ii, 21; and in many other passages either as a substantive or verb; and edify in 1 Cor. xiv, 3, 5, 12, 26; 2 Cor. x, 8; xii, 19; xiii, 10; Eph. iv, 12, 16, 29. The English word instruction is from a different original.

Instruction may edify and build up, and it may not. There is “instruction that causeth to err.” Prov. xix, 27. Such instruction will tear down rather than build up. Hence, instruct bears only a secondary relation to edification.

We may edify or build up one another by words of comfort and encouragement. That little child who gets up tremblingly and says, “I love the Saviour and want to go and live with him,” speaks to the “edification and comfort” of the church; while he who arises to give a harangue with a flourish of learning often destroys the comfort of his hearers and pulls them down to a level with his own coldness.

Edification comes from the heart as well as from the head. A well-informed and well-trained mind is designed to give instruction; and as far as the church is in ignorance and may be benefited by an increase of light, it will be edified or built up thereby. But in social meetings or in the conference department of a religious paper, where this professedly modest disclaimer is most often made, it is entirely out of place. There instruction is not the main object, but edification or building up is.

Let all bear in mind that if they would edify they must get the love of the truth deep in their hearts. Let the words be in the humble simplicity of love; high sounding words and all effort to display learning spoil their effect. And may the God of all comfort assist us through our Saviour, who was meek and lowly in heart, that we may be “rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.” J. H. W.