Honing

 (Pro 27:17 KJV)  Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.

In this verse, Moffett hits the nail on the head.  Instead of “sharpening” he uses the word “honing” for what is being described.  Iron is not sharpened with iron. It is generally sharpened with stone, grinding stones and such as that.  Think of your workshop.  If you have a grinder, it’s not a steel or iron wheel, but a stone wheel.

Sharpening with a stone removes large amounts of material.  When you have major chips out of your blade, then you need to sharpen it ,which grinds it down to the point where it can be made sharp.  If you are dealing with a knife that’s just a little bit dull you don’t need to grind off a lot of steel. What you do is you straighten out the blade.  This is honing or stropping, which I believe is another word for it.

I think honing is a better word here.  Honing is a kind of sharpening but it’s more fine, more precise, more delicate.  It’s more the approach that we need when we get together with friends to talk about spiritual things.  We usually aren’t out to attack and grind them down, but to fine-tune.

So?  Help your friends to get that razor edge of spiritual life that allows them to cut through all the garbage that is given to us.  Don’t assume they need a major work over.