Galatians 6:2-5 – “Really Caring 3”

Once again, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²Be bearing the burdens of one another, and thus you will fulfill the law of Christ, ³for if one is seeming to be something being nothing, he is deceiving himself. ⁴And each of you should be examining his own work and then the boast will hold only into himself and not into the other, ⁵for each one will bear his own load.

As I have been relating in my previous two posts, we have before us what would seem a very simple admonition, “Be bearing the burdens of one another …” It makes perfect sense that people indwelt by the very Spirit of Christ, the great Burden-bearer, would be compelled and enabled to see each others’ needs and actually be anxious to do whatever we can to help. My mental conundrum is to ask, “If it is that simple, why does He have to tell us to do it?” Usually when He has to tell us, and our first response is, “Oh, sure. We’ve got that,” it’s a sure sign we don’t. So, in case I’m blind to something, I keep praying and thinking and studying.

What does seem clear to me is that verses 3-5 are, in fact, logically attached to verse 2. One could question whether verses 3-5 are a separate thought in themselves. However, since v5 closes with the same verb “bearing,” and the idea of “bearing a load” compared to the “bearing a burden” of v2, I am strongly inclined to see vv 2-5 as a logical unit. That being said, verses 3-5 would be our divinely inspired explanation for why we might not “bear one another’s burdens.” I think rather than read verse 2 and smugly congratulate ourselves, we should spend some time in verses 3-5 and ask how well I’m staying on top of these things. It is a sure bet, if I’m not on top of my pride and if I’m not on top of the “comparing” game, in all likelihood I’m also not doing a good Spirit-led job of bearing others’ burdens.

In the last post I looked at the pride problem, “seeming to be something, being nothing,” and deceiving ourselves. That one is really scary to me. After all these years of fighting this evil sin, I think I can confidently say it is the sin I fear the most. I feel it is my very skin. I feel like the sin of pride is so much the very fabric of my being it is, in my own power, inescapable. In spite of praying against it and even attempting to be vigilant against it, still it has lurked under the radar of my heart and, in too many ways, ruined everything I ever cared about. So much of my life, I actually thought I was doing well, only to grow older and (perhaps) a little wiser and to look back and see my heart was full of the sin of pride. No wonder things “didn’t work.” “God resists the proud, but gives His grace to the humble.” The self-deception of the sin of pride is the part that scares me the most, that, like the Pharisees of old, I can sincerely believe I’m doing right, and even go so far as to crucify the Messiah(!). Now that’s blindness!

The other reason why pride scares me is because so many of the heroes of faith, at one time or another, went down in pride. David (numbering Israel), Hezekiah, Uzziah, Asa, so many men did so well for a lifetime, but before they were finished, went down hard in the sin of pride. If it happened to men like them, where do I stand?? Yikes. The only answer is to keep on praying hard against it, read the Scriptures attentively and allow them to interrogate my thoughts and my motives, and then just keep getting up and going on  in faith.  I pray that somehow Spirit-indwelling would mean that there would be a significant measure of victory against this ghastly sin, but having said that, still I know it clings to me like my very skin. God deliver me and let me be a Spirit-enabled blessing, not a flesh-driven prideful curse.