For each man will bear his own burden.
But let him who is taught in the word share all good things with him who teaches. Don’t be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. Let’s not be weary in doing good, for we will reap in due season, if we don’t give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let’s do what is good toward all men, and especially toward those who are of the household of the faith.
Martin Luther 1535 · Public Domain On vv5–10 VERSE 5. Every man shall bear his own burden.
VERSE 5. Every man shall bear his own burden.
That means: For anybody to covet praise is foolish because the praise of men will be of no help to you in the hour of death. Before the judgment throne of Christ everybody will have to bear his own burden. As it is the praise of men stops when we die. Before the eternal Judge it is not praise that counts but your own conscience.
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True, the consciousness of work well done cannot quiet the conscience. But it is well to have the testimony of a good conscience in the last judgment that we have performed our duty faithfully in accordance with God’s will.
For the suppression of pride we need the strength of prayer. What man even if he is a Christian is not delighted with his own praise? Only the Holy Spirit can preserve us from the misfortune of pride.
Martin Luther — Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), English translation by Theodore Graebner (Zondervan, 1939) — public domain (U.S. copyright not renewed). Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv5–10 5. For every man shall bear his own burdens.…
5. For every man shall bear his own burdens. To destroy sloth and pride, he brings before us the judgment of God, in which every individual for himself, and without a comparison with others, will give an account of his life. It is thus that we are deceived; for, if a man who has but one eye is placed among the blind, he considers his vision to be perfect; and a tawny person among negroes thinks himself white. The apostle affirms that the false conclusions to which we are thus conducted will find no place in the judgment of God; because there every one will bear his own burden, and none will stand acquitted by others from their own sins. This is the true meaning of the words.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv5–10 A reason wherefore men ought to have the greatest…
A reason wherefore men ought to have the greatest eye upon themselves, because that every man shall be judged before God according to his own life, and not by comparing himself with other men.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv5–10 5 For every man shall bear his own burden.
5 For every man shall bear his own burden.
Ver. 5. For every man shall bear] Be thorough therefore in the work of self-examination. Sparing a little pains at first, doubles it in the end; as he who will not cast up his books, his books wilt cast up him at length. The misery of most men is, that their minds are as ill set as their eyes, neither of them look inwards. How few are there that turn short again upon themselves so as to say, What have I done? Woe to all such when God shall send out summons for sleepers, when he comes to search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their lees, &c., Zep 1:12.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv5–10 That is, God will judge every man in the…
That is, God will judge every man in the last day, according not to what others have done, but to what he himself hath done, 1Co 3:8. Therefore every one is concerned to
prove his own work; for at last his eternal joy and rejoicing, or sorrow and mourning, shall be according to what he himself hath wrought, not according to what others have wrought. If ever they enter into the joy of heaven, they shall rejoice in their own work. And if eternal sorrow be their portion, they shall groan under their own burdens; they will not be the sins of others, but their own sins, which will sink them into eternal misery. For though superiors shall answer to God for the sins of their inferiors, yet it shall not properly be for their inferiors’ sins, but for their own sins, in neglecting to warn and to reprove them, and to do what in them lay to have hindered them in their sinful courses.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv6, 7, 9 In this and the following verses our apostle enters…
In this and the following verses our apostle enters upon a new exhortation, and that is, to stir up the Galatians to liberality and beneficence; upon every fitting occasion, to be ready to distribute, willing to communicate, and to do good unto all men. And because it is highly probable, that by reason of the prevalency of error amongst them, and the number of false teachers found with them, the Galatians’ love to the word, and to the ministers and dispensers of it, was grown cold: he first begins to stir up their liberality towards their teachers, saying, Let him that is taught in the word of the gospel, communicate unto him that teacheth in all such good things as he stands in need of.
Learn hence, 1. That the wisdom of God hath seen it fit to teach men by the ministry of man, not by his own immediate voice, this we cannot bear; nor by the glorious angels, these would rather terrify than teach us; but by men like ourselves, doth the great God instruct us. He has appointed some to teach, and obliged others to be taught; but the pride of man is grown to that pitch in our days, that almost every one thinks himself sufficient to teach, and few have humility enough to be taught.
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Learn, 2. That it is the special duty of ministers, not only to teach, but to teach the word: Let him that is taught in the word, that is, the written word, as dictated by the Holy Ghost, communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things. Our business is not to go into the pulpit and read a lecture to our people out of Aristotle’s Ethics, or Seneca’s Morals, much less to load them with the burden of unwritten traditions; but to make known a crucified Saviour to them, and the way to eternal salvation by him.
Learn, 3. That seeing the ministers of Christ are to give themselves wholly to the work of teaching, &c. without being entangled with the affairs of this life; the people whom they teach, and amongst whom they spend their time and strength, are obliged by common equity, as well as by the command of God, to allow them a comfortable subsistence; and, if able, an honourable maintenance: Let him that is taught communicate to him that teacheth in all good things.
Learn, 4. That the church’s maintenance is only due to such ministers as are apt to teach, that labour in the word themselves: none have a right to the church’s salary, which do not perform the church’s service. Let such laymen as by the impropriations take away the vicar’s bread, and such clergy men as eat the sweat of their curates’ brow, consider how they will answer it at the bar of God.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv5–10 For every man shall bear his own burden. That…
For every man shall bear his own burden. That is, either do his own work, which God has allotted him to do, whether in a more public or private station of life; which, because it is generally troublesome to the flesh, is called a "burden", and "his own", being peculiar to himself, and in which no other is concerned; and which he should patiently bear, cheerfully attend to, and constantly and faithfully perform while in this world: or he shall give an account of his own actions, and not another's, to God, in the other world; he shall be judged according to his own works, what they are in themselves, and not by a comparison of other men's, who have been more wicked than he; which will be no rule of judgment with God, nor of any advantage to man. Every wicked man will bear his own burden; that is, the punishment of his own sins, and not another's; so the judgments of God, inflicted on men in this world, are often called "a burden"; see Isa 13:1 and so may the punishment of the wicked in another world, which will be grievous and intolerable. The saints will be exempt from bearing this burden, because Christ has bore it for them, even all their sins, and all the punishment due unto them; but another burden, if it may be so called, even an exceeding and eternal weight of glory, shall be bore by them; and every man shall receive his own reward, and not another's; and that according to his own works and labour, and not another's; not indeed for his works, but according to them, the nature of them, according to the grace of God, from whence his works spring, and by which they are performed. This the apostle says to take off men from dwelling upon, and censuring the actions of others, and from making use of them to set off their own, and buoy themselves up with vain hopes, because they are better than others; and also to engage them to attend strictly to their own actions, and consider them simply and absolutely as in themselves, and not as compared with other men's, since they will be accountable for their own actions, and not other men's; and will be judged according to their own works, and not in a comparative view to others.
and so may the punishment of the wicked in another world, which will be grievous and intolerable. The saints will be exempt from bearing this burden, because Christ has bore it for them, even all their sins, and all the punishment due unto them; but another burden, if it may be so called, even an exceeding and eternal weight of glory, shall be bore by them; and every man shall receive his own reward, and not another's; and that according to his own works and labour, and not another's; not indeed for his works, but according to them, the nature of them, according to the grace of God, from whence his works spring, and by which they are performed. This the apostle says to take off men from dwelling upon, and censuring the actions of others, and from making use of them to set off their own, and buoy themselves up with vain hopes, because they are better than others; and also to engage them to attend strictly to their own actions, and consider them simply and absolutely as in themselves, and not as compared with other men's, since they will be accountable for their own actions, and not other men's; and will be judged according to their own works, and not in a comparative view to others.
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Galatians 6:6
gal 6:6
gal 6:6
gal 6:6Let him that is taught in the word,.... Instructed in the knowledge of the word, either of the essential Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, of his person, office, and grace; or rather of the written word, particularly the Gospel, which is sometimes called the word, without any additional epithet, which distinguishes it, and directs to the sense of it; and sometimes with such, as the words of truth, the word of faith, the word of righteousness, the word of reconciliation, and the word of this salvation, so called from the nature, use, and subject matter of it. He that is taught in this, is, according to the original word used here, a "catechumen"; and which designs not one that is just beginning to learn the first principles of the oracles of God, but anyone that is instructed in it, as this word is rendered in Rom 2:18 whether more or less, or whether internally or externally: one that is internally taught in and by the word, is one that has been taught to know himself, and his lost state by nature; to know Christ, and salvation by him; to know the truths of the Gospel, and to deny ungodliness, and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly. It may include everyone that is only outwardly taught, that is but an external hearer; and so the Syriac version renders the clause, , "he that hears the word": of which there are many sorts, and on whom it is an incumbent duty to
communicate to him that teacheth; who is commissioned, and qualified and sent forth by Christ, and whose office in the church is to teach the word, to preach the Gospel, to instruct men in the truths of it, and teach them their duty also to God and men, such are to be communicated to; that is, such as are under their instructions ought to impart of their worldly substance to them, for their honourable and comfortable support and maintenance; for since they spend their time, and make use of their talents, gifts, and abilities, for their instruction in spiritual things, it is but reasonable, and no such great matter, that they partake of their carnal things; and especially since it is the will and ordinance of Christ, that they that preach the Gospel should live of it. The apostle adds,
in all good things; which may be either connected with the word "teacheth", and so be descriptive of the teacher, as the Arabic version reads, "him that teacheth all his good things"; good doctrines, excellent truths, the wholesome words of Christ, which he is intrusted with, has a knowledge and experience of; and who freely and faithfully imparts them, and conceals and keeps back nothing, but declares the whole counsel of God, all that he knows, and that is good and profitable; and carries in it a very strong argument why he should be communicated to: or else with the word "communicate"; and the sense either be, let him be a partaker of, and join with him in everything he says or does that is good, but not in anything that is evil, which is a sense some give into; or rather let him impart of his temporal good things unto him: temporal things are good as they are of God, and in themselves, and when rightly used answer good purposes; all a man's good things are not to be communicated, only a part, according to his ability, and in proportion to others; and yet the communication should be large and liberal, sufficient to support the teacher in an honourable manner, and to supply him with all the necessaries of life, that his mind may be free from secular cares, and he be at leisure to attend to the instructing of others.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv5–10 For every one shall bear his own burden -…
For every one shall bear his own burden - ln that day shall give an account of himself to God.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv5–10 Verse 5. Every man shall bear his own burden.]…
Verse 5. Every man shall bear his own burden.] All must answer for themselves, not for their neighbours. And every man must expect to be dealt with by the Divine Judge, as his character and conduct have been. The greater offences of another will not excuse thy smaller crimes. Every man must give account of himself to God.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv6, 7, 9 Gal 6:6. Let him that is taught in the…
Gal 6:6. Let him that is taught in the word — Who is instructed in the doctrines and precepts of the gospel; communicate unto him that teacheth — According to the ability that God hath given him; in all good things — All such temporal things as he stands in need of. If, says Macknight, “the teachers, who by spiritual gifts were supernaturally qualified to instruct others, deserved to be liberally maintained, how much more is a liberal maintenance due to those, who, not possessing the [extraordinary] spiritual gifts, are obliged to spend a great deal of time and money in fitting themselves for their office, and who employ themselves assiduously in discharging it!”
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv5–10 For every man shall bear his own burden -…
For every man shall bear his own burden - This seems to be a kind of proverbial saying; and it means here, every man shall have his proper reward. If he is a virtuous man, he will be happy; if a vicious man, he will be miserable. If a virtuous man, he will have the source of happiness in himself; if a sinner, he must bear the proper penalty of his sin. In the great day every man shall be properly rewarded. Knowing this, we should be little anxious about the sentiments of others, and should seek to maintain a good conscience toward God and man. The design of this passage is, to prevent people from forming an improper estimate of themselves, and of the opinions of others. Let a man feel that he is soon to stand at the judgment-seat, and it will do much to keep him from an improper estimate of his own importance; let him feel that he must give an account to God, and that his great interests are to be determined by the estimate which God will affix to his character, and it will teach him that the opinion of the world is of little value. This will restrain his vanity and ambition. This will show him that the great business of life is to secure the favor of God, and to be prepared to give up his account; and there is no way so effectual of checking ambition, and subduing vanity and the love of applause, as to feel that we are soon to stand at the awesome bar of God.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv6–10 Communicate....in all good things: by this communication, is understood…
Communicate....in all good things: by this communication, is understood an assisting of others in their wants. (Witham) --- Such as are blessed with the goods of this world, should gladly communicate a share of their efforts to the preachers and teachers of the true faith; and this not merely as a return for what they have received, but also that they may be made thereby partakers of their merit. (St. Augustine, lib. 2. evang. quæst. q. 8.)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv5–10 For (by this way, Gal 6:4, of proving himself,…
For (by this way, Gal 6:4, of proving himself, not depreciating his neighbor by comparison) each man shall bear his own "burden," or rather, "load" (namely, of sin and infirmity), the Greek being different from that in Gal 6:2. This verse does not contradict Gal 6:2. There he tells them to bear with others' "burdens" of infirmity in sympathy; here, that self-examination will make a man to feel he has enough to do with "his own load" of sin, without comparing himself boastfully with his neighbor. Compare Gal 6:3. Instead of "thinking himself to be something," he shall feel the "load" of his own sin: and this will lead him to bear sympathetically with his neighbor's burden of infirmity. ÆSOP says a man carries two bags over his shoulder, the one with his own sins hanging behind, that with his neighbor's sins in front.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv5–10 5. Prove your own work, for each one has…
5. Prove your own work, for each one has a responsibility laid upon him for his own work. You are as responsible for the style and spirit in which you restore him, as he is for the fault from which you work to restore him.
Every man—You, as well as the transgressor.
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His own burden— Each must, in the final hour, bear his own burden of frailty, sin, and guilt. We can put shoulder under each other’s burdens for awhile, but the time must at length come when each shall answer for himself alone. The contradiction in form, with consistency in truth, between Gal_6:2; Gal_6:5, is intended by St. Paul, in order, by the apparent paradox, to fasten the thought upon the attention and memory.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv5–10 5. For every man … burden] For no man…
5. For every man … burden] For no man can escape from his own moral responsibility. The verse reads like a proverb. The ‘burden’ is the ‘load’ of accoutrements and provisions assigned to each soldier to carry on a march. Others regard the metaphor as taken from shipping affairs, and render the word ‘freight’. This is quite admissible as a verbal translation; but the phrase, ‘each man shall carry his own cargo’ may appear less satisfactory. There is no paradox or contradiction to the precept of Gal_6:2 except in the English version which renders two distinct words in the original by the same English word ‘burden’.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv5–10 (5) Every man shall bear his own burden.—The word…
(5) Every man shall bear his own burden.—The word for “burden” here is different from that which had been used above, though its meaning is very much the same. The distinction would be sufficiently represented if we were to translate in the one case burden, in the other load. The context, however, is quite different. In Gal_6:2 the Christian is bidden to “bear the burdens” of others, in the sense of sympathising with them in their troubles. Here he is told that he must “bear his own load,” in the sense that he must answer directly to God for his own actions. His responsibility cannot be shifted on to others. It will make him no better that there are others worse than himself.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv5–10 For every man shall bear his own burden (ekastov…
For every man shall bear his own burden (ekastov gar toon bastasei); for each man shall carry his own pack. A man"s business is with his own pack; and all depends upon his carrying that, not putting it down. This "pack" (fortion) is the whole of the duties for the discharge of which each man is responsible. It is thus that the image is employed by our Lord, (Mat_11:30) "My yoke is easy, and my pack is light." So also in Mat_23:4, "For they tie up packs heavy and hard to carry, and lay them upon men"s shoulders." The phrase, toon, "the pack which is individually his own," implies that men"s responsibilities vary, each one having such as are peculiar to himself. This "pack" is to be carefully distinguished from the "heavy loads" (ba) of ver. 2, Our Christian obligations Christ makes, to them who serve him well, light; but our burdens of remorse, shame, grief, loss, which are of our own wilful procuring, these may be, must needs be, heavy. One part of our "pack" of obligation is to help each other in bearing these "heavy loads;" and we shall find our joy and crown of glorying in doing so; not only in the approval of our own consciences and in the consciousness of Christ"s approval, but also in the manifold refreshments of mutual Christian sympathy. On the other hand, our Christian responsibilities, including these of mutual sympathy and succour, we must not attempt to evade. One man is able to do more for others than another man can; the truly "spiritual" man, for example, can do that which others may not even attempt to touch: each one has his own part and duty. And Christ"s mot d"ordre to all his workmen, or possibly the apostle means to all his soldiers, is this: "Every man carry his own pack!" The future tense of the verb "shall carry" does not point to some future time, but to the absoluteness of the law for all time; as in Gal_2:16 (see Winer, "Gram. N. T.," p. 251, 6th edit.). The varying turn given to the same general image of carrying burdens in ver. 2 and here is quite in St. Paul"s manner. Compare, for example, in 2Co
3. the varying turn given to the images of "epistle" and "veil.
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Our own individual burden.
each one shall bear his own burden." He is not called to glory in reference to his neighbour, for he has his own burden to carry. The "burdens" of the second verse point to the mutual sympathy; the "burden," or load, of this verse, to that burden which each one carries for himself and no one can carry for him.
I MARK THE INDIVIDUALITY OF EACH MAN"S POSITION 1N God"s SIGHT. Though God has set us in a wonderful scheme of human relations, we have an individual life that cannot be touched by man. We are individually responsible to God. This individuality sets man, as it were, in a solitude. He lives alone; he suffers alone; he dies alone. If he has pain in his body, no sympathy of friends can destroy it; it is still his pain. Our friends may soothe our dying moments by their prayers and their words of affection; but still we die alone. Thus every man carries alone, and apart from other men, his own burden of responsibility, or of frailty, or of sorrow. "Each soldier bears his own kit.
II MARK THE INFERENCES TO BE DRAWN FROM THIS INDIVIDUALITY OF POSITION. The apostle does not mean to countenance the neglect of social concern nor to recommend a selfish isolation in human relations, but he condemns the harsh judgments pronounced upon others by men who have their own imperfections and infirmities to answer for. We cannot lighten the burden of our own responsibilities by any attempt to bear hardly upon others.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 7, 9, 10 For every man shall bear his own burden.
Gal_6:5
For every man shall bear his own burden.
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Here are some of the burdens which each man must bear for himself alone
1. The burden of personality. Each individual is open to manifold influence--may be impressed, drawn, turned, melted, inflamed, according to the powers that play upon him; but he is himself in all. He abides in the eye of God a separate, complete, individual soul for ever.
2. The burden of responsibility. This arises of necessity out of the personality. Man is moral, therefore responsible. The separate threads of each ones life are singled out by God for judgment.
3. The burden of guilt. Where guilt gathers, there guilt must rest until God shall remove it. And what a load it is. Tis this which turns the moisture into the drought of summer, which breaks the bones, drinks up the spirit, weakens strength by the way, quenches the light of hope, and cleaves and clings to the soul a burden of present judgment, and daily foretelling of doom.
4. Immortality is a mans own burden. Each is to live for ever--his own life and not anothers: carrying forward with him through eternity its accumulating elements of happiness or woe. (A. Raleigh, D. D.)
The individual burden
A man often ceases to feel it for a while. He mingles in some great and gay assemblage, and for the time feels as though his personality were gone, or in suspense. He is not as a separate drop, he is lost in an ocean of life. But in a little while the great assemblage melts all away--only the individuals are left; that which they constituted when they were together has gone for ever; and the man whose life seemed to be almost absorbed and lost in an ocean of multitudinous existence--where is he now? He is going home there pensively under the shadow of the trees, and deeply conscious of himself; with his own joys and sorrows, with his own thoughts and plans, with his soul in all its powers and affections untouched. He is bearing his own burden. Or, in a time of sorrow, other souls come around with watchful yearning love. He has letters breathing the intensest sympathy. He has visits of sincere and sorrowing affection, or he has in the house with him those who feel so deeply and truly with himself that they hardly seem to be divided in the grief. But, the letters are read, the visits are paid, the tears are shed, and then--he retires into his personality, and feels that his sorrow is his own, that none can tell the loss to him, that none can feel as he feels, that he possesses his sorrow because he possesses his soul, and that he, as every man, shall bear his own burden. A man is born alone--has his being moulded with Gods plastic hand, has all his powers implanted, and the awful image of God impressed, to be carried in glory or in ruin for ever. In all the stages really, and in all the critical and important times of his life consciously, he is alone, as distinct as a tree in the forest, separate as a star in the sky. And in death he leaveth all his friends, and goeth out along the darksome valley without a hand to help, without a voice to cheer--when the dying really comes. He goeth out bearing his own burden of life from one world into another--from the things which are seen to the things which are not seen, from those which are temporal to those which are eternal …. We must think of this if we wish to be faithful and true men. It may be to some the taking up of the cross; but it must be done. Let a man examine himself. Let him sit down to weigh his burden and think: I am one--personal, complete. I cannot mingle my being in a general tide. I cannot lose one atom of my personality. I must be myself for ever! (A. Raleigh, D. D.)
The believers freight
The Greek word (φροτίον) is different from the word translated burden (βάρος) in Gal_6:2; and signifies a burden or load, especially a ships freight or lading. Paul was a native of Tarsus, which was situated on the Cydnus, about twenty miles from the sea; and, in Pauls time, was in the Eastern basin of the Mediterranean almost what Marseilles was in the Western. It was a place of much commerce; and St. Basil describes it as a point of union for Syrians Cilicians, Isaurians, and Cappadocians. Such was the city in which Paul was born and brought up, and from which he must have repeatedly sailed as a passenger in merchant ships going from one port to another to take in or unlade their freight (φορτίον). And thus, from his very childhood, Paul must have been quite familiar with this word as signifying a ships freight, and he could scarcely ever have connected it with any other idea than that of something precious and valuable. This is the only place in his writings in which he uses the word. May we not suppose that he here compares believers to vessels carrying off their respective freights, varying in value; and that he means, by this nautical phrase, that each one will receive his due reward at the last day? Elsewhere he speaks of the believers receiving a burden (βάρος) of glory, which is a somewhat similar figure, and certainly not less harsh to our ears than the one here used (2Co_4:17). Thus translated, the connection is clear. Let each one take care to have his ground of rejoicing in his own consistent life, and not in the falls of others; and this is the reason why he should do so--viz., that each one will have a reward according to what his own life has been, without reference to what the lives of his brethren were. (John Venn, M. A.)
The separate burden of each soul
I hope you will not associate with burden-bearing anything menial or degraded. Remember that our Blessed Saviour consecrated labour with the axe and the adze and the mallet at Nazareth; and labour is a crown of glory, never of degradation. Everybody, high or humble, ought to have some work to do. I remember how, in the days of the old dispensation in America, before slavery committed suicide, I was once the guest of a hospitable planter, and I stood by the river bank and watched the long line of negro men and women carrying bags of rice on their heads to load a vessel, and chanting the rich melodious song with which Africas daughters seem to have cheered themselves in the hours of their bondage. They were carrying their burdens. I went into the house, and the head of the family said to me, very thoughtfully; Sir, it is a tremendous thing to be the owner of a hundred immortal beings. That was his burden then. The burden in the one case was physical, and in the other mental, moral, spiritual. Well, in the same way, everybody has his own burden. Bear that in mind. The merchant goes to-morrow to his warehouse, and he says, What an easy time my porter has! He has nothing to do but to load up the dray. He has no care. What an easy time my clerk has--my book-keeper. He has nothing to do but to perform my work and receive his salary, and I have the care of the whole establishment. But, on the other hand, says the workman: What an easy time my master has. He has nothing to do but to ride here in his carriage, and sign cheques, and go home to his country seat. Ah, and the brain of the employer is the bread of the workman, and the toil of the workman is the prosperity of the master. Capital and labour God has joined together, and what God has joined together let no agrarian or communist ever tear asunder. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)
Our burden our blessing
Here is a man, who has come in for a good fortune and a good business. He has not made either the one or the ether. Those who did make the business, who watched and nurtured it from a tiny seed to a great tree with many branches, nourished and organized it so wisely that, even after they are gone, it continues, at least for a time, to grow and thrive and bring forth fruit well-nigh of itself. The man has no serious difficulties to encounter, no rubs, no hardships, no heart-tormenting cares. He lives at his ease, carelessly, luxuriously--drives down to his counting-house now and then, but gives most of his time to pleasure or to self-pleasing pursuits. Is he likely to be either a good man or a good man of business? It is nothing short of a miracle if he is. How should he feel the gravity of life, its solemn responsibilities, or even its true joys? For want of a burden he is only too likely to leave the straight path. With nothing to bear, nothing to conquer, and not much to do, he grows indolent, self-indulgent, fastidious, perhaps hypochondriacal; and, because he has no other burden, becomes a burden to himself. But here is another man who has had to begin life for himself. Under the pressure of necessity, he has been industrious, frugal, temperate, contriving; he knows all the ins and outs of his work; he has mastered the secrets of his craft, studied his markets, adapted himself to the time, won a good name, inspired his neighbours with respect for his ability, with confidence in his trustworthiness. In short, his burdens have made a man of him, and a true man of business. He is likely to succeed, and to be happy in his success. Up to a certain point, let us say, he has succeeded. He has a good and growing business, a considerable capital embarked in it, a comfortable home, a family trained in habits similar to his own. If you set such an one talking of his past career, you soon find that he sees how much he owes to his burdens. He will tell you himself that he thanks God for the very difficulties he once found it so hard to bear; for the obstacles which stood in his way, but which he has surmounted. If he is a thoughtful Christian man, he will also acknowledge that he has gained in character, in judgment, in patience, in energy of will, in faith in God, in charity with his neighbours, by the very trials and hardships he has had to endure. Nothing, indeed, is more common than to hear a self-made man refer boastfully, or thankfully, to the disadvantages, the unfavourable conditions, which he has overcome, and confess that but for these, and his resolute struggle with them, he would never have been the man he is. Whatever else, or more, a family may be, no one will deny that it is a burden. The fathers broad shoulders take a new weight with every child that is born to him. He must work harder; he must think and plan, and strive not for himself alone, but that he may feed, clothe, and educate his children. Most of you fathers have, no doubt, felt at times how heavy this load is; how sharp and painful is the pressure of the anxieties it entails. But you have also felt how this burden is your help and blessing. For your childrens sake you rule and deny yourselves. You know very well that if you would have them grow up with good habits, your habits must be good; that you cannot expect them to be punctual, orderly, temperate, industrious, considerate, kind, if you are unkind, thoughtless, indolent, passionate, disorderly, irregular. That you may train them in the way they should go, you try to keep the right way, to set them a good example. And thus they help you to acquire the very habits which make your own life sweet and pure, to keep the only course which leads to peace on earth or in heaven. Your burden is your benediction. Despite your good example and careful training, some of your children (let us suppose so cruel a case) do not turn out what you wish them to be: they are lazy, though you have tried to make them industrious; self-pleasing, though you have taught them self-denial; passionate and ungovernable, though you have striven to make them temperate and obedient; or even vicious, though you have done your utmost to keep them pure. And as the sad conviction grows on you that your labour has been lost, that they are settling into the very habits from which you would have made any sacrifice to preserve them, your heart fails you, and you almost give up the hope of reclaiming them. This new burden is, you say, heavier than you can bear. Oh, weak and faithless that we are! Oh, thankless and inobservant! Though every past burden has helped us, no sooner is a new and strange burden laid on us than we declare it beyond our strength. How does God prove Himself the perfect Father? What is it that we most admire in His paternal goodness? Is it that He sits among His unfallen children, shedding a heavenly bliss into their pure obedient hearts? Is it not, rather, that He comes into this fallen world to dwell with us--His prodigal and unthankful children--to suffer in and for our sins, to bear our sorrows, to pursue us with His lovingkindness and tender mercy? Is it not, rather, that He will not cease to hope for us, however hopeless and wicked we may be; that He lavishes His love upon us, even when we do not love Him, and saves and conquers us at last by a goodness which has no limit, and will not be repelled? And how shall we be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, unless we, too, bear the burdens of the weak and erring, patiently endure the ingratitude of the thankless, and overcome the evil of the wicked with our good? How shall you, fathers and mothers, become, and prove yourselves, perfect parents if you can only love the children that love you, if you cannot be patient with the disobedient, if you cannot take thought and pains to bring back those who have gone astray? This new terrible burden of sorrow and care is a new honour which God has put upon you, a new call to perfection. It is because you are strong that He asks you to bear the infirmities of the weak. It is because you are capable of the most heroic tasks of love that he taxes your love, and, by taxing, strengthens and deepens it. But take, for one example, the burden of mystery which lies on the sacred page. Most thoughtful men have felt its weight; in these days, indeed, it is hardly possible to escape its pressure. When we seek to acquaint ourselves with the truth, which is one, lo! we find it manifold; the simple and sincere Word bristles with paradox and contradiction; it opens up depths we cannot fathom, and suggests problems we cannot solve. Yet is not this burden a veritable blessing? If the inspired Word were simple and plain through-out--if it were level to the meanest understanding, and disclosed its inmost secrets to the most cursory and fugitive attention, could we study and love it as we do? (S. Cox, D. D.)
Burden-bearing strengthens
The Christian gets stronger for his load, or he ought to. Train up your boy indoors; give him as much spending money as he wants; never put the boy to any work; and the poor little flabby creature will get to be mere pulp. But turn him out to work for himself, load on him study, toil, the necessity of supporting himself, and you graduate him to manhood. That man, at whose departure a world is mourning, fought his way up from poverty by hard struggle, until he attained that place which he filled in the eyes of the country and of the world. Now, that is the way God deals with His children. He burdens them to make them strong. He says to one of His spiritual children, Every man shall bear his own burden; carry that; and to another, Every man to his work; do that: and to another, Every man his own cross; carry that. Between here and heaven lies many a Hill of Difficulty, as Bunyan describes it, where you and I have got to give over running for walking, and to give over walking for climbing on the knees. I have lived long enough to thank God for difficulties. They make you strong, they sinew your heart; they enlarge your faith; they bring you near to God. Burden-bearing strengthens; grappling with difficulties gives us what we so much need, and that is force; and in Gods school some hard lessons have to be learnt. I think we learn our most precious lessons when we look at them through tears which make a lens for the eye. I have found the hardest lesson in this world is--what? It is to let God have His way; and the man or woman who has learnt how to let God have His way has attained the higher life--the highest on earth. (S. Cox, D. D.)
Religion must be personal
A little girl, whom we will call Ellen, was some time ago helping to nurse a sick gentleman whom she loved very dearly. One day he said to her, Ellen, it is time for me to take my medicine, I think. Will you pour it out for me? You must measure just a table-spoonful, and then put it in that wine-glass close by. Ellen quickly did so, and brought it to his bedside; but, instead of taking it in his own hand, he quietly said, Now, dear, will you drink it for me? Will I drink it? What do you mean? I am sure I would, in a minute, if it would cure you all the same; but you know it wont do you any good, unless you take it yourself. Wont it, really? the gentleman replied. No, I suppose it will not. But Ellen, if you cant take my medicine for me, I cant take your salvation for you. You must go to Jesus, and believe in Him for yourself. In this way he tried to teach his little friend that each human being must seek salvation for him-self--repent, believe, obey, for himself: that this is a burden which no man can bear for his brother.
Doing duty by proxy
Bishop Burnet, in his charges to the clergy of his diocese, used to be extremely vehement in his declamations against pluralities. In his first visitation to Salisbury he urged the authority of St. Bernard; who being consulted by one of his followers, whether he might accept of two benefices, replied, And how will, you be able to serve them both? I intend, answered the priest, to officiate in one of them by a deputy. will your deputy suffer eternal punishment for you too? asked the saint. Believe me, you may serve your cure by proxy, but you must suffer the penalty in person. This anecdote made such an impression on Mr. Kelsey, a pious and wealthy clergyman then present, that he immediately resigned the rectory of Bernerton, in Berkshire, worth two hundred a year, which he then held with one of great value.
Burden-bearing
I. Self-help.
1. This is inevitable. Each has his burden of
(1) work;
(2) sorrow;
(3) responsibility;
(4) bodily infirmities;
(5) waiting.
2. This is salutary.
(1) To utilize our powers.
(2) To develope our excellences.
II. Brotherly help (Gal_6:2). The carrying of our own load gives strength to carry the burden of others.
(1) The burden of trial.
(2) Of poverty.
(3) Of bearing a wandering brother to Christ.
III. Divine help (Psa_55:22).
(1) The burden of anxiety.
(2) Of sin. (T. L. Cuyler.)
I. Man is independent, φορτίον, ones own proper burden, a packmans bag, a soldiers kit. Responsibilities of life, of parents, masters, teachers, is not a curse but a privilege, which is thrown away when we endeavour to throw it on others.
2. Fruits of past conduct.
II. Men are interdependent (Gal_6:2), βαρη, burdens which may be shifted or borne by another.
1. A mans infirmities, temptations, poverty, stumblings (Gal_6:1).
2. The mutual blessedness of this interdependence.
III. Men are absolutely dependent. (Psa_55:22): burdens sent as a portion from God.
1. Affliction.
2. Consciousness of guilt. (D. A. Taylor, M. A.)
Burdens
I. Our own.
II. Our brothers (Gal_6:2).
III. Our Lords (Gal_6:17) By bearing the first we relieve our Lords trouble: if every man bore his own burden, instead of shirking it, the will of God would be done on earth as it is in heaven. By bearing the second we relieve our brothers trouble. Either by sympathy or substitution. By bearing the third we relieve our own: the trouble of doubt, of sin, of controversy.
IV. Personality an awful gift. This short verse--
I. Singles us out from all the multitude around us.
II. Bids us remember, what the world would hide from us, that we are each of us one.
1. This is a great thought.
2. An awful thought.
3. A thought we cannot shake off.
III. Ordinary life witnesses to this truth.
1. All deep thinking people live apart from others.
2. Sympathy may lighten their burden, but still it is their own.
3. Pain and death prove this.
IV. The present life cannot explain all this. We must go to Revelation: there we find--
1. That this great mystery is the gift of individual being from God (Gen_2:7).
2. That we have a will that can resist the almighty will of God.
3. That the whole volume is a history of the conflict of the human will with the Divine, and of Gods endeavour to win the human will by redemption.
4. That every healed will owes its healing to Divine grace.
V. Hence the unspeakable worth of every life.
1. The will is either hardening itself against God, or--
2. is being drawn into harmonious action with the will of God.
VI. Practical lessons.
1. The great importance of acting in the remembrance of our responsibility.
2. The necessity of securing times for self-examination and prayer.
3. The need of claiming our place in Christ the new and living man. (Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.)
How to bear our burden
The world proposes rest by the removal of a burden. The Redeemer gives rest by giving us the spirit and power to bear the burden. (F. W. Robertson.)
Burden-bearing
I. This, then, is my first proposition, namely, that every one must bear the burden of his own sins, both as concerns this life and the next. The results of sin are strictly individual. It is with the soul as with the body, with the spirit as with the flesh. If you thrust a knife into your arm, it does not affect me. You yourself feel the pain; you yourself must endure the agony. I may sympathize, I may pity, I may bandage the gash, but the severed flesh, and the lacerated fibres are yours, and along your nerves nature telegraphs the pain. So it is with the soul. A man who stabs himself with a bad habit, who opens the arteries of his higher life with the lancet of his passions, and drains them of the vital fluid, who inserts his head within the noose of appetite and swings himself off from the pedestal of his self-control, must endure the suffering, the weakness, and the loss which are the issue of his insane conduct. In morals there is no copartnership, no pro rata division of profit and loss. Each man receives according to the summation of his own account.
II. I have alluded to the individuality of moral responsibility. I have striven to show you that each one must endure his own sufferings, and abide the result of his own actions, and that in this no one can share with him. Not only is this true in respect to moral responsibility, but it is equally true in respect to moral growth. You may place two trees side by side, so that their branches shall interlace, and the fragrance of their blossoms intermingle, and yet in their growth each is separate. Covered by the same soil, moistened by the same drop, warmed by the same ray, the roots of either collect and reinforce the trunks of each, with their respective nourishment. Each tree grows by a law of its own growth, and the law of its own effort. The sap of one, in its upward or downward flow, cannot desert its own channels and feed the fibres of the other. So it is with two Christians. Planted in the same soil, drawing their sustenance from the same source, they, nevertheless, extract it through individual processes of thought and life. In daily contact and communion, whether in floral or fruitful states intermingling, equal in girth and height, equal in the results of their growth, the spiritualized currents of the one mind cannot become the property of the other. They cannot exchange duties. They cannot exchange hopes. I cannot think for you, or you for me. We cannot meditate for one another. Soul-food, like bodily food, is assimilated by each man for himself. See what determination the world manifests in pursuit of carnal things; over what sharp obstacles men mount to honour and wealth. A worldly man asks no help from another. He plays the game of life boldly, asking no odds. When he comes to an obstruction, he puts his shoulder bravely against it, and rolls it aside or climbs over it. Nay, more, out of the very fragments of a previous overthrow he erects a triumph. Nothing overawes him nor discourages him. He asks no one to bear his burden. He bears it himself, and finds it to be a source of strength and power. And shall a Christian shrink from what a worldling bravely attempts? Shall we unto whom the heavens minister, faint when those to whom the gates of power are shut persevere? These things ought not so to be. What is a slip? What is a scar? What is a fall? They will all testify to the perils you endured, and the heroism of your perseverance, at the Last Day. Think not of these. Write on your banner, where, living or dying, your eyes shall behold them, these words: He who endureth unto the end shall be saved. (W. H. H. Murray.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v6 Chapter 27
Chapter 27
SOWING AND REAPING.
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Gal_6:6-10
EACH shall bear his own burden (Gal_6:5)-but let there be communion of disciple with teacher in all that is good. The latter sentence is clearly intended to balance the former. The transition turns upon the same antithesis between social and individual responsibility that occupied us in the foregoing chapter. But it is now presented on another side. In the previous passage it concerned the conduct of "the spiritual" toward erring brethren whom they were tempted to despise; here, their behaviour toward teachers whom they were disposed to neglect. There it is inferiors, here superiors that are in view. The Galatian "vainglory" manifested itself alike in provocation toward the former, and in envy toward the latter. {Gal_5:26} In both ways it bred disaffection, and threatened to break up the Churchs unity. The two effects are perfectly consistent. Those who are harsh in their dealings with the weak, are commonly rude and insubordinate toward their betters, where they dare to be so. Self-conceit and self-sufficiency engender in the one direction a cold contempt, in the other a jealous independence. The former error is corrected by a due sense of our own infirmities; the latter by the consideration of our responsibility to God. We are compelled to feel for the burdens of others when we realise the weight of our own. We learn to respect the claims of those placed over us, when we remember what we owe to God through them. Personal responsibility is the last word of the former paragraph; social responsibility is the first word of this. Such is the contrast marked by the transitional But.
From this point of view Gal_6:6 gains a very comprehensive sense. "All good things" cannot surely be limited to the "carnal things" of 1Co_9:11. As Meyer and Beet amongst recent commentators clearly show, the context gives to this phrase a larger scope. At the same time, there is no necessity to exclude the thought of temporal good. The Apostle designedly makes his appeal as wide as possible. The reasoning of the corresponding passage in the Corinthian letter is a deduction from the general principle laid down here.
But it is spiritual fellowship that the Apostle chiefly desiderates. The true minister of Christ counts this vastly more sacred, and has this interest far more at heart than his own temporalities. He labours for the unity of the Church; he strives to secure the mutual sympathy and co-operation of all orders and ranks-teachers and taught, officers and private members-"in every good word and work." He must have the heart of his people with him in his work, or his joy will be faint and his success scant indeed. Christian teaching is designed to awaken this sympathetic response. And it will take expression in the rendering of whatever kind of help the gifts and means of the hearer and the needs of the occasion call for. Paul requires every member of the Body of Christ to make her wants and toils his own. We have no right to leave the burdens of the Churchs work to her leaders, to expect her battles to be fought and won by the officers alone. This neglect has been the parent of innumerable mischiefs. Indolence in the laity fosters sacerdotalism in the clergy. But when, on the contrary, an active, sympathetic union is maintained between "him that is taught" and "him that teacheth," that other matter of the temporal support of the Christian ministry, to which this text is so often exclusively referred, comes in as a necessary detail, to be generously and prudently arranged, but which will not be felt on either side as a burden or a difficulty. Everything depends on the fellowship of spirit, on the strength of the bond of love that knits together the members of the Body of Christ. Here, in Galatia, that bond had been grievously weakened. In a Church so disturbed, the fellowship of teachers and taught was inevitably strained.
Such communion the Apostle craves from his children in the faith with an intense yearning. This is the one fruit of Gods grace in them which he covets to reap for himself, and feels he has a right to expect. "Be ye as I am," he cries-"do not desert me, my children, for whom I travail in birth. Let me not have to toil for you in vain". {Gal_4:12-19} So again, writing to the Corinthians: "It was I that begat you in Christ Jesus; I beseech you then, be followers of me. Let me remind you of my ways in the Lord…O ye Corinthians, to you our mouth is open, our heart enlarged. Pay me back in kind (you are my children), and be ye too enlarged". {1Co_4:14-17; 2Co_6:11-13} He "thanks God" for the Philippians "on every remembrance of them," and "makes his supplication" for them "with joy, because of their fellowship in regard to the gospel from the first day until now". {Php_1:3-7} Such is the fellowship which Paul wished to see restored in the Galatian Churches.
In Gal_6:10 he extends his appeal to embrace in it all the kindly offices of life. For the love inspired by the Church, the service rendered to her, should quicken all our human sympathies and make us readier to meet every claim of pity or affection. While our sympathies, like those of a loving family, will be concerned "especially" with "the household of faith," and within that circle more especially with our pastors and teachers in Christ, they have no limit but that of "opportunity"; they should "work that which is good toward all men." True zeal for the Church widens, instead of narrowing, our charities. Household affection is the nursery, not the rival, of love to our fatherland and to humanity.
Now the Apostle is extremely urgent in this matter of communion between teachers and taught. It concerns the very life of the Christian community. The welfare of the Church and the progress of the kingdom of God depend on the degree to which its individual members accept their responsibility in its affairs. Ill-will towards Christian teachers is paralysing in its effects on the Churchs life. Greatly are they to blame, if their conduct gives rise to discontent. Only less severe is the condemnation of those in lower place who harbour in themselves and foster in the minds of others sentiments of disloyalty. To cherish this mistrust, to withhold our sympathy from him who serves us in spiritual things, this, the Apostle declares, is not merely a wrong done to the man, it is an affront to God Himself. If it be Gods Word that His servant teaches, then God expects some fitting return to be made for the gift He has bestowed. Of that return the pecuniary contribution, the meed of "carnal things" with which so many seem to think their debt discharged, is often the least and easiest part. How far have men a right to be hearers-profited and believing hearers-in the Christian congregation, and yet decline the duties of Church fellowship? They eat the Churchs bread, but will not do her work. They expect like children to be fed and nursed and waited on; they think that if they pay their minister tolerably well, they have "communicated with" him quite sufficiently. This apathy has much the same effect as the Galatian bickerings and jealousies. It robs the Church of the help of the children whom she has nourished and brought up. Those who act thus are trying in reality to "mock God." They expect Him to sow his bounties upon them, but will not let Him reap. They refuse Him the return that He most requires for His choicest benefits.
Now, the Apostle says, God is not to be defrauded in this way. Men may wrong each other; they may grieve and affront His ministers. But no man is clever enough to cheat God. It is not Him, it is themselves they will prove to have deceived. Vain and selfish men who take the best that God and man can do for them as though it were a tribute to their greatness, envious and restless men who break the Churchs fellowship of peace, will reap at last even as they sow. The mischief and the loss may fall on others now; but in its full ripeness it will come in the end upon themselves. The final reckoning awaits us in another world. And as we act by God and by His Church now, in our day, so He will act hereafter by us in His day.
Thus the Apostle, in Gal_6:6-7, places this matter in the searching light of eternity. He brings to bear upon it one of the great spiritual maxims characteristic of his teaching. Pauls unique influence as a religious teacher lies in his mastery of principles of this kind, in the keenness of insight and the incomparable vigour with which he applies eternal truths to commonplace occurrences. The paltriness and vulgarity of these local broils and disaffections lend to his warning a more severe impressiveness. With what a startling and sobering force, one thinks, the rebuke of these verses must have fallen on the ears of the wrangling Galatians! How unspeakably mean their quarrels appear in the light of the solemn issues opening out before them! It was God whom their folly had presumed to mock. It was the harvest of eternal life of which their factiousness threatened to defraud them.
The principle on which this warning rests is stated in terms that give it universal application: Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. This is in fact the postulate of all moral responsibility. It asserts the continuity of personal existence, the connection of cause and effect in human character. It makes man the master of his own destiny. It declares that his future doom hangs upon his present choice, and is in truth its evolution and consummation. The twofold lot of "corruption" or "life eternal" is in every case no more, and no less, than the proper harvest of the kind of sowing practised here and now. The use made of our seed-time determines exactly, and with a moral certainty greater even than that which rules in the natural field, what kind of fruitage our immortality will render.
This great axiom deserves to be looked at in its broadest aspect. It involves the following considerations:-
1. Our present life is the seed-time of an eternal harvest.
Each recurring year presents a mirror of human existence. The analogy is a commonplace of the worlds poetry. The spring is in every land a picture of youth-its morning freshness and innocence, its laughing sunshine, its opening blossoms, its bright and buoyant energy; and, alas, oftentimes its cold winds and nipping frosts and early, sudden blight! Summer images a vigorous manhood, with all the powers in action and the pulses of life beating at full swing; when the dreams of youth are worked out in sober, waking earnest; when manly strength is tested and matured under the heat of mid-day toil, and character is disciplined, and success or failure in lifes battle must be determined. Then follows mellow autumn, season of shortening days and slackening steps and gathering snows; season too of ripe experience, of chastened thought and feeling, of widened influence and clustering honours. And the story ends in the silence and winter of the grave! Ends? Nay, that is a new beginning! This whole round of earthly vicissitude is but a single spring-time. It is the mere childhood of mans existence, the threshold of the vast house of life.
The oldest and wisest man amongst us is only a little child in the reckoning of eternity. The Apostle Paul counted himself no more. "We know in part," he says; "we prophesy in part-talking, reasoning like children. We shall become men, seeing face to face, knowing as we are known": {1Co_13:8; 1Co_13:11-12} Do we not ourselves feel this in our higher, moods? There is an instinct of immortality, a forecasting of some ampler existence, "a stirring of blind life" within the soul; there are visionary gleams of an unearthly Paradise haunting at times the busiest and most unimaginative men. We are intelligences in the germ, lying folded up in the chrysalis stage of our existence. Eyes, wings are still to come. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be," no more than he who had seen but the seed-sowing of early spring and the bare wintry furrows, could imagine what the golden, waving harvest would be like. There is a glorious, everlasting kingdom of heaven, a world which in its duration, its range of action and experience, its style of equipment and occupation, will be worthy of the elect children of God. Worship, music, the purest passages of human affection and of moral elevation, may give us some foretaste of its joys. But what it will be really like, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard; nor heart of man conceived."
Think of that, struggling heart, worn with labour, broken by sorrow, cramped and thwarted by the pressure of an unkindly world. "The earnest expectancy of the creation" waits for your revealing. {Rom_8:19} You will have your enfranchisement; your soul wilt take wing at last. Only have faith in God, and in righteousness; only be not weary in well-doing. Those crippled powers will get their full play. Those baffled purposes and frustrated affections will unfold and blossom into a completeness undreamed of now, in the sunshine of heaven, in "the liberty of the glory of the sons of God." Why look for your harvest here? It is March, not August yet. "In due season we shall reap, if we faint not." See to it that you "sow to the Spirit," that your life be of the true seed of the kingdom; and for the rest, have no care nor fear. What should we think of the farmer who in winter, when his fields were frost-bound, should go about wringing his hands and crying that his labour was all lost! Are we wiser in our despondent moods? However dreary and unpromising, however poor and paltry in its outward seeming the earthly seed-time, your lifes work will have its resurrection. Heaven lies hidden in those daily acts of humble, difficult duty, even as the giant oak with its centuries of growth and all its summer glory sleeps in the acorn-cup. No eye may see it now; but " the Day will declare it!"
2. In the second place, the quality of the future harvest depends entirely on the present sowing.
In quantity, as we have seen, in outward state and circumstance, there is a complete contrast. The harvest surpasses the seed from which it sprang, by thirty, sixty, or a hundred-fold. But in quality we find a strict agreement. In degree they may differ infinitely; in kind they are one. The harvest multiplies the effect of the sowers labour; but it multiplies exactly that effect, and nothing else. This law runs through all life. If we could not count upon it, labour would be purposeless and useless; we should have to yield ourselves passively to natures caprice. The farmer sows wheat in his cornfield, the gardener plants and trains his fig-tree; and he gets wheat, or figs, for his reward-nothing else. Or is he a "sluggard" that "will not plough by reason of the cold?" Does he let weeds and thistledown have the run of his garden-plot? Then it yields him a plentiful harvest of thistles and of weeds! What could he expect? "Men do not gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles." From the highest to the lowest order of living things, each grows and fructifies "after its kind." This is the rule of nature, the law which constituted Nature at the beginning. The good tree brings forth good fruit; and the good seed makes the good tree.
All this has its moral counterpart. The law of reproduction in kind holds equally true of the relation of this life to the next. Eternity for us will be the multiplied, consummated outcome of the good or evil of the present life. Hell is just sin ripe-rotten ripe. Heaven is the fruitage of righteousness. There will be two kinds of reaping, the Apostle tells us, because there are two different kinds of sowing. "He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption": there is nothing arbitrary or surprising in that. "Corruption"-the moral decay and dissolution of the mans being-is the natural retributive effect of his carnality. And "he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." Here too, the sequence is inevitable. Like breeds its like. Life springs of life; and death eternal is the culmination of the souls present death to God and goodness. The future glory of the saints is at once a Divine reward, and a necessary development of their present faithfulness. And eternal life lies germinally contained in faiths earliest beginning, when it is but as "a grain of mustard seed." We may expect in our final state the outcome of our present conduct, as certainly as the farmer who puts wheat into his furrows in November will.count on getting wheat out of them again next August.
Under this law of the harvest we are living at this moment, and sowing every day the seed of an immortality of honour or of shame. Life is the seed-plot of eternity; and youth is above all the seed-time of life. What are our children doing with these precious, vernal years? What is going into their minds? What ideas, what desires are rooting themselves in these young souls? If it be pure thoughts and true affections, love to God, self-denial, patience and humility, courage to do what is right-if these be the things that are sown in their hearts, there will be for them, and for us, a glorious harvest of wisdom and love and honour in the years to come, and in the day of eternity. But, if sloth and deceit be there, and unholy thoughts, vanity and envy and self-indulgence, theirs will he a bitter harvesting. Men talk of "sowing their wild oats," as though that were an end of it; as though a wild and prodigal youth might none the less be followed by a sober manhood and an honoured old age. But it is not so. If wild oats have been sown, there will be wild oats to reap, as certainly as autumn follows spring. For every time the youth deceives parent or teacher, let him know that he will be deceived by the Father of lies a hundred times. For every impure thought or dishonourable word, shame will come upon him sixty-fold. If his mind be filled with trash and refuse, then trash and refuse are all it will be able to produce. If the good seed be not timely sown in his heart, thorns and nettles will sow themselves there fast enough; and his soul will become like the sluggards garden, rank with base weeds and poison-plants, a place where all vile things will have their resort, - "rejected and nigh unto a curse."
Who is "he that soweth to his own flesh?" It is, in a word, the selfish man. He makes his personal interest, and as a rule his bodily pleasure, directly or ultimately, the object of life. The sense of responsibility to God, the thought of life as a stewardship of which one must give account, have no place in his mind. He is a "lover of pleasure rather than a lover of God." His desires, unfixed on God, steadily tend downwards. Idolatry of self becomes slavery to the flesh. Every act of selfish pleasure-seeking, untouched by nobler aims, weakens and worsens the souls life. The selfish man gravitates downward into the sensual man; the sensual man downward into the bottomless pit. This is the "minding of the flesh" which "is death." {Rom_8:5-8; Rom_8:13} For it is "enmity against God" and defiance of His law. It overthrows the course of nature, the balance of our human constitution; it brings disease into the frame of our being. The flesh, unsubdued, and uncleansed by the virtue of the Spirit, breeds "corruption." Its predominance is the sure presage of death. The process of decay begins already, this side of the grave; and it is often made visible by appalling signs. The bloated face, the sensual leer, the restless, vicious eye, the sullen brow tell us what is going on within. The mans soul is rotting in his body. Lust and greed are eating out of him the capacity for good. And if he passes on to the eternal harvest as he is, if that fatal corruption is not arrested, what doom can possibly await such a man but that of which our merciful Saviour spoke so plainly that we might tremble and escape-"the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched!"
3. And finally, God Himself is the Lord of the moral harvest. The rule of retribution, the nexus that binds together our sowing and our reaping, is not something automatic and that comes about of itself; it is directed by the will of God, who "worketh all in all."
Even in the natural harvest we look upwards to Him. The order and regularity of nature, the fair procession of the seasons waiting on the silent and majestic march of the heavens, have in all ages directed thinking and grateful men to the Supreme Giver, to the creative Mind and sustaining Will that sits above the worlds. As Paul reminded the untutored Lycaonians, "He hath not left Himself without witness, in that He gave us rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." It is "God" that "gives the increase" of the husbandmans toil, of the merchants forethought, of the artists genius and skill. We do not sing our harvest songs, with our Pagan forefathers, to sun and rain and west wind, to mother Earth and the mystic powers of Nature.
In these poetic idolatries were yet blended higher thoughts and a sense of Divine beneficence. But "to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him." In the harvest of the earth man is a worker together with God. The farmer does his part, fulfilling the conditions God has laid down in nature; "he putteth in the wheat in rows, and the barley in its appointed place; for his God doth instruct him aright, and doth teach him." He tills the ground, he sows the seed-and there he leaves it to God. "He sleeps and rises night and day; and the seed springs and grows up he knows not how." And the wisest man of science cannot tell him how. "God giveth it a body, as it hath pleased Him." But how- that is His own secret, which He seems likely to keep. All life in its growth, as in its inception, is a mystery, hid with Christ in God. Every seed sown in field or garden is a deposit committed to the faithfulness of God; which He honours by raising it up again, thirty, sixty, or a hundred-fold, in the increase of the harvest.
In the moral world this Divine co-operation is the more immediate, as the field of action lies nearer, if one may so say, to the nature of God Himself. The earthly harvest may, and does often fail. Storms waste it; blights canker it; drought withers, or fire consumes it. Industry and skill, spent in years of patient labour, are doomed not unfrequently to see their reward snatched from them. The very abundance of other lands deprives our produce of its value.
The natural creation "was made subject to vanity." His frustration and disappointment are overruled for higher ends. But in the spiritual sphere there are no casualties, no room for accident or failure. Here life comes directly into contact with the Living God, its fountain; and its laws partake of His absoluteness.
Each act of faith, of worship, of duty and integrity, is a compact between the soul and God. We "commit our souls in well-doing unto a faithful Creator". {1Pe_4:19} By every such volition the heart is yielding itself to the direction of the Divine Spirit. It "sows unto the Spirit," whenever in thought or deed His prompting is obeyed and His will made the law of life. And as in the soil, by the Divine chemistry of nature, the tiny germ is nursed and fostered out of sight, till it lifts itself from the sod a lovely flower, a perfect fruit, so in the order of grace it will prove that from the smallest seeds of goodness in human hearts, from the feeblest beginnings of the life of faith, from the lowliest acts of love and service, God in due season will raise up a glorious harvest for which heaven itself will be the richer.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv5–10 5. For every man shall bear his own burden.…
5. For every man shall bear his own burden. This seems at first to conflict with verse 2. The meaning of verse 2 is “Bear ye one another's burden of trial and suffering;” of verse 5, “Every one must bear his own burden of responsibility.” The first is aiding to bear the burden of another's infirmities; the second is the burden of our account before God. The Greek had two different words for “burden” in the two verses. It is unfortunate that the Versions do not represent the difference by two words in the English.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v6 Gal_6:6. Communicate unto him that teacheth in all good…
CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Gal_6:6. Communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.—Go shares with him in the good things of this life. While each bears his own burden he must think of others, especially in ministering out of his earthly goods to the wants of his spiritual teacher (see 2Co_11:7; 2Co_11:11; Php_4:10; 1Th_2:6; 1Th_2:9; 1Ti_5:17-18).
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Gal_6:7. God is not mocked.—The verb means to sneer with the nostrils drawn up in contempt. Excuses for illiberality may seem valid before men, but are not so before God.
Gal_6:8. He that soweth to his flesh.—Unto his own flesh, which is devoted to selfishness. Shall reap corruption.—Destruction, which is not an arbitrary punishment of fleshly-mindedness, but is its natural fruit; the corrupt flesh producing corruption, which is another word for destruction. Corruption is the fault, and corruption the punishment.
Gal_6:9. Let us not be weary: we shall reap, if we faint not.—“Weary” refers to the will; “faint” to relaxation of the powers. No one should faint, as in an earthly harvest sometimes happens.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Gal_6:6-10
Moral Sowing and Reaping.
I. Beneficence by the taught towards the teacher is sowing good seed.—“Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things” (Gal_6:6). The good things referred to, though not confined to temporal good, do certainly mean that. While every man must bear his own burden, he must also help to bear the burden of his brother. Especially must the taught go shares with his spiritual teacher in all things necessary. But beneficence shown towards the minister in temporalities is the least, and with many the easiest, part of the duty. Teacher and taught should mutually co-operate with each other in Christian work, and share with each other in spiritual blessings. The true minister of the gospel is more concerned in eliciting the co-operation and sympathy of the members of his Church than in securing their temporal support. If he faithfully ministers to them in spiritual things, they should be eager to minister unto him of their worldly substance, and to aid him in promoting the work of God. Every good deed, done in the spirit of love and self-sacrifice, is sowing good seed.
II. By the operation of unchanging divine law the reaping will correspond to the kind of seed sown and the nature of the soil into which it is cast.—“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh,” etc. (Gal_6:7-8). Men may wrong each other, but they cannot cheat God. To expect God to sow His bounties upon them, and not to let Him reap their gratitude and service, is mockery. But it is not God they deceive; they deceive themselves. For at last every one shall reap as he sows. The use made of our seed-time determines exactly, and with a moral certainty greater even than that which rules in the natural field, what kind of fruitage our immortality will render. Eternity for us will be the multiplied, consummate outcome of the good or evil of the present life. Hell is just sin ripe—rotten ripe. Heaven is the fruitage of righteousness. “He that soweth to his own flesh reaps corruption”—the moral decay and dissolution of the man’s being. This is the natural retributive effect of his carnality. The selfish man gravitates downward into the sensual man; the sensual man downward into the bottomless pit. “He that soweth to the Spirit reaps life everlasting.” The sequence is inevitable. Like breeds its like. Life springs of life, and death eternal is the culmination of the soul’s present death to God and goodness. The future glory of the saints is at once a divine reward and a necessary development of their present faithfulness (Findlay, passim).
III. Sowing the seed of good deeds should be prosecuted with unwearied perseverance.—
1. Because the harvest is sure to follow. “Let us not be weary in well-doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Gal_6:9). Here is encouragement for the wearied, baffled worker. We have all our moments of despondency and disappointment, and are apt to imagine our labours are futile and all our painstaking useless. Not so. We are confounding the harvest with the seed-time. “In due season”—in God’s time, which is the best time—“we shall reap, if we faint not.” Our heavenly harvest lies in every earnest and faithful deed, as the oak with its centuries of growth and all its summer glory sleeps in the acorn-cup, as the golden harvest slumbers in the seeds under their covering of wintry snow.
2. Because the opportunity of doing good is ever present.—“As we have opportunity let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith” (Gal_6:10). The whole of life is our opportunity, and every day brings its special work. Opportunity is never to seek; it is ever present. There is not a moment without a duty. While we are looking for a more convenient opportunity we lose the one that is nearest to us. As members of the household of faith there is ever work enough to do—work that fits us to do good on a wider scale—“unto all men.” True zeal for the Church broadens rather than narrows our charities. Household affection is the nursery, not the rival, of love to our fatherland and to humanity.
Lessons.—
1. Our present life is the seed-time of an eternal harvest.
2. The quality of the future harvest depends entirely on the present sowing.
3. God Himself is the Lord of the moral harvest.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Gal_6:6. Pastors and People.
I. It is the duty of the people to give their pastors not only countenance but maintenance.
II. It is the law of nations, and a conclusion grounded on common equity, that those who spend themselves, as a candle, to give light to others and for the common good of all, should be maintained of the common stock by all.
III. Every calling is able to maintain them that live therein, therefore we may not think that the ministry, the highest calling, should be so base or barren as that it cannot maintain them that attend thereupon.
IV. Ministers are the Lord’s soldiers, captains, and standard-bearers, and therefore are not to go a warfare at their own cost.
V. Ministers are to give themselves wholly to the building of the Church and to the fighting of the Lord’s battles. Therefore they are to have their pay that they may attend upon their calling without distraction.
VI. It is the ordinance of God that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.—Ministers should be liberally provided for, yet with moderation, that they draw not all men’s wealth into their purses. He that would live of the gospel must teach the gospel. A benefit requires a duty, and diligence in that duty.—Perkins.
Ministerial Maintenance.—
1. Seeing Christ’s ministers are to bestow themselves wholly in the work of the ministry and not to be entangled with the affairs of this life, therefore the people of God, among whom they spend their strength, are bound by common equity to give them worldly maintenance, that they may be neither diverted from nor discouraged in their work of watching over souls.
2. This maintenance, though it should be moderate and such as may not through abundance occasion pride, luxury, and prodigality, yet should be liberal and creditable, such as may not only supply pinching necessities, but also that they may have wherewith to supply the necessities of the indigent, to educate their children so as they may sustain themselves and be profitable members both of Church and commonwealth.
3. The Church’s maintenance is only due unto such ministers as have abilities to preach, and are faithful and diligent labourers in the word. Those who are unfit or unwilling to preach should be removed from their charge, and not suffered to eat up the Church’s maintenance, feeding themselves and starving the souls of people committed to their charge.—Fergusson.
Gal_6:7-9. Deceived Sowers to the Flesh.
I. The solemnity of the apostle’s warning.—He seems to intimate that such is the audacious wickedness of the human heart, that it has within it so many latent mazes of iniquity, that they might be self-deceived either as to their apprehensions of that which was right before God, or as to their own actual condition in His sight; and he tells them God is not mocked by this pretended service, that to Him all hearts are open, and that in impartial and discriminating arbitration He will render to every man according to his deeds. It is sad to be deceived in a friend, in our estimate of health, in our computation of property; but a mistake about the state of the soul—a veil folded about the heart so that it cannot see its own helplessness and peril—this is a state of which thought shudders to conceive, and to describe whose portentousness language has no words that are sufficiently appalling. There can be no peril more imminent than yours. The headlong rider through the darkness before whom the dizzy precipice yawns; the heedless traveller for whom in the bosky woodland the bandits lie in ambush, or upon whom from the jungle’s density the tiger waits to spring; the man who, gazing faintly upward, meets the cruel eye and lifted hand and flashing steel of his remorseless enemy; they of whose condition you can only poorly image, who in far dungeons and beneath the torture of a tyrant’s cruelty groan for a sight of friend or glimpse of day; all around whom perils thicken hopelessly, and to whom, with feet laden with the tidings of evil, the messengers of disaster come,—how they move your sympathy, how you shudder as you dwell upon their danger, how you would fain stir yourselves into brave efforts for their rescue or their warning! Brethren, your own danger is more nearly encompassing and is more infinitely terrible.
II. The import of the apostle’s statement.—We have largely the making or the marring of our own future—that in the thoughts we harbour, in the words we speak and in the silent deeds which, beaded on Time’s string, are told by some recording angel as the story of our lives from year to year, we shape our character and therefore our destiny for ever. There are three special sowers to the flesh—the proud, the covetous, the ungodly. They are all spiritual sins—sins of which human law takes no cognisance, and to which codes of earthly jurisprudence affix no scathing penalty. There is the greater need, therefore, that these spiritual sins should be disclosed in all their enormity and shown in their exceeding sinfulness and in their disastrous wages, in order that men may be left without excuse if they persist wilfully to believe a lie.—W. M. Punshon.
Gal_6:7-8. The Double Harvest.
I. Our present life is a moral trial for another to come.—On till death is our seed-sowing; after death is the sure and universal harvest. On till death is our moral trial; after death is the life of judicial retribution, alike for the just and the unjust.
II. Human life has one or the other of two great characters, and will issue in one or the other of two great results.—
1. They sow to the flesh who live under the influence of their natural inclinations and desires, pleasing only themselves and despising or neglecting the holy will of God. They live to the Spirit the whole current of whose being has been supernaturally reversed under the grace of the gospel.
2. The sowers to the Spirit live. And this true and proper life of man, in its maturity and full perfection, is the great and glorious reward which, by divine appointment, shall eventually crown the labours of the sowers to the Spirit. The sowers to the flesh sow seed which brings forth death. Even now their life is death in rudiment, and in the end they must reap it in its full and eternal development. Degraded existence, miserable existence, everlastingly degraded and miserable existence.
II. We are liable to delusions with respect to these great verities.—All history and experience teem with illustrations of the spiritual spells and juggleries which men, prompted by the invisible potentate of evil, practise upon themselves, that so they may reduce to their convictions the sinfulness of sin, and may tone the booming of the great bell of Scripture menace down to the gentle whisper of an amiable reprimand.—J. D. Geden.
On the Difference between sowing to the Flesh and to the Spirit.
I. The man who soweth to his flesh.—It is to spend our lives in doing these works of the flesh—to lay out our time, our thoughts, and our care in gratifying the vain, sensual, and selfish inclinations which the evil state of the heart naturally and continually puts forth. Broken health, loathsome diseases, ruined fortunes, disappointed wishes, soured tempers, infamy, and shame are among those things which usually come from walking after the flesh.
II. The man who soweth to the Spirit.—It is to live under the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, and in every part of our conduct to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit. He enjoys even at present the fruit of his labour: inward peace and joy, and a hope full of immortality.—Edward Cooper.
The Principle of the Spiritual Harvest.
I. The principle is this, “God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”—There are two kinds of good possible to men—one enjoyed by our animal being, the other felt and appreciated by our spirits. Reap what you have sown. If you sow the wind, do not complain if your harvest is the whirlwind. If you sow to the Spirit, be content with a spiritual reward, invisible, within, more life and higher life.
II. The two branches of the application of this principle.—
1. Sowing to the flesh includes those who live in open riot.
2. Those who live in respectable worldliness.
3. Sowing to the Spirit, the harvest is life eternal.
4. The reward is not arbitrary but natural. The thing reaped is the very thing sown, multiplied a hundredfold. You have sown a seed of life, you reap life everlasting.—F. W. Robertson.
Gal_6:7. Sowing and Reaping in their bearing on the Formation of Individual Character.—There are three plots in which every man is perpetually engaged in sowing and reaping—in the plot of his thoughts, in the plot of his words, and in the plot of his deeds. And there is a storehouse into which the harvests from these three plots are being secretly but unmistakably garnered—the storehouse of individual character. The moral condition of the man to-day is the inevitable result of his thoughts, words, and deeds; his selfhood is rich or poor according to his sowing and reaping in these respective fields.
I. Whatsoever a man sows in thought that will he also reap in the formation, tone, and tendency of his intellectual and moral nature.—
1. Vain thoughts. If we indolently sport with vain and foolish thoughts, they will inevitably produce a crop of the same kind. The mind will be garnished with flimsy and unprofitable fancies, inflated with a too conscious self-importance, and the outcome is heard in “the loud laugh that proclaims the vacant mind,” and seen in the pompous swagger of the intellectual fop (Pro_13:16; Psa_94:11).
2. Proud thoughts.—The man dominated by pride is the most pitiable of objects. His pride of birth will not bear investigation into three generations, his pride of social status is snubbed in a way that leaves a wound that never heals, his pride of wealth smitten down by an unexpected turn of the ever-revolving wheel of fortune, and his pride of life withered by the passing breath of the great Destroyer. But he reaps what he sowed. He sowed the dragon’s teeth of proud and boastful thoughts, and the monster grew up and devoured him (Pro_16:18).
3. Thoughts of sinful pleasure.—If we allow the mind to dream of pleasures that are forbidden, the bloom of innocence is rubbed off never to be again replaced, the conscience is outraged till its voice is muffled and but feebly heard, one vile thought indulged breeds another that is viler still, and the moral atmosphere of the soul is poisoned. What he sows he reaps.
4. Good thoughts.—The mind that aims at the loftiest style of thought, declining to tolerate the presence of a debasing sentiment, that keeps in check the wild and savage brood of evil thoughts ever seeking to overrun and defile the mind, that cultivates a chaste imagination and cherishes the exalted and unselfish charity that “thinketh no evil”—reaps the result in an accession of intellectual vigour, in the creation of a nobler standard by which to judge of men and things, in the unbounded raptures of a refined and fertile imagination, and in the increase of power for doing the highest kind of work for God and humanity.
II. Whatsoever a man sows in words that shall he also reap.—
1. Bitter and rancorous words. If a man studies how much of spiteful venom he can pack into a single sentence, how he can most skilfully whet and sharpen the edge of his words so as to make the deepest wound and raise the most violent storm of irritation and ill-feeling, unalterable as the course of nature the harvest is sure to come. “Our unkind words come home to roost.” The man offensive with his tongue is the devil’s bellows with which he blows up the sparks of contention and strife, and showers of the fiery embers are sure to fall back upon himself to scathe and destroy.
2. False words.—If we deliberately and maliciously concoct a lie, and utter the same with whispered humbleness and hypocritical commiseration, as sure as there is justice in the heavens, the lie will come back with terrific recompense upon the head of the originator.
3. Kind and loving words.—If we speak in the kindest spirit of others, especially in their absence, if we stand up for a friend unjustly maligned and defend him with dignity and faithfulness, if we study to avoid words which cannot but grieve and irritate, then as we have sown so shall we reap—reap the tranquil satisfaction of conscious inoffensiveness, and, best of all, the divine approval. “Heaven in sunshine will requite the kind.”
III. Whatsoever a man sows in deeds that shall he also reap.—
1. Cruel deeds. If we take a savage delight in torturing beast or bird or insect, if we plot how we can inflict the most exquisite pain on our fellow-man, if we make sport of the anguish and distress of others which we make no effort to relieve, we shall inevitably reap the harvest—reap it in the embruting and degradation of our finer sensibilities, reap it in the tempest of rebellion and retaliation which those we outraged will launch upon us.
2. Selfish deeds.—If we live for our own selfish gratification, indifferent to the rights and woes of others; if we surrender ourselves to a covetous spirit, living poor that we may die rich—as we sow we reap. The thing we lived to enjoy ceases to gratify, and our noblest sentiments are buried amid the rubbish of our own sordidness.
3. Generous and noble deeds.—If we aim at the elevation of ourselves and others, if we seek to act on the highest level of righteousness and truth, if we are diligent, unwearied, and persistent in well-doing, then in due season we shall reap the harvest—reap it in a heightened and expansive nobility of character, in an intensified influence and enlarged capacity for doing good, and in the eternal enrichment of the divine plaudit, “Well done.”
Be not Deceived.—This phrase occurs several times as preface to warning, seeming to indicate thus that the subject of the warning is one about which we are specially liable to deception, and upon examination we find that observation justifies the presumption. We are thus guarded against any deception as to the following important practical truths:—
I. The contaminating influence of evil associations (1Co_15:33).
II. The personal responsibility of each for his own sin (Jas_1:16).
III. Entrance into heaven conditioned on character (1Co_6:9).
IV. Human destiny, once settled, irreversible (Gal_6:7).—British and Foreign Evangelical Review.
Gal_6:8. Sowing to the Spirit.
I. The natural man has no desire for immortality.—He has not been seized with the earnest and real wish for a future life; but he is entirely bound by this world in all his thoughts, aims, and wishes: he identifies life and existence altogether with this world, and life out of this world is a mere name to him. He is shut up within the walls of the flesh and within the circle of its own present aims and projects.
II. The spiritual man has a strong desire for immortality, and it is the beginning and foundation of the religious life he leads here. Every field of action becomes unimportant and insignificant compared with the simply doing good things, because in that simple exercise of goodness lies the preparation for eternity.
III. The natural and spiritual man are divided from each other by these distinctions—one has the desire for everlasting life, the other has not. The success of the one perishes with the corruptible life to which it belongs; the success of the other endures for all ages in the world to come.—J. B. Mozley.
The Law of Retribution.
I. We see the justice of God—His bounty and severity.—His bounty in recompensing men above their deserts; His severity in punishing sinners according to their deserts.
II. This doctrine, that we shall drink such as we brew, reap such as we sow, and that men have degrees of felicity or misery answerable to their works, will make us more careful to avoid sin.
III. It serves as a comfort against inequality; whereas the wicked flourish and the godly live in contempt, the time shall come when every one shall reap even as he has sown.
IV. It crosses the conceit of those who promise to themselves an impunity from sin and immunity from all the judgments of God, notwithstanding they go on in their bad practices.—Perkins.
Gal_6:9. Against Weariness in Well-doing.—
1. There is the prevailing temper of our nature, the love of ease—horror of hard labour.
2. The reluctance and aversion are greater when the labour is enjoined by extraneous authority—the imperative will of a foreign power.
3. In the service of God there is a good deal that does not seem for ourselves.
4. There is a principle of false humility—what signifies the little I can do?
5. The complaint of deficient co-operation.
6. In the cause of God the object and effect of well-doing are much less palpable than in some other provinces of action.
7. Yet the duty expressly prescribed is an absolute thing, independently of what men can foresee of its results.
8. There is the consciousness and pleasure of pleasing God.
9. What relief has man gained by yielding to the weariness?
10. Our grave accountableness is for making a diligent, patient, persevering use of the means God has actually given us.—J. Foster.
Apathy one of our Trials.—
1. Because, as in everything else, so in our spiritual growth, we are inevitably disappointed in much of our expectations.
2. The temptation to weariness is no sign at all that the man so tempted is not a true servant of God, though this very often is the first thought that enters the mind. It is no sin to feel weary; the sin is to be weary—that is, to let the feeling have its way and rule our conduct.
3. We expect a kind of fulness of satisfaction in God’s service which we do not get nearly so soon as we fancy that we shall.
4. You are quite mistaken in your belief that former prayers and former resolutions have been in vain and have produced no fruit because no fruit is visible.
5. In due season we shall find that it has been worth while to persevere in trying to serve Christ.—Dr. Temple.
Well-doing.
I. Contrasted with fruitless profession.—It is possible to have a clear notion of Christian truth and to talk well, and yet be idle and useless.
II. Contrasted with mistaken standards.—It is easy to do as others are doing; but are they doing well? Practice must be guided by holy precepts.
III. Contrasted with wrong motives.—Many are careful to do what is literally the right thing, but they do it with base motives. The correct motives are—love (2Co_5:14), gratitude (Psa_116:12), compassion (2Co_5:11), desire to imitate Christ. All well-doing is humble and self-renouncing.—The Lay Preacher.
“Reap if we faint not.”—The image is agricultural.
I. Points of resemblance.—
1. The material harvest is of two kinds—weeds and golden grain.
2. The spiritual harvest is of two kinds—corruption and everlasting life.
3. A combination of agencies.
(1) For the material harvest seed, soil, and elements work with the efforts of the farmer.
(2) For the spiritual harvest the seed of the word and the power of God must co-operate with man’s agency.
4. As to difficulties.
(1) The season may be too wet, too dry, or too hot, or an army of insects may attack the growing grain.
(2) The foes of the spiritual harvest are the world, the flesh, and the devil.
II. Points of contrast.—
1. The material harvest is annual, the spiritual eternal.
2. There are seasons so unfavourable that all the efforts of the farmer prove in vain; the spiritual harvest will never fail.
3. The drouth of one year may be made good by next year’s abundance, but eternity cannot compensate for what was lost in time.
III. Encouragements.—
1. “Our labour is not in vain in the Lord.”
2. “In due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
3. The harvest will be glorious and eternal.—Homiletic Monthly.
Gal_6:10. On doing Good.
I. It is our duty to do good.—This duty is enforced both by the words and example of Christ. Christianity not only requires its adherents to abstain from evil, but it demands their active service.
II. In doing good man attains to true nobility of character.—The characters in history that exert the greatest fascination over us are not those of eminent statesmen or scientists, but those who have been distinguished for their philanthropy. We see in them a moral dignity that is unique. What reversals in human estimates of character will take place when the divine standard of greatness is appealed to!
III. In doing good we find true happiness.—God has so constituted us that the exercise of our malevolent passions is productive of inward dissatisfaction, while the exercise of benevolent affections is attended with the greatest joy. There is real luxury in doing good.—Preacher’s Magazine.
The Opportunity of Beneficence.
I. What a precious thing is opportunity.—People talk about making time for this or that purpose. The time is really made for us, only we are too idle or too careless to use it for the proper end. Opportunities of usefulness are of frequent occurrence; they are wont to come and go with rapidity. They must be seized as you would lay hold of a passing friend in the street.
II. The whole of life is an opportunity.—There is such a thing as a useful life, a true life, a noble life, though all lives must needs contain a multitude of neglected opportunities. As a series of opportunities its record is woefully imperfect. As one opportunity it is not utterly unworthy of the example of Christ. Let us have a thread of right intention running through life. Let us have an active purpose of benevolence—a constant design of love. The continuous opportunity of life must be utilised, if the particular opportunities of life are to be turned to the best account.
III. The field of beneficence is very wide.—Wherever men are found it is possible for us to do them good. We touch only a few persons, but each of these is in contact with others. To do great things with great powers is easy enough; but things so done may be undone so. The glory of Christianity has always been that it does great things with small powers, or powers that men think small; and the results of its work remain. Good work done by many hands is better than the extended philanthropy of an individual; for what is this but the effort of one man to make amends for the neglect of a thousand?
IV. Though all men have a claim on our Christian benevolence some are entitled to a special share.—A man does not become a better citizen when he spurns his own family and neglects his duties at home. On the contrary, the noblest philanthropist is the most affectionate of fathers and husbands, and he who loves most widely in the world loves most intensely in his own house. So it will be with us in our Christian charity. We shall begin with those who are called by the common name and worship the common Lord, and from these we shall go on, with our energy not exhausted but rather refreshed, to the great mass of mankind.—Edward C. Lefroy.
Doing Good.
I. We must do good with that only which is our own.—We may not cut a large and liberal shive off another man’s loaf; we may not steal from one to give to another, or deal unjustly with some that we may be merciful to others.
II. We must do good with cheerfulness and alacrity.—What more free than gift; therefore we may not play the hucksters in doing good, for that blemishes the excellency of the gift.
III. We must so do good as that we do not disable ourselves for ever doing good.—So begin to do good as that we may continue.
IV. We must do all the good we can within the compass of our calling, and hinder all the evil.
V. We must do good to all.—
1. From the grounds of love and beneficence.
2. God is good and bountiful to all.
3. Do good to others as we would they should do to us.
4. Our profession and the reward we look for require us to do this.
VI. There is no possibility of doing good to others after this life.—Perkins.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv5, 10
Galatians
BURDEN-BEARING
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Gal 6:5.
The injunction in the former of these verses appears, at first sight, to be inconsistent with the statement in the latter. But Paul has a way of setting side by side two superficially contradictory clauses, in order that attention may be awakened, and that we may make an effort to apprehend the point of reconciliation between them. So, for instance, you remember he puts in one sentence, and couples together by a ‘for,’ these two sayings: ‘Work out your own salvation’; ‘It is God that worketh in you.’ So here he has been exhorting the Galatian Christians to restore a fallen brother. That is one case to which the general commandment, ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens,’ is applicable.
I cannot here enter on the intervening verses by which he glides from the one to the other of these two thoughts which I have coupled together, but I may just point out in a word the outline of his course of thought. ‘Bear ye one another’s burden,’ says he; and then he thinks, ‘What is it that keeps men from bearing each other’s burdens?’ Being swallowed up with themselves, and especially being conceited about their own strength and goodness. And so he goes on: ‘If a man think himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.’ And what is the best cure for all these fancies inside us of how strong and good we are? To look at our work with an impartial and rigid judgment. It is easy for a man to plume himself on being good, and strong, and great; but let him look at what he has done, and try that by a high standard, and that will knock the conceit out of him. Or, if his work stands the test, then ‘he shall have rejoicing in himself, and not’ by comparing himself with other people. Two blacks do not make a white, and we are not to heighten the lustre of our own whiteness by comparing it with our neighbour’s blackness. Take your act for what _it_ is worth, apart altogether from what other people are. Do not say, ‘God! I thank thee that I am not as other men are . . . or even as this publican’; but look to yourself. There is an occupation with self which is good, and is a help to brotherly sympathy.
And so the Apostle has worked round, you see, to almost an opposite thought from the one with which he started. ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens.’ Yes, but a man’s work is his own and nobody else’s, and a man’s character is his own and nobody else’s, so ‘every man shall bear his own burden.’ The statements are not contradictory. They complete each other. They are the north and the south poles, and between them is the rounded orb of the whole truth. So then, let me point out that:
I. There are burdens which can be shared, and there are burdens which _cannot_.
Let us take the case from which the whole context has arisen. Paul was exhorting the Galatians, as I explained, in reference to their duty to a fallen brother; and he speaks of him--according to our version--as ‘overtaken in a fault.’ Now, that is scarcely his idea, I think. The phrase, as it stands in our Bibles, suggests that Paul is trying to minimise the gravity of the man’s offence; but just in proportion as he minimised its gravity would he weaken his exhortation to restore him. But what he is really doing is not to make as little as possible of the sin, but to make as much of it as is consistent with the truth. The word ‘overtaken’ suggests that some sin, like a tiger in a jungle, springs upon a man and overpowers him by the suddenness of the assault. The word so rendered may perhaps be represented by some such phrase as ‘discovered’; or, if I may use a ‘colloquialism,’ if a man be caught ‘red-handed.’ That is the idea. And Paul does not use the weak word ‘fault,’ but a very much stronger one, which means stark staring sin. He is supposing a bad case of inconsistency, and is not palliating it at all. Here is a brother who has had an unblemished reputation; and all at once the curtain is thrown aside behind which he is working some wicked thing; and there the culprit stands, with the bull’s-eye light flashed upon him, ashamed and trembling. Paul says, ‘If you are a spiritual man’--there is irony there of the graver sort--’show your spirituality by going and lifting him up, and trying to help him.’ When he says, ‘Restore such an one,’ he uses an expression which is employed in other connections in the New Testament, such as for mending the broken meshes of a net, for repairing any kind of damage, for setting the fractured bones of a limb. And that is what the ‘spiritual’ man has to do. He is to show the validity of his claim to live on high by stooping down to the man bemired and broken-legged in the dirt. We have come across people who chiefly show their own purity by their harsh condemnation of others’ sins. One has heard of women so very virtuous that they would rather hound a fallen sister to death than try to restore her; and there are saints so extremely saintly that they will not touch the leper to heal him, for fear of their own hands being ceremonially defiled. Paul says, ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens’; and especially take a lift of each other’s sin.
I need not remind you how the same command applies in relation to pecuniary distress, narrow circumstances, heavy duties, sorrows, and all the ‘ills that flesh is heir to.’ These can be borne by sympathy, by true loving outgoing of the heart, and by the rendering of such practical help as the circumstances require.
But there are burdens that cannot be borne by any but the man himself.
There is the awful burden of personal existence. It is a solemn thing to be able to say ‘I.’ And that carries with it this, that after all sympathy, after all nestling closeness of affection, after the tenderest exhibition of identity of feeling, and of swift godlike readiness to help, each of us lives alone. Like the inhabitants of the islands of the Greek Archipelago, we are able to wave signals to the next island, and sometimes to send a boat with provisions and succour, but we are parted, ‘with echoing straits between us thrown.’ Every man, after all, lives alone, and society is like the material things round about us, which are all compressible, because the atoms that compose them are not in actual contact, but separated by slenderer or more substantial films of isolating air. Thus there is even in the sorrows which we can share with our brethren, and in all the burdens which we can help to bear, an element which cannot be imparted. ‘The heart knoweth its own bitterness’, and neither ‘stranger’ nor other ‘intermeddleth’ with the deepest fountains of ‘its joy.’
Then again, there is the burden of responsibility which can be shared by none. A dozen soldiers may be turned out to make a firing party to shoot the mutineer, and no man knows who fired the shot, but one man did fire it. And however there may have been companions, it was his rifle that carried the bullet, and his finger that pulled the trigger. We say, ‘The woman that Thou gavest me tempted me, and I did eat.’ Or we say, ‘My natural appetites, for which I am not responsible, but Thou who madest me art, drew me aside, and I fell’, or we may say, ‘It was not I; it was the other boy.’ And then there rises up in our hearts a veiled form, and from its majestic lips comes ‘Thou art the man’; and our whole being echoes assent--_Mea culpa; mea maxima culpa_--’My fault, my exceeding great fault.’ No man can bear that burden.
And then, closely connected with responsibility there is another--the burden of the inevitable consequences of transgression, not only away yonder in the future, when all human bonds of companionship shall be broken, and each man shall ‘give account of himself to God,’ but here and now; as in the immediate context the Apostle tells us, ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ The effects of our evil deeds come back to roost; and they never make a mistake as to where they should alight. If I have sown, I, and no one else, will gather. No sympathy will prevent to-morrow’s headache after to-night’s debauch, and nothing that anybody can do will turn the sleuth-hounds off the scent. Though they may be slow-footed, they have sure noses and deep-mouthed fangs. ‘If thou be wise thou shalt be wise for thyself, and if thou scornest thou alone shalt bear it.’ So there are burdens which can, and burdens which cannot, be borne.
II. Jesus Christ is the Burden-bearer for both sorts of burdens.
‘Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ,’ not only as spoken by His lips, but as set forth in the pattern of His life. We have, then, to turn to Him, and think of Him as Burden-bearer in even a deeper sense than the psalmist had discerned, who magnified God as ‘He who daily beareth our burdens.’
Christ is the Burden-bearer of our sin. ‘The Lord hath laid’--or made to meet--’upon Him the iniquity of us all.’ The Baptist pointed his lean, ascetic finger at the young Jesus, and said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God which beareth’--and beareth away--’the sin of the world.’ How heavy the load, how real its pressure, let Gethsemane witness, when He clung to human companionship with the unutterably solemn and plaintive words, ‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death. Tarry ye here and watch with Me.’ He bore the burden of the world’s sin.
Jesus Christ is the bearer of the burden of the consequences of sin, not only inasmuch as, in His sinless humanity, He knew by sympathy the weight of the world’s sin, but because in that same humanity, by identification of Himself with us, deeper and more wonderful than our plummets have any line long enough to sound the abysses of, He took the cup of bitterness which our sins have mixed, and drank it all when He said, ‘My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ Consequences still remain: thank God that they do! ‘Thou wast a God that forgavest them, and Thou didst inflict retribution on their inventions.’ So the outward, the present, the temporal consequences of transgression are left standing in all their power, in order that transgressors may thereby be scourged from their evil, and led to forsake the thing that has wrought them such havoc. But the ultimate consequence, the deepest of all, separation from God, has been borne by Christ, and need never be borne by us.
I suppose I need not dwell on the other aspects of this burden-bearing of our Lord, how that He, in a very deep and real sense, takes upon Himself the sorrows which we bear in union with, and faith on, Him. For then the griefs that still come to us, when so borne, are transmitted into ‘light affliction which is but for a moment.’ ‘In all their afflictions He was afflicted.’ Oh, brethren! you with sad hearts, you with lonely lives, you with carking cares, you with pressing, heavy duties, cast your burden on the Christ, and He ‘will sustain you,’ and sorrows borne in union with Him will change their character, and the very cross shall be wreathed in flowers.
Jesus bears the burden of that solemn solitude which our personal being lays upon us all. The rest of us stand round, and, as I said, hoist signals of sympathy, and sometimes can stretch a brotherly hand out and grasp the sufferer’s hand. But their help comes from without; Christ comes in, and dwells in our hearts, and makes us no longer alone in the depths of our being, which He fills with the effulgence and peace of His companionship. And so for sin, for guilt, for responsibility, for sorrow, for holiness, Christ bears our burdens.
Yes! And when He takes ours on His shoulders, He puts His on ours. ‘My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.’ As the old mystics used to say, Christ’s burden carries him that carries it. It may add a little weight, but it gives power to soar, and it gives power to progress. It is like the wings of a bird, it is like the sails of a ship.
III. Lastly, Christ’s carrying our burdens binds us to carry our brother’s!
‘So fulfil the law of Christ.’ There is a very biting sarcasm, and, as I said about another matter, a grave irony in Paul’s use of that word ‘law’ here. For the whole of this Epistle has been directed against the Judaising teachers who were desirous of cramming Jewish law down Galatian throats, and is addressed to their victims in the Galatian churches who had fallen into the trap. Paul turns round on them here, and says, ‘You want law, do you? Well, if you _will_ have it, here it is--the law of Christ.’ Christ’s life is our law. Practical Christianity is doing what Christ did. The Cross is not only the ground of our hope, but the pattern of our conduct.
And, says Paul in effect, the example of Jesus Christ, in all its sweep, and in all the depth of it, is the only motive by which this injunction that I am giving you will ever be fulfilled. ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens.’ You will never do that unless you have Christ as the ground of your hope, and His great sacrifice as the example for your conduct. For the hindrance that prevents sympathy is self-absorption; and that natural selfishness which is in us all will never be exorcised and banished from us thoroughly, so as that we shall be awake to all the obligations to bear our brother’s burdens, unless Christ has dethroned self, and is the Lord of our inmost spirits.
I rejoice as much as any man in the largely increased sense of mutual responsibility and obligation of mutual aid, which is sweetening society by degrees amongst us to-day, but I believe that no Socialistic or other schemes for the regeneration of society which are not based on the Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ will live and grow. There is but one power that will cast out natural selfishness, and that is love to Christ, apprehending His Cross as the great example to which our lives are to be conformed. I believe that the growing sense of brotherhood amongst us, even where it is not consciously connected with any faith in Christianity, is, to a very large extent, the result of the diffusion through society of the spirit of Christianity, even where its body is rejected. Thank God, the river of the water of life can percolate through many a mile of soil, and reach the roots of trees far away, in the pastures of the wilderness, that know not whence the refreshing moisture has come. But on the wide scale be sure of this: it is the law of Christ that will fight and conquer the natural selfishness which makes bearing our brother’s burdens an impossibility for men. Only, Christian people! let us take care that we are not robbed of our prerogative of being foremost in all such things, by men whose zeal has a less heavenly source than ours ought to have. Depend upon it, heresy has less power to arrest the progress of the Church than the selfish lives of Christian professors.
So, dear friends, let us see to it that we first of all cast our own burdens on the Christ who is able to bear them all, whatever they are. And then let us, with lightened hearts and shoulders, make our own the heavy burdens of sin, of sorrow, of care, of guilt, of consequences, of responsibility, which are crushing down many that are weary and heavy laden. For be sure of this, if we do not bear our brother’s burdens, the load that we thought we had cast on Christ will roll back upon ourselves. He is able to bear both us and our burdens, if we will let Him, and if we will fulfil that law of Christ which was illustrated in all His life, ‘Who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor,’ and was written large in letters of blood upon that Cross where there was ‘laid on Him the iniquity of us all.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv5–10 For each man shall bear his own burden. [Greek,…
For each man shall bear his own burden. [Greek, phortion, burden or responsibility. Bear one another's burden of trial and suffering, those burdens which come by reason of infirmity of the flesh, and so fulfill the law of Christ, which bids us love one another ( Joh_13:34 ; Joh_15:12 ; 1Jo_3:23 ). For if a man think himself to be something, etc., i. e., so good that he can not be tempted, or so strong that he can not fall, or so perfect that he will never need the patience and sympathy of his brethren, when in reality he is nothing, i. e., no better than other men, he deceives himself. But let each man prove his own work instead of criticizing and judging the work of others, and then shall he have glory in himself alone, and not because he seems superior to his neighbor by comparison of his work with that of his neighbor. And it behooves us to be concerned about our own work, and to thus test it, for each one of us shall bear his own load of duty and accountability, for which alone he shall be called to answer in the judgment.]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v6 Or, share with him. 1Co 9:7-15; 1Ti 5:18.
communicate
Or, share with him. 1Co 9:7-15; 1Ti 5:18.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v6 The apostle urges unselfish service:
The apostle urges unselfish service:
v. 6. Let him that is taught in the Word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.
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v. 7. Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
v. 8. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.
v. 9. And let us not be weary in well-doing; for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
v. 10. As we have, therefore, opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.
These single admonitions are not brought in as abruptly as might appear at first glance. Paul is still speaking of the life in the Spirit, which is opposed to all envious grudging. And he here voices a thought which he has emphasized also elsewhere: Let him that is taught in the Word communicate to him that teaches in all good things. He that is taught in the Word, either in the more restricted private and catechetical discussion or in the public instruction, in which the teacher expounds the Word of God before all, should communicate to, literally go shares with, the one that does the teaching, in all good things, not only in temporal support, but in all other benefits as well. They that preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel, 1Co 9:14. Thus the ministers, on their part, do not degrade their ministry to a mere business, especially since it is impossible to speak of adequate compensation in their case, and the parishioners, on their part, do not regard the money paid toward the minister’s support as charity, but as the proper sharing of goods demanded by God.
Solemnly the warning sounds in this connection: Do not let yourselves be deceived; God will not be sneered at. For what a man sows, this he also reaps. He that sows on his own flesh will harvest from the flesh destruction; he that sows to the Spirit of the Spirit will harvest everlasting life. In connection with the obligation of gratitude which he has enjoined upon them, the apostle warns the Galatian Christians against harboring or entertaining any erroneous thoughts. For it is nothing but self-delusion if a person tries to convince himself that he believes in Christ and can comfort himself with regard to the mercy of God and the forgiveness of sins, and yet permits his flesh to rule with all its passions and evil lusts, disregarding all duties which the law of love imposes. For it is impossible to sneer at God with impunity. He will not be disregarded and despised. Although our gracious and merciful Father, He is also the holy and righteous God, whose vengeance will find all the workers of iniquity. If a person, therefore, reaps God’s wrath and displeasure, temporal death, and eternal damnation, he has no one to blame but himself, since he sowed on his own flesh, since he served the lusts of his own evil nature. His harvest agrees with his sowing. Altogether different is the case of him that sows to the Spirit, that takes the proper care of the new man wrought in him through regeneration, that strives more and more to put on the new man, who after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. Such a person will enjoy the harvest of eternal life. By the grace of God the present spiritual life will mature into the life of glory and in glory, where there is fullness of joy at the right hand of God forevermore. What an incentive to every Christian to walk in the Spirit and thus to obtain this harvest of joy!
Unwearied efforts should therefore characterize the life of the Christians, as the apostle writes: But in well-doing let us not become weary; for at the proper season we shall harvest if we do not become faint. In well doing we should not become weary, which not only includes the manifold deeds of charity, by which we have an opportunity to assist our neighbor in spiritual and temporal distress, but refers to the entire spiritual life of the Christian. In this the Christians should not become weary; they should not lose courage; they should not permit the obstacles to wear them out. Only he that remains faithful to the end, the same shall be saved. As soon as our spirit grows weary, then our body will also become faint. This we cannot afford to permit, for the harvest is promised only to such as do not become weary and faint. The harvest of satisfaction and joy in this world may still be connected with much labor and exertion, but if we persist to the end, without growing faint, our reward will be unspeakable fullness of bliss, an everlasting harvest of joy in the presence of our Lord and Savior.
The apostle concludes his admonition with another urgent call: Now, then, as we have time, opportunity, let us do good to all men, but most of all to them that are of the household of faith. Here and now, in proportion to the opportunity offered and afforded to us on all sides, we can and should do good. Now is the chance of the Christians, the most opportune time for sowing deeds of kindness. We do not know how soon the Day of Judgment may be coming. We should practice deeds of love toward our neighbor, we should be of assistance to him, no matter whether the trouble which is bothering him be of the body or of the spirit, our neighbor in this case being every person that is in need of our help, whether Jew or Gentile, friend or enemy, known or unknown, grateful or ungrateful. Only one distinction should we observe; we should give the preference to those that are of the household of faith. Our companions in faith, our fellow-Christians, are united with us by the most intimate bonds of fellowship. To their wants and needs we should, therefore, attend first of all, to them we should give assistance by preference. That is the great duty which our living and walking in the Spirit places upon us.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv6, 9 The one
The one
"The person"
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the word
"the message," everything God has said or commanded
for whatever a man plants, that he will also gather in
Planting represents doing things that end in some kind of result, and gathering in represents experiencing the results of what one has done. AT: "for just as a farmer gathers in the fruit of whatever kind of seeds he plants, so everyone experiences the results of whatever he does" (See: Metaphor)
whatever a man plants
Paul is not specifying males here. AT: "whatever a person plants" or "whatever someone plants" (See: When Masculine Words Include Women)
plants seed to his own sinful nature
Planting seeds is a metaphor for doing deeds that will have consequences later. In this case, the person is doing sinful actions because of his sinful nature. AT: "plants seed according to what he wants because of his sinful nature" or "does the things he wants to do because of his sinful nature" (See: Metaphor)
will gather in destruction
God punishing the person is spoken of as if the person were harvesting a crop. AT: "will receive punishment for what he did" (See: Metaphor)
plants seed to the Spirit
Planting seeds is a metaphor for doing deeds that will have consequences later. In this case, the person is doing good actions because he is listening to God's Spirit. AT: "does the things God's Spirit loves" (See: Metaphor)
will gather in eternal life from the Spirit
"will receive eternal life as a reward from God's Spirit"
translationWords
word
good
teacher
deceive
mock
plant
harvest
flesh
Holy Spirit
eternity
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv5–10 6:5 If believers carry their own load (6:4), they…
6:5 If believers carry their own load (6:4), they will have no occasion to treat a brother or sister with contempt (6:3).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.