Galatians 6:1-10--Bear One Another's Burdens

Bear One Another's Burdens​
6 Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. 2 Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. 3 For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4 But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. 5 For each will have to bear his own load.

6 Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches. 7 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. 9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. 10 So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

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Paul is wrapping up his epistle (letter) to the churches in Galatia--I'm not sure that I mentioned that yet, but this epistle was actually written to a group of churches that would have been on a circuit and it was meant to be shared with all the churches in the entire region.  We'll see in Acts that Paul desired to go back and visit these churches again, but the Holy Spirit prevented it as He pushed Paul to travel to Macedonia where we see some of the first European Christians.  So, Paul was forced to communicate these concerns that he had in writing.

As he's nearing the end of this letter, he changes his tone from correcting their turning away to a false gospel to encouraging them to help restore one another and to help bear each other's burdens, and to always do so in a spirit of gentleness that is consistent with the law of love that we talked about last time.

Paul puts the responsibility here on the one who is "spiritual"--that is the one who is not controlled by the flesh, but this person must be careful to not become self-righteous, proud and arrogant, because any such man who thinks he is spiritual but acts in this way is really controlled by the flesh as well (we saw that in chapter 5 of Galatians as well as I Corinthians 6).  Each one of us is supposed to take close inventory of our own lives and make close inspection of ourselves--basically the point of epistles like 1st John and James--to make sure that we are in the faith and that our talk and our walk match up.

Paul then reminds them that anyone who is taught the Word of God should share all good things (time, talent and treasure) with the one who teaches the Word of God.  In other epistles Paul would specifically say that he had a right to benefit from his work and his ministry as an apostle and teacher of the Word, but he refused to do so and instead was a tent-maker so that no one would accuse him of being one of the charlatans who simply used the gospel for personal gain (we have a lot of them today).  Yet, it is a good idea for us to keep in mind that those who have been called to full-time ministry of preaching and teaching the Word of God (and their families) survive by the generosity of those they lead--that is the order of things so that God teaches them to trust Him to provide all their needs according to His riches in glory through Christ Jesus--which He has given stewardship of to the individual Christians in the Church.  We are to be cheerful givers and to take care of the poor and widows and orphans, but we are also to take care of our pastors, evangelists, and Bible teachers.

Paul now returns to the main idea of the letter of the flesh versus the Spirit.  He uses the idea of sowing and reaping that would be familiar to most of them.  One kernel or seed will turn into an entire plant with lots of seeds and each of those seeds can be planted and take root to produce new plants, etc.  So you reap what you sow, but greater than you sow and usually later than you sow.  Agriculture doesn't work in a way where you put a seed in the ground and seconds later it has germinated and grown and produced a healthy crop to be harvested.  So, we need to be about sowing the Spirit and not the flesh (we talked about what that looks like last time) and we need to run our race with patience and endurance because we may not see results immediately (or maybe never on this side of eternity).Jeremiah the prophet was faithful in his teaching and preaching the Word of God for many years and never saw a single person repent during his time, yet today we look back at him as one of the greatest prophets of all time that has much to say even to us today.

We should always be about the business of looking for opportunities to do good for everyone, but especially for those are part of the Body of Christ, because this is one of the ways we are told that the world understands the gospel--by the way that we love each other unconditionally and sacrificially.  "They'll know we are Christians by out love."  Yes, love your enemies without loving the world system (love the people, but not the broken system), but we must love the people that are part of our family--even the ones that were chosen by adoption that we wonder why God chose that person, because someone else is probably thinking the same thing about us.  We should not be like the older brother in the Parable of the Two Sons who refuses to celebrate that his brother who was dead is now alive and was lost but has now been found.  How awful is it if we seem to only love people until they believe the gospel and then we turn on them and treat them terribly.  Who would want to be part of a family like that--even the Gentiles/heathens know how to treat each other better than that!  (That's something that Paul will say in some of his other epistles).  Remember that the gospel is something we show, not just tell.  We live it out on full display every day by they way we walk, not just by the way we talk, and especially by the way that we treat those who we call "brother" and "sister."