Bear Ye One Another's Burdens

Galatians is the angriest letter in the New Testament, and knowing that helps.

Paul writes to the churches of Galatia, which he had planted, and Galatians 6:1-5 is the passage we are in. He skips the thanksgiving section entirely, which he does nowhere else. He goes straight from the greeting to I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you.

The occasion was this. Teachers had arrived after him, telling Gentile believers there that they were not fully in unless they took on the whole law and were circumcised. That was the argument in those churches in that decade, and it is why the letter runs hot for five chapters.

And then chapter six opens, and the temperature drops completely.

Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.Galatians 6:1, King James Version

That is the first thing he says after five chapters of argument, and it is about how to pick somebody up.

Overtaken in a fault. The word carries the sense of being caught out, surprised by it, the way a person is overtaken by weather. And the instruction is restore, which was an ordinary word for setting a bone or mending a net.

And then a warning to the person doing the restoring: considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Watch yourself while you do this.

Two sentences, three verses apart

Here is the pair that people notice and then usually leave alone.

Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.Galatians 6:2, King James Version

For every man shall bear his own burden.Galatians 6:5, King James Version

On the face of it those cancel each other out. Carry each other's. Carry your own. Three verses apart, in one paragraph, by one writer, who was not careless.

The context between them settles it, and the settling verse is the one in the middle.

But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.Galatians 6:4, King James Version

And not in another. Verse four is about comparison. It is about a person measuring their own work rather than measuring themselves against somebody else's.

So read the three together and the shape appears. Verse two is about crushing weight: carry that for each other. Verse four is about comparison: stop scoring yourself against the next person. Verse five is what follows from four: everybody has their own account to give, so there is no point running theirs.

Two different kinds of load. One is a weight that will break a person alone. The other is the responsibility that is simply yours and always was.

You are carrying one of each and they have been getting confused with each other for years. Galatians 6:2 and 6:5 sit three verses apart with the comparison verse between them, and it is the Holy Spirit who separates them again when a tired person treats every load as theirs alone.

You are not the only one under this. Galatians 6:2 is written as a command to a whole congregation, not as an offer, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps it that way for somebody who has decided to manage.

Now, I have been a preacher a long time and I want to name what actually goes wrong here, because it is never the theology.

Nobody refuses help because they misread verse five. People refuse help because asking costs something they cannot afford: standing, or privacy, or the version of themselves that other people rely on. And there is usually one person in a life who was let down badly once when they did ask, and that one time is doing more work than any verse.

You have been carrying something Galatians 6:2 assigns to a company, and the assigning is a command rather than a kindness. The written word puts it in the imperative to the whole church, and the same Spirit who kept it that way is the reason accepting help is obedience and not weakness.

There is one more piece and it is the one I would put on the wall.

And so fulfill the law of Christ.

Five chapters of arguing about law, and then Paul uses the word himself, once, positively, and attaches it to this. The one thing in the letter he is willing to call a law is carrying each other's weight.

You have been handed the one law this letter approves of, and it is about a load and not a rule. Galatians 6:2 says so fulfil the law of Christ after five chapters of dispute, and it is His Spirit who makes that placement deliberate rather than accidental.