Galatians 6:2, 5 (A 5 by 5 by 5 Reflection)

As some may know, I'm using the Navigators' 5x5x5 Bible Reading Plan for my daily times with God. Today's reading is Galatians, chapter 6. I've read this chapter many times. But today, something stood out: The seeming contradiction between verses 2 and 5.

Verse 2:

Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

The "law of Christ," I take it, is first, Jesus' great commandment, summarizing the two tables of the Ten Commandments, that we love God with our whole beings and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

I take it also to mean the new commandment that Jesus gave to His followers to love fellow believers as Christ has loved them, with their whole lives.

Finally, I take this "law" to encompass Jesus' great commission that all who are part of His Church make disciples.

But since Galatians 6 deals with the internal life of Christ's Church, I think Paul has in mind the first two components of what I believe he means by the "law of Christ."

The thrust of the passage is that, even in restoring those who have rebelled against Christ, being careful not to fall into temptation ourselves (v. 1), we in the Church are to bear each other's burdens.

I've seen this exemplified in the people of Living Water Lutheran Church in the days leading up to and following my wife's recent surgery. On the night before the surgery, during our Lenten midweek service, the people in attendance gathered around me (my wife was unable to attend) and prayed for her healing and for my encouragement. We received many calls, cards, and emails of encouragement, assuring us of people's prayers. On the day of the surgery, a couple from the congregation drove the hour-plus to the hospital to be with my daughter, mother-in-law, and me; they stayed all day. Someone sent us a gift card to a local restaurant. Several have brought or offered to bring meals. Some have offered to take my wife to where she needs to be, since she can't drive right now. These are the kinds of things, I believe, that Paul has in mind when he tells Christians to "bear one another's burdens." The love of Christ is seen and experienced in these acts and gestures of love, the power of Christ is demonstrated when we pray for one another.

I also have a friend who lives miles away who is wonderful about praying for people whose needs are brought to her attention. In addition, this friend is compassionate, generous, and forgiving of others, whatever their needs. All of these traits too, demonstrate the Christian bearing others' burdens.

But then we come to Galatians 6:5:

For all must carry their own loads.

I'll never forget eating lunch, more than thirty years ago, with a seminary classmate at a fast food restaurant in Columbus. We were working on a project together and we both had our Bibles open, discussing the project. A middle aged man approached us, who, it became clear, had a bee in his bonnet.

"You know," he said, "if everyone studied the Bible the way you two are, we wouldn't need welfare or charity programs for the poor. There wouldn't be any poor."

My classmate asked the guy how he'd arrived at that conclusion. He pointed to Galatians 6:5 and said, if everybody carried their own loads, everyone would be working.

I'd half-forgotten that encounter until I read this passage again this morning.

Of course, even thirty years ago, I realized that the man at the fast food restaurant was taking one passage of Scripture out of context with no regard for the total witness of Scripture on what the believer's stance toward the poor should be.

For example, throughout the Old Testament moral law, God's people were told to make provisions for the poor, the orphaned, foreigners, and the widowed. Farmers weren't to harvest their crops to the edges of their fields and if, after harvesting, they realized that parts of their fields were unharvested, they weren't to go back to harvest the rest of their crops. All of these leavings were to remain for the benefit of the poor who could glean them.

Jesus and the New Testament commends a similar concern for the poor.

Whether any of this bears relevance to government relief programs is one question. But there can be no question that what the man called "charity" programs, at least those in which Christians who have give to others who have not, is both commended and commanded by God.

So, is Paul contradicting himself in Galatians 6:2 and 6:5?

I dug a little deeper today.

In Galatians 6:2, the word translated as burdens that Paul uses in the Greek in which his letter was originally composed is baros. The word he uses in Galatians 6:5 translated as loads is phortion.

While these words can have similar meanings, there are subtle shades of difference between the two.

According to one New Testament Greek-English lexicon, baros, carries the meanings of "heaviness, weight, burden, trouble." In the context of Galatians 6, the burdens referred to are clearly those experiences in life that weigh us down, things like physical illness, relational discord, financial troubles, worry over loved ones, poverty, grief, heartbreaks, depression. The call in Galatians 6:2 is for Christians to lighten the burdens of fellow believers when they encounter these weights of life.

That same lexicon says that phortion can mean burden or load, with particular reference to the cargo being carried by a ship. It can also reference burdensome religious duties or "faults of the conscience that burden the soul."

In the context of 6:5, a different meaning emerges: the obligations we have to respond to the free gifts of God's forgiveness and new life that comes to all who believe in Christ. This "load," to be borne by every Christian is what Paul calls in Romans 12:1 our "true and proper worship" or, in other translations, "spiritual worship" or "reasonable service."

In other words, concern and care for the poor and all who are in need are among the good fruits that will spring from the life a person made new by the forgiveness and grace of Jesus Christ.

In fact, Galatians 6:5 appears to have no direct reference to work for an income, but the work of every believer as a priest and minister of the gospel. 

As with Jesus in His parable of the final judgement in Matthew 25:31-46, Paul isn't saying that we are saved by our good works, by shouldering some odious burdens, but that, touched and transformed by Christ, we will, almost as an involuntary Holy Spirit-created response to grace, do good works, including caring for the poor. (See Ephesians 2:8-10)

The "load" that Paul talks about in Galatians 6:5, is what Jesus also talks about when he tells those heavily laden either by the implacable demands of a dog-eat-dog world or by religious striving to be "good:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

The light burden to which Christ refers, I think, is taking His loving lordship over our lives, believing in Him as our God and Savior.

When we do that, in Martin Luther's words, Christians become "the Holy Spirit's workshop." God goes to work on us, transforming us even without our conscious awareness. It's as though we fall into Christ's orbit and can't always see the ways in which He is changing us. The "load" is to keep living in daily repentance and renewal so that the Master Craftsman can continue to to make us over in the image of Christ.

In dispelling the seeming contradiction between Galatians 6:2 and 6:5, The Lutheran Study Bible says simply: "Those who are willing to accept personal accountability for their own actions before God (bearing their own "load"...phortion) are more willing to to bear others burdens (v.2, "burden"...baros)..."

So, Paul's message in a nutshell, seems to be: "Christians: Bear the burdens of others. Your willingness to do so is the measure of God's grace operating in your life; it's your 'load' as a believer."

Salvation is a free gift and each believer is responsible to God for how they use their salvation.

To not use the power of God living within us as Christians to help others is like being gifted with the power to make music and never singing a note or playing a tune.

Or like having the power to do medical research that might save lives, but staying away from the lab.

Or being a gifted athlete and never trying out for the team.

Just as God wants Christians to use their spiritual gifts for the mutual upbuilding of all in Christ's Church, He also wants us to use His grace to take on the ministry of caring for others.

Taking the Time

The passage of Scripture appointed from today's 5x5x5 Bible Reading Plan is Acts 24.

The New Testament book of Acts is like an old friend to me, maybe sometimes a bit too familiar.

Acts, a history of the early Church from the moment of the risen Jesus' ascension through about three decades later, is the first book of the Bible I read after I became a follower of Christ. (I had been an atheist for the preceding ten years or so.)

In chapter 24, the apostle Paul is being held in Roman custody. The charge on which he's being held, false, is that he has profaned the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, specifically by allowing Gentiles into portions of the temple open to Jews alone.

For the Romans, conquerors and governors of Judea, the defiling of the Jewish holy place would have been a matter of indifference, except if it caused disruptions of the public order. The accusations lodged by the powerful among Paul's fellow Jews was that Paul was being disruptive, though Paul claims that he's in hot water with some--one thinks of the Sadducees, highly important among the Jewish leadership who didn't believe in life after death--because he has spoken of the resurrection of the dead.

Paul is kept a prisoner for two years in Jerusalem, albeit with some liberties. This delay occurred because Felix, the Roman governor of Judea from 52 to 58 AD, "well informed about the Way"--"the Way" being the Christian movement--thought he could pry a bribe from Paul's fellow believers to achieve his release.

Once, Felix sent for Paul and, with his wife, Druscilla, listened to the apostle teach. But Felix was a man who had always acted to get what he wanted, irrespective of how it hurt others.

This is where the verse that I considered for today comes in:

And as he [Paul] discussed justice, self-control, and the coming judgment, Felix became frightened and said, “Go away for the present; when I have an opportunity, I will send for you.” (Acts 24:25)

The grace of God, which includes forgiveness of sins and the promise of new life through faith in Jesus Christ and the promise of Jesus' help and presence for me everyday I live on earth, is something I cherish. I know that these blessings of God are free gifts I can't earn, but only receive by faith in Christ.

But I also know that I cannot receive these gifts if I insist on sinning like the rest of the world.

I am human. I sin everyday, however unintentionally. And I must ask God to show me my sins--unintentional and otherwise--everyday, in case I come to presume on God's grace, secured for me and all people by the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross.

In gratitude for what Jesus has done for me, I want to live a life pleasing to Him. Despite my imperfections, I want to be an instrument that He can use for His purposes each day. Un-repented sin can stand in the way of that.

Conversely, when we have faith in Jesus--meaning when we trust Him with our sins and deficiencies and to save us from the death our sins deserve--He helps us, by His Holy Spirit, to live more justly toward others, with more self-control.

Jesus, according to Mark's gospel, called people to repent, that is, turn away from sin (something I have to do multiple times every day) and believe in the good news that God so loves us He sent God the Son Jesus to die for our sin and to rise from the dead, so that all who believe in Him won't perish--won't be separated from God--but live with God for eternity.

Paul was sharing this message with Felix and Druscilla. But when Paul began to talk about justice, self-control, and judgment, Felix became frightened and sent Paul away.

Paul hit too close to home. We can't be just or self-controlled when we're guided by the things of this world--whether they're our stomachs, our traditions, our desire for security, our countries, our love of money and power, our families, or something else.

To claim that we are just or that we do exercise self-control in our lives apart from the gifts of grace operating within us through faith in Christ is a delusion. I know that.

Without Jesus, we all stand naked in sin, deserving of death, and susceptible to judgment by God.

This is what disturbs Felix and so, he sends Paul away.

But as I contemplate this passage, I realize that I often send the message of God away. I send God away.

I hurry through my Bible readings.

I avoid making a personal application of what I read in God's Word and think, instead, of how it applies to other people. Or how I might use it as an illustration in a sermon or a lesson.

I hurriedly skip meditating on God's Word in order to offer pious prayers for justice and protection and healing for other people. There's nothing wrong with praying for other people, of course, unless I use such prayers to deflect God's attention from my deficiencies and God's desire to alter my character. In other words, to elude the judgment and recognition of sin that must happen before the grace of God can flood into that place in my life too.

I avoid the pain of letting God search me and know my heart, to detect the evil in me, to rip it out of my soul to die, to be replaced by a humble, childlike dependence on Him in another facet of my life.

I can be like Felix: well-informed about the Way of salvation, Jesus, but sending Him away when He gets too close.

I've preached it to many, but I don't always practice it myself: I must let God tear down these walls, to stop me from hurrying, to give me the guts to listen and to apply what His Word tells me when I would rather move on with my day and my agenda. I need to do this so that I can live for Him alone. (It's the only reasonable thing to do in response to the fact that He has lived and died and risen for me.)

God, give me the guts to take the time often each day to stop and listen to Your Word. Forgive me for so often, like Felix, turning You away when, for my soul's sake, I need to let Your Spirit do His work. I need to let Your Spirit convict me of sin and, as I repent and trust in Christ, to set me free to be trusting and faithful in yet another aspect of my life. Help me to take my cues for living from You alone. Help me to live the reality that I confess (and preach) that Jesus alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and that there's no way to You or the life You want to give me except through daily surrender to Jesus Christ alone. In His Name. Amen

A Life Well Spent

I decided to use tomorrow's appointed chapter for the 5x5x5 Bible Reading Plan for my time with God today. (For an explanation of what that's all about, go here.) The reading was Acts 20. The thoughts here are all mine, so don't blame God for them.

The verse that particularly struck me was Acts 20:24. It cites words spoken by the apostle Paul to the elders (the pastors) of the church in Ephesus as he said goodbye to them. (He was on his way to Jerusalem.) Paul didn't expect to see the Ephesian Christians again. Luke the evangelist, present for this meeting, quotes Paul as saying:

"...I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace."

Anyone familiar with Paul's New Testament writings will be persuaded that Luke is quoting Paul with total accuracy. The words are reminiscent of something Paul wrote to a young pastor named Timothy:

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:7-8)

Big idea:

This life is most fully lived when living this life to the fullest is not our aim. But when our lives are spent with the aim of "finishing the race" and "completing the task" the Lord has given to us with faithfulness, this life, even when marred by difficulties, is lived to the fullest.

Every individual believer in Christ has differing gifts, talents, and experiences. So, each of us will finish the race and complete the task in different ways.

But for each of us, the task is always the same: In response to the grace of God that saves all who trust in the crucified and risen Jesus, we're to give glory to God by loving God, loving others, and sharing Christ in order to make disciples in Jesus' Name. A life focused on these aims, whatever work we do, is a life well spent.

My prayer:

Lord, use me up to Your glory and help me to love You completely, love others as You loved us through Jesus, and share Christ with others with the prayer that they too, will have the forgiveness of sin and everlasting life Jesus came to our world to bring. In Jesus' Name. Amen

When Confronting Evil

Recently, I've begun using the 5x5x5 Bible Reading Plan for my morning time with God. (You can download this plan and print it on two sides of single sheet of paper, from this site.)

With this plan, you spend five minutes a day on five days of the week reading one chapter of the New Testament. Then you choose one of five ways to dig deeper. My "dig deeper" method for now is to try capturing the big idea of sentence, paragraph, or chapter.

Today, I've decided to home in on Acts 19:11-17. The apostle Paul is in the Asia Minor city of Ephesus. Paul taught the good news of new and everlasting life for all who believe in Jesus Christ. God used Paul to accomplish other things as well:

¹¹ God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, ¹² so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.

¹³ Some Jews [Remember that Paul was a Jew] who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” ¹⁴ Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. ¹⁵ One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” ¹⁶ Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.

¹⁷ When this became known to the Jews and Greeks living in Ephesus, they were all seized with fear, and the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high honor. [Acts 19:11-17]

Big idea: 

When we confront evil in our own power, we are doomed (vv.15-16); although even this can redound to God's glory (v.17).

My prayer:

Lord, help me be prepared to confront evil each day, evil in myself and in the world, by staying connected to You. May I only confront evil in the Name and in the power of Jesus Christ alone. And even when, by my own sin, I fail to stand in Your power alone, bring glory to Your Name. Amen