Bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfil the law of the Christ.
The Galatians wanted to put themselves under law, so Paul points them to another law — Christ's, worked out by helping someone carry what is too heavy for them. It follows straight on from the call to restore a believer caught in sin, which raises two questions: what this law asks, and where it gets its shape.
The phrase sounds at first like a return to rules, but Paul means the opposite. One writer reads it against the whole letter, where Paul refuses to let the Galatians add Moses to Christ:
"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 difference between the two systems shows up in what each one does with weight. One writer sets them side by side:
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 standard is not a text to consult but a life to copy. He spent that life under other people's weight.
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.
One writer sums that law up in a single word:
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.
Carrying someone else's weight costs us our self-importance.
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."
Applied to the person who has fallen, the command reaches further than sympathy. It asks us to take his failure on ourselves in prayer rather than stand over it as a judge.
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.
The tense of the command matters. It is not a rescue you mount once, but a settled way of living:
"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.
Verse 5 speaks of a load each must carry alone. One writer shows why that does not cancel verse 2:
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.
- A better law. They wanted rules, so Paul hands them Christ's. It is an appeal against going back to Moses, not a way of bringing him back in.
- A borne burden. Moses' law laid weight on people and left it there. Christ took our sorrows in His life and our sins on the tree. That is the pattern we copy.
- A lowered self. Carrying another's load reduces the flesh to nothing. Grace and humility, not stern justice, brought Him to the cross.
- A shared load. Love goes so far as to make a brother's sin one's own and bear it before God, instead of standing over him as a critic.
- A load kept. No one can carry your own account before God for you. Grace does not remove that responsibility; it deepens it.
For if any man reputes himself to be something, being nothing, he deceives himself;
Paul writes this line just after telling the Galatians to restore a fallen brother gently and to carry one another's burdens. He then names the thing that stops us doing it: a high opinion of yourself, which fools nobody but you.
Carrying someone else's load takes more than strength.
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.
Paul's measure is blunt, and it bites hardest when a person feels most spiritual.
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!
A system of rules leaves human pride standing.
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.
Even the command to love your neighbour can be turned this way.
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.
The man who wrote this line had once been the leading example of it.
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 deception has one victim, and boasting has one limit.
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."
Admitting you are nothing is not the end of the matter. It is where usefulness starts.
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.
One test of this is whose name you are working to build.
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.
- Nothing exposed. Self-importance is no small flaw. Paul puts the man who thinks he is something at zero, and he is never further from the truth than when he feels spiritual.
- Nothing hidden by law. Rule-keeping flatters human nature and leaves pride standing. The gospel destroys pride at the root.
- Nothing but grace. Paul once headed the list of religious achievers, until light from God turned the best of men into the chief of sinners.
- Nothing but self-fooled. The boaster fools himself and nobody else, and in Christ's presence no one boasts at all.
- Nothing, therefore usable. Own that you are nothing and the Lord becomes everything. Then He can use you, and He will own your name in the coming day.