Galatians 6

The life of walking by the Spirit is not necessarily an easy life, or a life without some dangerous twists and turns. Even Jesus, we are told in Luke 4:1-2, being “full of the Holy Spirit, … was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil.” Though He faced all kinds of temptations, He never sinned. The rest of us may fall into a ditch from which we cannot readily remove ourselves. In Galatians 6, Paul advises the more spiritual ones among the churches there to look for those who have fallen, perhaps into this false message of circumcision, and to restore them in a spirit of gentleness. This is not without its own dangers, because even those who are strong in the gospel of Christ may themselves be tempted and may fall. We all need to recognize our weakness, and care for each other. This is a way to bear one another’s spiritual burdens, and thus it is one of the ways that we are to love, fulfilling the law of Christ.

The proud leader who is harsh toward others, and who thinks that he is something in the gospel, has forgotten that the good news is all about our rescue based solely on the merits of someone else. No matter how much growth we may experience by the Lord’s grace, the facts of divine care for us cannot change. The most eminent Christians are still saved entirely by the work of our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

That is not to say that we don’t have work to accomplish for the Lord, but it is all proceeding from God’s grace, and we need to have a vigilant care for our own souls as we do the soul work of caring for those who have fallen into entangling sin. Every one of the Lord’s workers will have his labors tested by God when the Day of Judgment comes, and we will see how profitably we have used the treasures He granted to us. Until that day, we would be wise to do some honest testing of our own work without too much self-congratulation.

Positively speaking, we should be thankful for the work of those true servants of the Lord who bring us the word for our spiritual good. If someone has been called to teach the word as his calling, we should be happy to help with his financial support. We are not talking about those who would presume to be teachers, but those who have not been called by the churches to that task. Paul is not suggesting that the churches in Galatia should support the circumcision party, though those visitors from Jerusalem may be insisting that they are worthy of such blessings.

True ministers of the Word who have been recognized as such by the church, men who are called by God to this task, should receive the material blessings of the church so that they can focus on that work. To do less than this is to mock God. If we say that we are profiting from the message of Christ and the cross and then are unwilling to give so that the man who preaches can eat, this fools no one, least of all Almighty God. To support gospel work is to sow to the Spirit in expectations of a spiritual harvest. This may not be easy, but we can trust God that in due season we will reap a good reward for this kind of faithful giving and living.

In every opportunity for service we can use this principle: If we sow to the flesh, we gain only the flesh. If we sow to the Spirit, we can expect a spiritual reward. And God knows how to take care of His people. In everything before us, we should aim to be faithful with the time, energy, ability, and wealth that the Lord has given us. The Lord will not be mocked. We need to care for the household of faith as a first priority, but seek to help those in need all around us.

Paul ends this letter by taking the pen out of the hand of his trained scribe to make his own mark, with his own large letters expressing the intensity of his feelings concerning the true gospel of Jesus Christ, and those who have been troubling the Galatian churches with strange adjustments to the perfection of the message of the Lord’s grace through His Son. He exposes the hypocrisy of those who have come all this way from Jerusalem just to preach circumcision. They do not fool him for a bit. They claim to want to preach Christ, but they have found a way to do it by avoiding the persecution of Jews who are insisting on the Pharisaic way. Jesus had to fight such persecutors. Paul has his own battle scars from them. Have these new teachers from Jerusalem found a way to make everyone happy with their insistence on circumcision and the Law?

What are such men giving up when they settle on that kind of message? Isn’t it a fact that the most vehement defenders of circumcision cannot themselves keep the Law? Have they decided to boast in the number of their converts to this laceration of the gospel? Paul will have no part in any such boasting. His boast is in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world’s approval has been crucified to him, and he to the world’s approval. He has come to the conclusion that it is only through the cross of Christ that the great purposes of God can ever be accomplished. The cross needs none of our help to be meaningful, powerful, and full of divine wisdom and love. It is only the cross that can bring about the new creation of resurrection life. That new life, the life of faith working itself out through love, this is worth pursuing in the power of God, and not some old or new outward ritual. This is worth living for and even worth dying for. Men like Paul who are committed to Christ, the cross, and the resurrection, are willing to bear on their bodies marks of suffering more significant than the marks of circumcision. They have heard the good news of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and they will accept no other word than this news, the message that has made our spirits alive with the presence of Almighty God.