CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES
Galatians 6:1. Overtaken in a fault.—Be caught red-handed in any transgression, the result of some sudden and overpowering gust of evil impulse. Restore such an one.—The same word used of a dislocated limb reduced to its place. Such is the tenderness with which we should treat a fallen member in restoring him to a better state. In the spirit of meekness.—Meekness is that temper of spirit towards God whereby we accept His dealings without disputing; then towards men whereby we endure meekly their provocations, and do not withdraw ourselves from the burdens which their sins impose upon us (Trench).
Galatians 6:2. Bear ye one another’s burdens.—The word is “weights,” something exceeding the strength of those under them. “One another’s” is strongly emphatic. It is a powerful stroke, as with an axe in the hand of a giant, at censoriousness or vainglorious egotism. We are not to think of self, but of one another. To bear the burden of an erring brother is truly Christ-like. And so fulfil the law of Christ.—If you must needs observe a law, let it be the law of Christ.
Galatians 6:3. He deceiveth himself.—He is misled by the vapours of his own vanity, he is self-deceived.
Galatians 6:4. Rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.—In that his own work stands the test after severe examination, and not that he is superior to another.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Galatians 6:1-5
Mutual Sympathy in Burden-bearing.
I. That sympathy towards the erring is a test of spiritual-mindedness.—
1. Shown in the tenderness with which the erring should be treated. “If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness” (Galatians 6:1). Worldly and self-seeking men are often severe on a neighbour’s fault. They are more likely to aggravate than heal the wound, to push the weak man down when he tries to rise than to help him to his feet. The spiritual, moved by genuine compassion, should regard it as their duty to set right a lapsed brother, to bring him back as soon and safely as may be to the fold of Christ. To reprove without pride or acrimony, to stoop to the fallen without the air of condescension, requires the spirit of meekness in a singular degree.
2. Reflecting that the most virtuous may some day be in need of similar consideration.—“Considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted” (Galatians 6:1). The disaster befalling one reveals the common peril; it is a signal for every member of the Church to take heed to himself. The scrutiny which it calls for belongs to each man’s private conscience. The faithfulness and integrity required in those who approach the wrong-doer with a view to his recovery must be chastened by personal solicitude. The fall of a Christian brother should be in any case the occasion of heart-searching and profound humiliation. Feelings of indifference towards him, much more of contempt, will prove the prelude of a worse overthrow for ourselves.
II. That sympathy in burden-bearing is in harmony with the highest law.—“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). As much as to say, If ye will bear burdens, bear one another’s burden; if ye will observe law, observe the highest law—the law of love. There is nothing more Christ-like than to bear the burden of a brother’s trespass. Christ bore burdens which to us would have been intolerable and overwhelming. The heaviest burden becomes supportable when shared with loving sympathy. Kindness towards the needy and helpless is work done to Christ. There is a poetic legend among the Anglian kings that Count Fulc the Good, journeying along Loire-side towards Tours, saw, just as the towers of St. Martin’s rose before him in the distance, a leper full of sores who put by his offer of alms and desired to be borne to the sacred city. Amidst the jibes of his courtiers, the good count lifted him in his arms and carried him along bank and bridge. As they entered the town the leper vanished from their sight, and men told how Fulc had borne an angel unawares! Mutual burden-bearing is the practical proof of the unity and solidarity of the Christian brotherhood.
III. That no man can afford to be independent of human sympathy.—
1. Fancied superiority to sympathy is self-deception. “If a man think himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself” (Galatians 6:3). Others will see how little his affected eminence is worth. Some will humour his vanity, many will ridicule or pity it, few will be deceived by it. Real knowledge is humble; it knows its nothingness. Socrates, when the oracle pronounced him the wisest man in Greece, at last discovered that the response was right, inasmuch as he alone was aware that he knew nothing, while other men were confident of their knowledge. It is in humility and dependence, in self-forgetting, that true wisdom begins. Who are we, although the most refined or highest in place, that we should despise plain, uncultured members of the Church, those who bear life’s heavier burdens and amongst whom our Saviour spent His days on earth, and treat them as unfit for our company, unworthy of fellowship with us in Christ? (Findlay). The most exalted and gifted is never lifted above the need of fellow-sympathy.
2. A searching examination into our conduct will reveal how little cause there is for boasting a fancied superiority.—“But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another” (Galatians 6:4). As if the apostle said: “Let each man try his own work. Judge yourselves instead of judging one another. Mind your own duty rather than your neighbours’ faults. Do not think of your worth or talents in comparison with theirs, but see to it that your work is right.” The question for each of us is not, What do others fail to do? but, What am I myself really doing? What will my life’s work amount to when measured by that which God expects from me? The petty comparisons which feed our vanity and our class-prejudices are of no avail at the bar of God. If we study our brother’s work, it should be with a view of enabling him to do it better, or to learn to improve our own by his example; not in order to find excuses for ourselves in his shortcomings. If our work abide the test, we shall have glorying in ourselves alone, not in regard to our neighbour. Not his flaws and failures, but my own honest work, will be the ground of my satisfaction (Ibid.).
IV. That individual responsibility is universal.—“For every man shall bear his own burden [load]” (Galatians 6:5). No man can rid himself of his life-load; he must carry it up to the judgment-seat of Christ, where he will get his final discharge. Daniel Webster was present one day at a dinner-party given at Astor House by some New York friends, and in order to draw him out one of the company put to him the following question, “Will you please tell us, Mr. Webster, what was the most important thought that ever occupied your mind?” Mr. Webster merely raised his head, and passing his hand slowly over his forehead, said, “Is there any one here who doesn’t know me?” “No, sir,” was the reply; “we all know you, and are your friends.” “Then,” said he, looking over the table, “the most important thought that ever occupied my mind was that of my individual responsibility to God”; and he spoke on the subject for twenty minutes. The higher sense we have of our own responsibility the more considerate we are in judging others and the more we sympathise with them in their struggles and trials. Æsop says a man carries two bags over his shoulder, the one with his own sins hanging behind, that with his neighbour’s sins in front.
Lessons.—
1. Sympathy is a Christ-like grace.
2. Sympathy for the erring does not tolerate wrong.
3. Practical help is the test of genuine sympathy.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Galatians 6:1. The Sins of Others.
I. The follies and misconduct of others are the choice subjects of conversation in every stage of society; and if we take slander out of these conversations, we rob them of their keenest fascination. I have felt it, that fearful joy which the discovery of others’ faults produces; and then I found nothing at all extravagant in the strongest expressions by which the Scriptures depict the depth of our fall and the depravity of our heart.
II. One of our brethren has lapsed: but you who condemn him, have you never erred? Do you know his history? Did he know what you know yourself? The fall of a brother should call forth a painful self-examination and a sincere humiliation before God.
III. Real and profound compassion should be felt for the brother whom sin has overtaken. But sympathy alone will not suffice. There is a sympathy which is mere weakness. Our mission lays upon us the duty of restoration. This is a delicate and sublime work, for it is the work of God, but the work of God destined to be accomplished by man. Do the work of Jesus Christ in the spirit of Jesus Christ. You must have for your fallen brethren a love without weakness and a holiness without pride. We cannot raise them en masse, and by I know not what a collective action which would exempt us from individual love and sacrifice. All will be of no avail unless each of us, in the post where God has placed him, acts upon those around him, and brings them all individually under that influence of love which nothing can either equal or replace. Have you never asked yourself with terror if you have not lost some soul? Do you know if, among all those unfortunate beings whom God will cast from His presence at the last day, more than one will not sorrowfully turn towards you and say, “It is thou, it is thou that hast lost me”?—Eugene Bersier.
Galatians 6:1-2. Christian Reformation.
I. A thief is the man who uses, in order to keep up appearances, that which does not justly belong to him, whether that appearance be kept up by actually robbing his neighbour’s pocket, or by delaying the payment of his just debts, or by stinting God and man of their dues in any way. Such a one has, for keeping up appearances, every advantage up to a certain point, and that point is the moment of detection. After that, all is changed. The detected thief is the most miserable of men. Two ways only are open to him by which he can endure life or carry on hope. One of these is to declare war against society, and become an open instead of a secret offender; the other is to begin anew, and strive to build up a fresh reputation under more favourable auspices, it may be by shrewder and deeper deceit, or it may be in the way of genuine repentance and amendment. It is hard to say whether of these two is the more difficult or hopeless.
II. Were we all true men, safe in our own consciences, fearless of detection in any point ourselves, we should be ever ready to help up an erring brother or sister; but it is just because we are afraid of our own weak and unsound points that we are so reluctant ever to let a tarnished character again brighten itself. It is hardly possible to over-estimate the vast conspiracy which is arranged against the delinquent’s effort to be reinstated in the favour of his fellow-men.
III. It would be by no means uninstructive to inquire how far these feelings have influenced us in our views and practice with regard to the punishment of crime. The last thing we believe in is reformation. You may view this as a judicial consequence of guilt. Terrible as may be the fears of a conscience dreading detection, far more difficulty, far more anguish, far bitterer self-reproach, is in store for the penitent struggling to regain peace and the fair name which he has lost. He carries the past evermore, as it were, branded on his brow, for men to see and avoid.
IV. While we rejoice and are grateful to God for His mercy to us, we should at the same time tremble at our own unworthiness, and ever bear in mind our personal liability to fall into sin. In such a spirit should we set about the blessed work of restoration, ever looking on the fallen as our brethren, going to meet them across the gulf which human Pharisaism has placed between them and us, the undetected; as common children of that God whose grace is able to raise them up again, bearing their burdens instead of disclaiming them and letting them sink under their weight, and so fulfilling the law of Christ.—Dean Alford.
The Restoration of the Erring.
I. The Christian view of other men’s sins.—
1. The apostle looks upon sin as if it might be sometimes the result of a surprise.
2. As that which has left a burden on the erring spirit.
(1) One burden laid on fault is that chain of entanglement which seems to drag down to fresh sins.
(2) The burden of the heart weighing on itself.
(3) The burden of a secret, leading a man to tell the tale of his crimes as under the personality of another, as in the old fable of him who breathed his weighty secret to the reeds; to get relief in profuse and general acknowledgment of guilt; evidenced in the commonness of the longing for confession.
(4) The burden of an intuitive consciousness of the hidden sins of others’ hearts.
II. The Christian power of restoration.—
1. Restoration is possible.
2. By sympathy.
3. By forgiveness.
4. In the spirit of meekness.
5. The motive urging to attempt restoration.—“Considering thyself,” etc.—F. W. Robertson.
Brotherly Reproof.—
1. A man must so reprove his brother as that it may be most for the advancement of God’s glory, best for winning him to God, and least to the defaming of him abroad. He must pray that God would guide his tongue and move the other’s heart. We may not traduce him to others, either before or after our reproof.
2. Every reproof must be grounded on a certainty of knowledge of the fault committed.
3. It is very requisite the reprover be not tainted with the like fault he reproves in another.
4. The vinegar of sharp reprehension must be allayed and tempered with the oil of gentle exhortation. The word “restore” signifies to set a bone that is broken. We are to deal with a man who has fallen and by his fall disjoined some member of the new man as the surgeon does with an arm or leg that is broken or out of joint—handle it tenderly and gently, so as to cause least pain.
5. Every reproof must be fitted to the quality and condition of him we reprove and to the nature of the offence.
6. Must be administered in fit time when we may do the most good.
7. Secret sins known to thee or to a few must be reproved secretly.
8. We must be careful to observe the order set down by our Saviour (Matthew 18:15).—Perkins.
Galatians 6:2; Galatians 6:5. Our Twofold Burdens.—
1. The burden which every man must bear for himself is the burden of his own sins, and from this burden no man can relieve him.
2. If a man be overtaken in a fault, we are to bear his burden by trying to restore him.
3. We are to do this in the spirit of meekness, bending patiently under the burden which his fault may cast on us. This spirit toward those who commit faults is wholly at variance with the natural man’s way of acting, speaking, and thinking. We are to love our friends in spite of their faults, to treat them kindly, cheerfully, graciously, in spite of the pain they may give us.
4. Our Saviour has given us an example of what we should wish and strive to be and do. The law of Christ is the law of love.—J. C. Hare.
Galatians 6:2. Bear One Another’s Burdens.—The law of Christ was lovingkindness. His business was benevolence. If we would resemble Him,—
1. We must raise up the fallen.—This was hardly ever attempted till Christ set the pattern. People went wrong, and the world let them go; they broke the laws, and the magistrate punished; they became a scandal, and society cast them out—out of the synagogue, out of the city, out of the world. But with a moral tone infinitely higher Christ taught a more excellent way.
2. We must bear the infirmities of the weak.—Very tiresome is a continual touchiness in a neighbour, or the perpetual recurrence of the same faults in a pupil or child. But if by self-restraint and right treatment God should enable you to cure those faults, from how much shame and sorrow do you rescue them, from how much suffering yourself.
3. We must bear one another’s trials.—With one is the burden of poverty; with another it is pain or failing strength, the extinction of a great hope, or the loss of some precious faculty. A little thing will sometimes ease the pressure. In a country road you have seen the weary beast with foaming flank straining onward with the overladen cart and ready to give in, when the kindly waggoner called a halt, and propping up the shaft with a slim rod or stake from the hedgerow, he patted and praised the willing creature, till after a little rest they were ready to resume the rough track together. Many a time a small prop is quite sufficient.
4. By thus bearing others’ burdens you will lighten your own.—Rogers the poet has preserved a story told him by a Piedmontese nobleman. “I was weary of life, and after a melancholy day was hurrying along the street to the river, when I felt a sudden check. I turned, and beheld a little boy who had caught the skirt of my cloak in his anxiety to solicit my notice. His look and manner were irresistible. Not less so was the lesson I learnt. ‘There are six of us, and we are dying for want of food.’ ‘Why should I not,’ said I to myself, ‘relieve this wretched family? I have the means, and it will not delay me many minutes.’ The scene of misery he conducted me to I cannot describe. I threw them my purse, and their burst of gratitude overcame me. It filled my eyes; it went as a cordial to my heart. ‘I will call again to-morrow,’ I cried. Fool that I was to think of leaving a world where such pleasure was to be had, and so cheaply.” There is many a load which only grows less by giving a lift to another. A dim gospel makes a cold Christian; a distant Saviour makes a halting, hesitating disciple.—Dr. James Hamilton.
Galatians 6:2. Christian Generosity.
I. The duty enjoined.—
1. It may apply to a weight of labour or bodily toil.
2. To a weight of personal affliction.
3. To a weight of providential losses and embarrassments.
4. To a weight of guilt.
5. Of temptation.
6. Of infirmities.
II. The enforcing motive.—
1. The apostle’s requirement is worthy of the character of Christ, as it is a law of equity.
2. It is congenial with the Spirit of Christ.
3. It is agreeable to the example of Christ.
4. It is deducible from the precepts of Christ.
5. It has the approbation of Christ.—Sketches.
Bearing One Another’s Burdens.—The metaphor is taken from travellers who used to ease one another by carrying one another’s burdens, wholly or in part, so that they may more cheerfully and speedily go on in their journey. As in architecture all stones are not fit to be laid in every place of the building, but some below and others above the wall, so that the whole building may be firm and compact in itself; so in the Church those who are strong must support the weak. The Italians have a proverb—Hard with hard never makes a good wall, by which is signified that stones cobbled up one upon another without mortar to combine them make but a tottering wall that may be easily shaken; but if there be mortar betwixt them yielding to the hardness of the stones, it makes the whole like a solid continued body, strong and stable, able to endure the shock of the ram or the shot of the cannon. So that society, where all are as stiff as stones which will not yield a hair one to another, cannot be firm and durable. But where men are of a yielding nature society is compact, because one bears the infirmities of another. Therefore the strong are to support the weak, and the weak the strong; as in the arch of a building one stone bears mutually, though not equally, the burden of the rest; or as harts swimming over a great water do ease one another in laying their heads one upon the back of another—the foremost, having none to support him, changing his place and resting his head upon the hindermost. Thus in God’s providence Luther and Melancthon were happily joined together. Melancthon tempered the heat and zeal of Luther with his mildness, being as oil to his vinegar; and Luther, on the other side, did warm his coldness, being as fire to his frozenness.—Ralph Cudworth.
Association (A Benefit Club Sermon).—
1. This plan of bearing one another’s burdens is not only good in benefit clubs—it is good in families, in parishes, in nations, in the Church of God. What is there bearing on this matter of prudence that makes one of the greatest differences between a man and a brute beast? Many beasts have forethought: the sleep-mouse hoards up acorns against the winter, the fox will hide the game he cannot eat. The difference between man and beast is, that the beast has forethought only for himself, but the man has forethought for others also.
2. Just the same with nations. If the king and nobles give their whole minds to making good laws, and seeing justice done to all, and workmen fairly paid, and if the poor in their turn are loyal and ready to fight and work for their king and their nobles, then will not that country be a happy and a great country?
3. Just the same way with Christ’s Church, the company of true Christian men. If the people love and help each other, and obey their ministers and pray for them, and if the ministers labour earnestly after the souls and bodies of their people, and Christ in heaven helps both minister and people with His Spirit and His providence and protection, if all in the whole Church bear each other’s burdens, then Christ’s Church will stand, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.—Charles Kingsley.
Burden-bearing.
I. Different kinds of burdens.—
1. Those that are necessary.
2. Those that are superfluous.
3. Those that are imaginary.
II. What shall we do with them?—
1. Reduce their number to the limits of necessity.
2. Some of these we are expected to carry ourselves.
3. Some we may expect our friends to help us to carry.
4. We may take them all to the Lord that He may either remove them or sustain us under them.
Lessons.—
1. With grace burdens are removed or lightened.
2. In what way can we best help others with their burdens? “Thou lightenest thy load by lightening his.”
3. Let our burdens be reduced to light running order.—Homiletic Monthly.
Practical Christian Sympathy.
I. Consider the burdens you can bear for others.—All have to bear burdens. Some man can only bear for himself. Others he can be helped to bear, such as the burden of carnal tendency, persecution, anxiety over loved ones, affliction that is not punishment.
II. Consider how we may bear the burdens of others.—
1. We can bear them on our hearts in prayer.
2. We can lighten the burden by friendly help.
3. We can by the strength of our sympathies come under the burdens of others.
III. Bearing the burdens of others is the chief way by which we can fulfil the law of Christ.—Nothing will give us such a resemblance to Him. He lived solely for others. He came voluntarily under the burden of man’s miseries, sacrificing Himself for the race.
IV. Consider the importance of obeying this injunction.—
1. For our own sakes.
2. For the good of others.
3. For the prosperity of the Church.—The Lay Preacher.
Galatians 6:5. Burden-bearing.
I. There is the burden of personal responsibility.—This comes out in the formation of character.
II. There is the burden of toil.—Among the steep precipitous mountains of Thibet the traveller meets long processions of hungry, ill-clad Chinamen, carrying enormous loads of tea. There they go, climb, climbing day after day up the rough sides of the mountains, each with his great burden on his back, eyes fixed on the ground, all silent, stepping slowly, and leaning on great iron-pointed sticks, till the leader of the gang gives the signal for a halt, and, after standing a few minutes, the heavy load again falls on the back and head, the body is again bent towards the ground, and the caravan is once more in motion. You do not wonder that, with a task so monotonous, these poor drudges should acquire a dreary, stupid look, little better than beasts of burden; and you feel sorry for those in whose lives there is a large amount of the like irksome and exhausting routine. Yet there are many who, in order to earn their daily bread, must go through a similar task.
III. There is the burden of sorrow.—Sorrow dwells beneath a king’s robes as much as beneath a peasant’s cloak; the star of the noble, the warrior’s corslet, the courtier’s silken vesture, cannot shut it out. That rural home is such a picture of peace we cannot believe that care or tears are there. That noble castle amidst ancient trees is surely lifted up in its calm grandeur above sighs and sadness. Alas! it is not so. Man is the tenant of both, and wherever man dwells sorrow is sure to be with him.
IV. There is one burden which it is wrong to bear.—It is a sin and a shame to you if you are still plodding along under the burden of unpardoned transgression. The load of guilt, the feeling that our sin is too great for the blood of Christ to expiate, or the grace of God to pardon—this burden it is wrong to bear.—Dr. James Hamilton.
Bearing our Burdens Alone.
I. The loneliness of each one of us.—One of the tendencies of these bustling times is to make us forget that we are single beings, detached souls. Each great star flung out like an atom of gold dust into space may seem lost amid the hundred of millions of mightier worlds that surround; and yet no; it rolls on, grave in itself, careering in its own orbit, while its sister-stars sweep round on every side. We stand cut off from one another. We are to stave up side by side our own destiny, we are to be alone with our burdens, not lost in the forest of human lives.
II. Look at some of the forms of this burden.—
1. There is the burden of being itself.
2. The burden of duty.
3. The burden of imperfection and sin.
4. The burden of sorrow.
5. The burden of dying alone.
6. If a man is lost, he is lost alone; if saved, he is saved alone.—The Lay Preacher.
Every Man has his Own Burden.
I. No man can pay a ransom for his brother, or redeem his soul from death, or satisfy the justice of God for his sin, seeing that every man by the tenor of the law is to bear his own burden, and by the gospel none can be our surety but Christ.
II. We see the nature of sin that is a burden to the soul.—It is heavier than the gravel of the earth and the sand of the sea.
III. We are not to wonder that sin being so heavy a burden should be made so light a matter by carnal men, for it is a spiritual burden.
IV. The more a man fears the burden of his sins the greater measure of grace and spiritual life he has, and the less he feels it the more is he to suspect himself.
V. The greatest part of the world are dead in their sins in that they have no sense of feeling of this heavy burden.
VI. We are to take heed of every sin, for there is no sin so small but hath its weight.—Many small sins will as easily condemn as a few great. Like as sands, though small in quantity, yet being many in number, will as soon sink the ship as if it were laden with the greatest burden.
VII. Feeling the weight and burden of our sins, we are to labour to be disburdened; and this is done by repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.—Perkins.