Sowing And Reaping
SOWING AND REAPING
GALATIANS 6:7-10
These verses make plain that to be spiritual is also to be practical.
The mention of the fruit of the Spirit (5:22) prompts Paul to continue this thought, introduced by a stern warning that the order and reliability which we observe in God’s world of nature, with its law of seedtime and harvest (Genesis 8:22), are also part of God’s moral world. Jesus said the same (Matthew 7:16-20). And earlier still, Hosea had warned the people of his day that sowing and reaping belong together (Hosea 8:7).
Another pair of contrasts which we have met in a previous passage recur too: the flesh and the Spirit (5:13-26). The background here is probably the rabbis’ teaching that human behavior is governed by two impulses, one good, the other evil. These were found in a person’s inner life, setting up a conflict (as in 5:17). Paul, the ex-rabbi, had discovered, however, the secret of victory in Christ (2 Corinthians 2:14; Romans 5:17; 7:25; 8:2-13) and the confidence which stems from that moral conquest: to sow in the field of the Spirit is to be assured of a harvest of eternal life. The thought of Romans 8:12-13 is similar.
“Sowing” stands not only for moral endeavor and preoccupation with those things which please God (Romans 8:6); it is equally a picture word for Christian service (as in 2 Corinthians 9:6-10) in which the great dissatisfaction is a tendency to grow fainthearted. Paul himself perhaps knew that discouragement first hand (2 Corinthians 4:1,16: how does he fight off this despondency?). Having known something of the temptation and the way through, he writes an encouragement to the Galatian workers (6:9).
There are many calls on our interest, energy and finances. “Let us do good” (6:10) is an incentive which no Christian will fail to respond to, once a worthy cause is presented. But there has to be a priority. Who has first call on our stewardship of time and money?
Note 6:7: the strong admonition looks back to the proposal that the Christian may treat the high standards of morality with impunity (5:21). Possibly some Galatians had gone to the opposite extreme and argued that as they were free from the (Jewish) law, they were free to set aside all moral restraints.