After yesterday's message of God's design for us to live among other people, we might start to believe that something is wrong with us - or that we're doing something wrong - when our encounters with others are abrasive and painful. But this abrasiveness is exactly what is pictured in the metaphor of iron sharpening iron.
When two pieces of iron scrape across each other's surface, the smooth parts glide across each other easily. But as soon as one piece comes across the jagged edge of the other, both pieces suffer a disruption to their gliding. The jagged edges catch, get ripped and bent, until both edges resume their previous movement.
As humans, we would love it if all our encounters with others were a smooth, frictionless glide. But all of us have our flaws: our baggage, our past hurts, our pride, and all the other little imperfections which disrupt our happy relationships. Children are born with many such flaws, which parents are supposed to patiently work out through good parenting. Young couples in love try to hide their flaws and ignore them in the other. But without the Spiritual fruit of patience, parents start to become angry and irritable, and married couples give up and get divorced.
When it comes to our relationship with God, we are the only ones with rough edges; any discomfort we feel with Him is brought into the relationship by us. But God has an endless supply of love towards us, and no matter how often we lash out or mess up, He patently loves us and restores us, smoothing us out until we one day reach the full image of what He wants us to be.
Many attempt through willpower to tolerate each other's rough edges, but as carnal humans we often run out of such willpower when the other person no longer offers us that which we desire. As Christians, when it comes to finding the patience to surviving the iron-sharpening-iron process, we ought first to be humble, remembering our own rough edges and God's patient, persistent love. And secondly, we must regularly submit to God's whetstone: meditating on His word, seeking Him in prayer, and asking for forgiveness and healing when He brings our roughness to light.