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Galatians 6.1-5 (ESV)
1 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.
Have you ever been around someone who is truly an encourager, who looks for the good in others and finds ways to encourage that goodness to grow and flourish? People want to be around a person like that because they build you up. Even if you’ve made a mistake, they have a wonderful gift of addressing the mistake while at the same time managing to encourage you.
That’s what Paul is driving at in this passage. He wants the believers to be encouragers; to be humble, to care for one another, and bear with each other all because in Christ, they are united together.
This passage takes on a different tone and feel from the rest of the letter. After having outlined what life looks like as the believers keep in step with the Spirit (5:22-26), Paul shifts gears and gives the Galatians some general instructions; practical ways of living together in a community of faith that can be broadly applied in any church.
Paul doesn’t get into specifics by listing individuals for who these precepts need to be applied, rather Paul leaves it up to the Galatians to work that out for themselves.
But we can’t miss the thrust of Paul’s concern in these verses; restore, gentleness, keep watch, bear one another’s burdens, fulfill the law of Christ (the law of love, of encouraging, challenging, and urging one another to relentlessly pursue their relationship with Jesus).
After having pulled no punches for much of the letter, here we see Paul’s gentleness and desire for believers to be stitched together as one.
Why? Why the shift in gears here?
It is because Paul understands the uniqueness of life that believers share with one another as we are united together in Christ. The things that once divided the believers from one another no longer exist. As N.T. Wright has said, “We are all equal at the foot of the cross, all equally ‘in Christ’, all equally members of Abraham’s family.”
In Christ, we are uniquely united to one another in a way that those who don’t know Jesus long to be.
Being united in Christ and bearing each other's burdens in love is an amazing witness to the transforming power and presence of Jesus with us. This is perhaps the greatest witness of the church to those outside the church.
Equally, a church whose members are divided for whatever reason (personal agendas, status, wealth, gender, race, or the like) witnesses to an awful absence that can easily creep into the life of any church; the absence of the presence of the Lord, of His Son Jesus, and of the Spirit.
Which community do you want to be a part of? Perhaps a better question would be, “Which community are you working to build by God’s grace?”
This morning I’m reminded of something Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote of in his work Life Together. His quote is listed below.
God bless you and know that I’m praying for you constantly.
Scott
The Christian, however, must bear the burden of a brother. He must suffer and endure the brother. It is only when he is a burden that another person is really a brother and not merely an object to be manipulated. The burden of men was so heavy for God Himself that He had to endure the Cross. God verily bore the burden of men in the body of Jesus Christ. But He bore them as a mother carries her child, as a shepherd enfolds the lost lamb that has been found. God took men upon Himself and they weighted Him to the ground, but God remained with them and they with God. In bearing with men God maintained fellowship with them. It is the law of Christ that was fulfilled in the Cross. And Christians must share in this law. They must suffer their brethren, but, what is more important, now that the law of Christ has been fulfilled, they can bear with their brethren.
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together page 100-101.
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