Galatians 6:1–5

"Fault" is, we judge, a very poor rendering of the original word in this passage. The same word appears as "offences" in Romans 4:25, "sins" in Ephesians 1:7, and "trespasses" in Ephesians 2:1... Another thing to keep in mind: in the case Paul supposes in Galatians, he is not describing a state or condition. He is describing someone taken, or overtaken, by an offence — someone surprised by a sudden temptation into which he has fallen. It is not a course of sin, but an act, a failure under some seduction or enticement of the flesh through not watching.

A contrast seems to be implied between verse 21 of chapter 5 and the first verse of chapter 6. The former has in view those who are characterised by doing certain evil things. The latter speaks of a man being overtaken in an offence. Those who are characterised by evil will never enter the kingdom of God. The man overtaken in evil, on the other hand, is to be restored. It is taken for granted that he is a true believer.

The word "set to rights" first appears in the New Testament in Matthew 4:21. There the Lord found James and John in a boat with their father, mending their nets — putting them right. In Hebrews 11:3 we read that the worlds were "set to rights" by the Word of God. It is also used for setting a broken bone, putting it right.

They are to bring him back into communion with God, and into happy working with the saints. I take this to be the force of the word (katartizo) used here... The broken ends of a net are joined and restored to their proper place and function in the whole. So it is with the failing saint as a member of the body of Christ.

The Galatians boasted about their spirituality. It is the same today: people who put themselves under law, and try to put others under law, always feel they are holier than others... That is God's test of whether a man is spiritual or not. Are you someone God can use to set the fallen right? If not, you are not a spiritual man in God's sight.

To approach a fallen brother in the spirit of vainglory would be bound to stir up all that is worst in him. To approach him in a spirit of meekness would help him. Let us note that a spirit of meekness must go with spirituality. There is a false spirituality, met with all too often, that goes hand in hand with a self-conscious assertiveness. That is the very opposite of meekness. A truly spiritual man is ruled and controlled by the Spirit of God who lives in him, and so is marked by "the meekness and gentleness of Christ" (2 Cor. 10:1). But even such a man can fall when temptation comes.

The spirit of the law leads to righteousness, and then to hardness towards another who is overtaken in a fault. It makes us forget our own weakness. This was plainly seen in the Pharisees, and is found among Christians too... The sense of one's own weakness makes us meek towards others.

With these words before us, we can safely say that a direct responsibility rests on the people of God for those who may have been "overtaken in a fault"... For an unspiritual man to deal with a fallen brother would be almost a mockery. Such a service needs communion with the heart of Christ. In this sense, at least, the spiritual are their brothers' keepers.

A man may be "overtaken in a fault," as in Galatians 6... Should such a person be hastily thrust out of the assembly? Certainly not. He should be lovingly and tenderly warned by "the spiritual," who alone know how to do it. He should be carefully looked after. The aim is not to find accusation against him, but to "restore" him and free him fully from the effect of his "fault."

"Fulfil the law of Christ" is a plain appeal against the law. The Galatians wanted the law after Christ, and the apostle would not hear of it. He barely knows whether to own them as Christians. He greets no one at the start of the letter or at the end. He is more severe with them than he was about all the terrible things at Corinth. They were, it seems, biting and devouring one another about it. And he says, "Bear rather one another's burdens." If you want a law — that is Christ's, that is what He did; that will suit you better. It is exactly the opposite of bringing them back to the law.

The law that Moses gave laid burdens on people and left them there. The grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ took those burdens away. But the One who loosens burdens and sets the oppressed free is a law also to His own disciples. Yet how unlike all other laws! For His own part He expects only that we bear the honourable burden of His cross. If we want to please Him, we are to spend the energy of our love and devotion not on Himself, but on His own.

The law of His blessed life was to be a burden-bearer; "He took our illnesses and bore our diseases." In His grace and sympathy He went down under the sorrows of His people. He took them, as it were, on His own shoulders. He carried them before God to take them away. This was in His life, but in His death He bore, not our infirmities, but our sins in His own body on the tree. Whether in life or in death, He was the great burden-bearer, and the apostle urges us to walk in His steps in this respect.

We are to fulfil the law of Christ — which in one word is LOVE — and bear one another's burdens. Very often the brother who falls has been carrying burdens we know nothing about. If we had been obeying the new commandment of John 13:34, we would have been helping to lighten them.

Bearing the burdens of another reduces the flesh to nothing, for we must humble ourselves to do this. Was it, for instance, the stern spirit of justice that led Christ to come to bear at Calvary our greatest burden? Not at all! Grace and humility stand out at the cross in wonderful beauty, and this is "the law of Christ."

When a brother has sinned, our tendency is to sit in judgement on him. We take the place of a severe critic. We look on his sin as something that has nothing to do with us. This is a sad failure in our duty as priests before God… It is a most precious fruit of grace to identify yourself with a failing brother so fully that you make his sin your own — and carry it in spirit before God.

"Make it your habit to be bearing the burdens of one another." … Do not do it only now and then. Make it your habit, day by day, to keep bearing your brothers' and sisters' burdens. How many heavy burdens there are all around us — sin and sorrow, poverty and care, sighing and suffering.

Galatians 6:5 in no way contradicts Galatians 6:2. In the earlier verse it is a question of sympathy with one another's infirmities. We are to be helpers of each other, bearing one another's burdens. Here it is responsibility, where each must stand alone… No one can shift responsibility to other shoulders. Each believer will have to give his own account to God… Grace does not do away with responsibility; it deepens it.

To bear another's burdens is proof not only of strength, but of kindness and a lowly mind. While men think highly of themselves, they cannot truly serve. The outward forms of service may still be there. Christ was meek and lowly by nature; we are proud and foolish by nature. Grace withers pride down to the dust and ashes of repentance by the power of the cross... To value himself as anything is to reckon wrongly and deceive himself. It takes away from his Saviour's glory. In practice it is a refusal of His cross.

Why do we not fulfil the law of Christ in this way? What is it that so often hinders us? We think ourselves to be something or somebody, and when we do, we feel too great and important to lift other people's burdens. All the time we are deceiving ourselves. We are nothing, as verse 3 so pointedly tells us. A man is never nearer to zero than when he fancies himself to be somebody — even a "spiritual" somebody!

The law never crushes the pride of man, and man will put up with anything that assumes he can do something. The law works on the mere nature of man and puffs him up, unless the Holy Spirit uses it to slay him in his conscience. Nature twists it into the idea that it can do something, and people love this and are all the more pleased with themselves. This is what the gospel destroys at the very roots.

The law of Sinai tells us to love our neighbour as ourselves. But it still keeps us occupied with our own works, and this too often leads a man to think himself to be something. That is what had happened with these Galatian believers. Having turned back to law, they had become conceited, so that instead of serving one another in love they were biting and devouring one another.

There was a time when Paul thought himself to be something. Recall his list of legal attainments and advantages in Philippians 3:5-6. He then thought himself the best of men and gloried in the flesh to the utmost. But how vast the change when the light of God was let into his soul! The best of men discovered that he was the chief of sinners, and nothing but sovereign grace and mercy could help him... Never afterwards did he "think himself to be something." Only grace can do this.

The Apostle speaks with real contempt for those who boast that they are something when they are nothing. The one who acts this way deceives himself, but no one else. No man is so small as the man who thinks he is great. No one can boast in the presence of Christ. Away from His presence we may argue among ourselves about who is the greatest, just as the disciples once did. In His presence the Apostle himself owns that he is "the very least of all the saints."

To accept that within ourselves we are nothing — a very condemning statement — is very hard, but it is the truth. If we accept this, that in ourselves we are nothing, then the Lord is everything, then He can use us.

Too often we seek a reputation before others for godliness, only to come under the condemnation of the word which says, "You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead." ... It is good for us to hold fast and honour the Name of Christ, and refuse to seek a name for ourselves, whether among the Lord's people or in the world. Then indeed our names will be owned in the day to come.

"But let each one test his own work" (v.4). Assumptions and claims have no place before God. Instead, let each one judge himself strictly and weigh the true value of his own work. He is to examine himself, but make no boast of it before others. "And then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor." Such self-judgment puts the believer personally and alone before God. There he judges his own work — not by comparing it with the work of others, but as God sees it.

The word "testing" means "proving," or "putting to the test." The Pharisees and Judaizers tried to boast in so many circumcisions, in what they had accomplished in connection with others. Paul, by contrast, says the thing you can really boast in is your own work — if that work can pass the test.

And what work will stand the fire? Only that which is according to the Word of God: "If anyone competes as an athlete, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules" (2 Tim. 2:5). He must strive by the rules of the contest, not by his own ideas. The rules for us are the Word of God. How much there is all around us, and perhaps much in our own lives, that is not according to that Word. Let us test our work. Let us test it now.

Instead of deceiving ourselves by vain boasting, let us each test our own works. Are they works of law which magnify self, or works of love after the pattern of Christ? Paul had worked in love in Galatia. The believers there were the fruit of his work, and in that he can rejoice as belonging to himself. Others were using the apostle's work to exalt themselves and exclude him.

Suppose someone examines everything and so proves his work thoroughly. Then he will have his rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. There the apostle is giving a home-thrust: let him put it to the proof. No doubt the Lord will own true service. But wherever a man honestly examines and proves his work, it never gives him grounds to congratulate himself. It is deeply humbling in every possible way.

The point before the mind of the Spirit here is that everyone should look to his own ways. Then, in the coming day, he may have rejoicing as to himself. The word is needed and wholesome beyond all doubt. The heart is so deceitful that we always tend to dwell on the ways and failings of others rather than our own. You can complain loudly about a speck in someone else's eye and never notice the log in your own.

Of ourselves as Christians we must give account. As sinners, we have given account already, and received in the rich grace of our Redeemer double for our sins. But a day is coming which will test by fire not us, but our work (1 Cor. 3:13). Our faith is tested now; our work is to be proved hereafter. But in view of that day, the call here is to prove our own work in the spirit of self-judgment... So let each believer examine and weigh two things: what he puts his hand to, and what he approves or allows.

Galatians 6:2 and 6:5 use two different Greek words: "Bear one another's burdens . . . For each will have to bear his own load." We may and should bear one another's troubles with sympathy; but each one is responsible for his own "bundle": he cannot transfer it to another.

In verse 5 the word is used for something that you can and should carry yourself. It is your own responsibility, which nobody else can or should take. It is clearly a different word. We also find this word in Matthew 11, in connection with the yoke of Christ, where He says, "My yoke is easy, and My burden is light." There it is obviously we who carry the burden ourselves. Even then, in the context of Matthew 11, we see that the Lord carries it with us.

The apostle closes this part of his subject with another statement, one that might look like a contradiction next to verse 2. In fact, we have here the two great practical principles of Christianity: one is active, energetic love, which bears the burdens of others; the other is personal responsibility.

It is important that we have genuine compassion and care for others. But we must not expect others to take responsibility for us, and we should not busy ourselves with what is their responsibility.

Notice, this is not speaking about salvation. If a man had to bear his own burden in the matter of justification before God, it would destroy every hope. The Psalmist says, "Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you." If God enters into judgment with me on this question, I am lost.

No one can shift responsibility onto other shoulders. Each believer will have to give his own account to God. A solemn thought! We easily forget the judgment seat of Christ, where the Lord will go over everything we have done in this life. But to overlook it is dangerous. Grace does not do away with responsibility; it deepens it.

Instead of deceiving ourselves by empty boasting, let each of us test our own works. Are they works of law which magnify self, or works of love after the pattern of Christ? … Let us see that our works are true Christian works, that produce fruit in which we can rejoice. For each one is responsible for his own work, and in this sense "each will have to bear his own load."

The heart is so treacherous that we always tend to watch the ways and failings of others instead of our own. We can easily complain about a speck in someone else's eye and never notice the plank in our own. … Beware of climbing into the judgment seat; that is the right of the Lord Jesus Christ alone.

We may carry what we will, and it will always be our own. … Christ's burden is light in the carrying, and receives a crown of righteousness as its reward. But we may load ourselves with weights we ought to throw aside. That harms us now and costs us greatly at the end. The cares that belong to us as men are not the burdens we ought to bear as saints. The Lord expects us to cast them on Him. What we bear as Christians we should first receive at His hands.