17. Shared Christian relationships
In Galatians 5:16–25 the apostle Paul has described both the Christian conflict between the flesh and the Spirit, and the way of victory through crucifying the flesh and living by the Spirit.
Galatians 5:26 – 6:5 describes one of the practical results of this victory. It concerns our personal relationships, especially with fellow believers in the congregation. This is plain from the appeals of verses 25 and 26: ‘Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.’ Ephesians 5:18ff. is similar, where the outcome of the command ‘Be filled with the Spirit’ includes ‘speaking to one another’ and ‘submitting to one another’. Both passages show that the first and great evidence of our living by the Spirit or being filled with the Spirit is not some private mystical experience of our own, but our practical relationships of love with other people. And this is only logical, since the first fruit of the Spirit is love.
But it is easy to talk about ‘love’ in an abstract and general way; it is much harder to get down to concrete, particular situations in which we actually demonstrate our love for one another. It is some of these which Paul now unfolds. He tells us how, if we are walking by the Spirit, we shall and shall not behave towards each other.
1. How Christians should not treat each other (5:26)
Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other. This is a very instructive verse because it shows that our conduct to others is determined by our opinion of ourselves. It is when we are conceited that we provoke and envy other people. This word (the Greek adjective kenodoxos) denotes those who have an opinion of themselves which is empty, vain or false. They are cherishing an illusion about themselves or are just plain conceited. Now, when we are conceited, our relationships with other people are bound to be poisoned. Indeed, whenever relationships with other people deteriorate, conceit is nearly always the basic cause. According to Paul, when we are conceited, we tend to do one of two things; we either ‘provoke’ one another or ‘envy’ one another.
First, we provoke one another. This Greek verb (prokaleō) is unique in the New Testament. It means to ‘challenge’ somebody to a contest. It implies that we are so sure of our superiority that we want to demonstrate it. So we challenge people to dispute it in order to give ourselves a chance to prove it. Second, we envy one another, being jealous of one another’s gifts or attainments.
What the apostle writes here is entirely true to our own experience. Generally speaking, we adopt one of these two attitudes towards each other. We are motivated by feelings either of inferiority or superiority. If we regard ourselves as superior to other people we challenge them, for we want them to know and feel our superiority. If, on the other hand, we regard them as superior to us, we envy them. In both cases our attitude is due to ‘conceit’, to our having such a fantasy opinion of ourselves that we cannot bear rivals.
Very different is that love which is the fruit of the Spirit, which Christians demonstrate when they are living by the Spirit. Such people have no conceit, or rather are continuously seeking to subdue it by the Spirit. They do not think of themselves more highly than they ought to think; they think with sober judgment (Rom. 12:3). The Holy Spirit has opened their eyes to see both their own sin and unworthiness and also the importance and value of other people in the sight of God. People with such love regard others as ‘more important’ and seek every opportunity to serve them.
To sum up, then, truly Christian relationships are governed not by rivalry but by service. The correct attitude to other people is not ‘I’m better than you and I’ll prove it’, nor ‘You’re better than me and I resent it’, but ‘You are a person of importance in your own right (because God made you in his own image and Christ died for you) and it is my joy and privilege to serve you.’
2. How Christians should treat each other (6:2–5)
The general principle is set out for us in Galatians 6:2: Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.
Notice the assumption which lies behind this command, namely that we all have burdens and that God does not mean us to carry them alone. Some people try to. They think it a sign of resilience not to bother other people with their burdens. Such resilience is certainly brave. But it is more stoical than Christian. Others remind us that we are told in Psalm 55:22 to ‘cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you’, and that the Lord Jesus invited the weary and burdened to come to him and promised to give them rest (Matt. 11:28). They therefore argue that we have a divine burden-bearer who is quite adequate, and that it is a sign of weakness to require any human help. This too is a serious mistake. It is true that Jesus Christ alone can bear the burden of our sin and guilt; he bore it in his own body when he died on the cross. But this is not so with our other burdens – our worries, temptations, doubts and sorrows. We can certainly cast these burdens on the Lord as well. We can cast all our anxiety on him, since he cares for us (1 Pet. 5:7). But remember that one of the ways in which he bears these burdens of ours is through human friendship.
A striking example of this principle is given us in the career of the apostle Paul. At one stage in his life he was terribly burdened. He was worried to death over the Corinthian church and in particular about their reaction to a rather severe letter which he had written to them. His mind could not rest, so great was his suspense. ‘We were harassed at every turn,’ he wrote; ‘conflicts on the outside, fears within.’ Then he continued: ‘But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus’ (2 Cor. 7:5–6). God’s comfort was not given to Paul through his private prayer and waiting upon the Lord, but through the companionship of a friend and through the good news which he brought.
Human friendship, in which we bear one another’s burdens, is part of the purpose of God for his people. So we should not keep our burdens to ourselves, but rather seek a Christian friend who will help to bear them with us.
By such burden-bearing we fulfil the law of Christ (2). Because of the interesting link in this sentence between ‘burdens’ and the ‘law’, it is possible that Paul is casting a side glance at the Judaizers. Certainly some of the law’s requirements are referred to as a burden in the New Testament (e.g. Luke 11:46; Acts 15:10, 28), and the Judaizers were seeking to burden the Galatians with the observance of the law for their acceptance with God. So Paul may be saying to them, in effect, that instead of imposing the law as a burden upon others, they should rather lift their burdens and so fulfil Christ’s law.
The ‘law of Christ’ is to love one another as he loves us; that was the new commandment which he gave (John 13:34; 15:12). So, as Paul has already stated in Galatians 5:14, to love our neighbour is to fulfil the law. It is very impressive that to ‘love your neighbour’, ‘carry each other’s burdens’ and ‘fulfil the law’ are three equivalent expressions. It shows that to love one another as Christ loved us may lead us, not to some heroic, spectacular deed of self-sacrifice, but to the much more mundane and unspectacular ministry of burden-bearing. When we see someone struggling to carry a heavy case, do we not offer to help carry it? So when we see somebody with a heavy burden on his or her heart or mind, we must be ready to get alongside that person and share the burden. Similarly, we must be humble enough to let others share ours.
To be a burden-bearer is a great ministry. It is something that every Christian should and can do. It is a natural consequence of living by the Spirit. It fulfils the law of Christ. ‘Therefore,’ wrote Martin Luther, ‘Christians must have strong shoulders and mighty bones’ – sturdy enough, that is, to carry heavy burdens.
The apostle continues in verse 3: If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. The implication seems to be that if we do not or will not bear one another’s burdens, it is because we think we are above it. We would not lower ourselves to such a thing; it would be beneath our dignity. Again it is apparent, as in Galatians 5:26, that our behaviour towards others is governed by our opinion of ourselves. As we provoke and envy other people when we have conceit, so when we think we are something we decline to bear their burdens.
But to think thus of ourselves is to deceive ourselves. As we saw earlier, conceit is entertaining a false opinion of ourselves. The truth is that we are not ‘something’; we are ‘nothing’. Is this an exaggeration? Not when the Holy Spirit has opened our eyes to see ourselves as we are, rebels against the God who made us in his image, deserving nothing at his hand but destruction. When we realize and remember this, we shall not compare ourselves favourably with other people, nor shall we decline to serve them or carry their burdens.
Moreover, when we are Christians, redeemed by God through Jesus Christ, we shall still not compare ourselves with others. It is these comparisons which are so odious and dangerous, as the apostle goes on to say: Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load (4–5). In other words, instead of inspecting our neighbour and comparing ourselves with him or her, we are to test our own actions, for we will have to carry our own load. That is, we are responsible to God for what we do and must give an account of it to him one day.
There is no contradiction here between verse 2, ‘Carry each another’s burdens’, and verse 5, ‘each one should carry their own load’. The Greek words for ‘burden’ and ‘load’ are different, baros (2) meaning a weight or heavy load, and phortion (5) being ‘a common term for a man’s pack’. So we are to carry one another’s ‘burdens’ which are too heavy for someone to bear alone, but there is one burden which we cannot share – indeed do not need to because it is a pack light enough for all to carry themselves – and that is our responsibility to God on the day of judgment. On that day you cannot carry my pack and I cannot carry yours. ‘Each one should carry their own load.’
3. An example of burden-bearing (6:1)
In verse 1 the apostle Paul gives his readers a particular example of burden-bearing: Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. To ‘catch’ somebody in the act of sinning is a frequent occurrence. The best-known example in the New Testament is the woman whom the Pharisees brought to Jesus and described to him as having been ‘caught in the act of adultery’ (John 8:4). But we have many other, less sensational experiences when somebody has been surprised or detected in a sin. The apostle gives instructions for such a situation. He tells us, first, what to do; second, who is to do it; and third, how it is to be done.
a. What to do
If someone is caught in a sin . . . restore that person. The verb is informative. Katartizō means to ‘put in order’ and so to ‘restore to its former condition’ (Arndt–Gingrich). It was used in secular Greek as a medical term for setting a fractured or dislocated bone. It is applied in Mark 1:19 to the apostles who were ‘preparing’ their nets.
Notice how positive Paul’s instruction is. If we find somebody doing something wrong, we are not to stand by doing nothing on the pretext that it is none of our business and we have no wish to be involved. Nor are we to despise or condemn that person in our heart and, if he or she suffers for the mistake, say ‘Serves him right’ or ‘Let her stew in her own juice’. Nor are we to report that person to the minister, or gossip about him or her to our friends in the congregation. No, we are to restore that person.
We are not told here precisely how we are to restore our fallen brother or sister, but we can learn this from the more detailed instructions of Jesus in Matthew 18:15–17. We are to go to our brother or sister and tell him or her the fault, face to face and privately. Jesus also made our object positive and constructive. We are to seek to ‘win them over’, he said, as Paul here says we are to ‘restore’ him or her.
b. Who is to do it
You who live by the Spirit [or ‘who are spiritual’] should restore that person. Some commentators have thought that Paul is here being sarcastic. They have suggested that there was a group of super-spiritual people in Galatia who were calling themselves the ‘spiritual’ party. But there is no evidence that such a party existed, and no need to see sarcasm in Paul’s words. He is referring to ‘mature’ or ‘spiritual’ Christians, whom he is later to describe more fully in 1 Corinthians 2:14 – 3:4, and whom he has already begun to describe in Galatians 5:16–25. All Christians are indwelt by the Spirit, but ‘spiritual’ Christians are also ‘led by the Spirit’ and ‘live by the Spirit’, so that ‘the fruit of the Spirit’ appears in their lives. Indeed, this loving ministry of restoring an erring brother or sister is exactly the kind of thing that we shall do when we are living by the Spirit. It is only the ‘spiritual’ Christian who should attempt to restore that person.
We may not, however, seize upon this as an excuse to evade an unpleasant task. We may not say, ‘That excuses me; I’m not spiritual.’ Verse 1 is certainly an admission that not all Christians are in fact ‘spiritual’ Christians, but then all Christians should be, and as such have a responsibility to restore a sinning brother or sister.
c. How it should be done
You who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. The same Greek word for ‘gentleness’ (praütēs) has occurred in 5:23 as part of the fruit of the Spirit, for ‘gentleness’, writes Bishop Lightfoot, ‘is a characteristic of true spirituality’. One of the reasons why only spiritual Christians should attempt the ministry of restoration is that only the spiritual are gentle. Paul then adds that we are ourselves to be watchful, in case we also are tempted. This suggests that gentleness is born of a sense of our own weakness and liability to sin. J. B. Phillips paraphrases: ‘not with any feeling of superiority but being yourselves on guard against temptation’.
We have seen, then, that when a Christian brother or sister is caught in sin, he or she is to be restored, and that mature, spiritual believers are to exercise this delicate ministry gently and humbly. It is sad that in today’s church this plain command of the apostle is effectively ignored. Yet if we truly lived by the Spirit we would love one another more, and if we loved one another more we would carry one another’s burdens, and if we carried one another’s burdens we would not hesitate to restore a brother or sister who has fallen into sin. Further, if we obeyed this apostolic instruction as we should, much unkind gossip would be avoided, more serious backsliding prevented, the good of the church advanced and the name of Christ glorified.
4. Conclusion
We come back to where we started. Those who live by the Spirit are led into harmonious relationships with each other. Indeed, this mutual ‘each other’ is the word which gives cohesion to the paragraph we have been studying. There is to be ‘no provoking of each other’ and ‘no envying of each other’ (5:26). We are instead to ‘carry each other’s burdens’ (6:2). And this active Christian ‘each-otherness’ is an inevitable expression of Christian family unity. It is not an accident that Paul addresses his readers as ‘brothers and sisters’ (6:1). In the Greek the first word and the last word of Galatians 6, apart from the final ‘Amen’, is the word translated ‘brothers and sisters’. Bishop Lightfoot quotes the old Latin commentator Bengel: ‘a whole argument lies hidden under this one word’.
Just as the apostle argues about our Christian freedom from the fact that we are God’s ‘children’, so he argues for responsible Christian conduct from the fact that we are ‘brothers and sisters’. This paragraph is the New Testament answer to Cain’s irresponsible question ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ (Gen. 4:9). If men are my brothers, and women my sisters, then I am their keeper. I am to care for them in love, to be concerned for their welfare. I am neither to assert my imaginary superiority over them and ‘provoke’ them, nor resent their superiority over me and ‘envy’ them. I am to love them and to serve them. If they are heavy-laden, I am to bear their burdens. If they fall into sin, I am to restore them, and do so gently. It is to such practical Christian living, affectionate care and service that living by the Spirit will lead us, and it is by such too that the law of Christ is fulfilled.