Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Galatians 6:2

Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

2. one another’s burdens ] Brotherhood is a mutual relationship, and entails mutual good offices.

burdens ] This is not the same word in the Greek which is rendered ‘burden’ in Gal 6:5. It denotes any weight which presses heavily on the body or the mind, as toil, suffering, responsibility, anxiety. In Gal 6:5 the reference is to the burden assigned to man or beast, to a ship or other vehicle, to carry, corresponding to the English ‘load’.

and so fulfil ] The other reading, ‘ and so ye will fulfil ’ has about equal authority.

the law of Christ ] ‘He calls love the law of Christ’, Thdt., with reference to the new Commandment of Joh 13:34. The law of Christ is the law given by Christ and exemplified in His most holy life. The nature and the measure of its fulfilment are stated in the Divine Commentary: ‘ as I have loved you, that ye also love one another’. It involves sympathy always, active sympathy (i.e. help) when possible. Of our Lord it was foretold (Isa 53:4), ‘Surely He hath borne our griefs (Heb. sicknesses) and carried our sorrows’. This is quoted by St Matthew (ch. Mat 8:17), ‘Himself took our infirmities and bare our diseases’; while the Septuagint version gives, ‘Himself bears our sins and for us He is in anguish’. With the injunction compare Rom 15:1, ‘We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak’. Here, however, mutual sympathy is enjoined.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Bear ye one anothers burdens – See the note at Rom 15:1. Bear with each other; help each other in the divine life. The sense is, that every man has special temptations and easily besetting sins, which constitute a heavy burden. We should aid each other in regard to these, and help one another to overcome them.

And so fulfil the law of Christ – The special law of Christ, requiring us to love one another; see the note at Joh 13:34. This was the distinguishing law of the Redeemer; and they could in no way better fulfil it than by aiding each other in the divine life. The law of Christ would not allow us to reproach the offender, or to taunt him, or to rejoice in his fall. We should help him to take up his load of infirmities, and sustain him by our counsels, our exhortations, and our prayers. Christians, conscious of their infirmities, have a right to the sympathy and the prayers of their brethren. They should not be cast off to a cold and heartless world; a world rejoicing over their fall, and ready to brand them as hypocrites. They should be pressed to the warm bosom of brotherly kindness; and prayer should be made to ascend without ceasing around an erring and a fallen brother. Is this the case in regard to all who bear the Christian name?

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Gal 6:2

Bear ye one anothers burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

Burden-bearing

These two principles are:–

I. The brotherhood of souls–Bear ye one anothers burdens.

II. The responsibility of the individual soul–Every man shall bear his own burden. Now these two principles are not really opposed to each other, and neither are the precepts of the text. For if you think of it, you will find it is impossible to obey one part of this law without obeying the other; that it is impossible to bear one, your own burden, without at the same time bearing the burden of others; that it is impossible to realize the awful responsibilities of your being without at the same time realizing the claims of your brothers; impossible to find your own true life without giving up your individual will, without merging your personal interests in those of the human brotherhood, and those of the human brotherhood in the light of the life of God. Take one side of the idea first. Every man shall bear his own burden. There is certainly a very real sense in which this is true, and perhaps no truth has impressed itself more deeply upon the mind of man. Strangest of all things in this wondrous universe is the loneliness of man. Lonely in his birth, lonely in all the great movements of his life, lonely in his death, he comes, he passes, he disappears. Enthroned on the citadel of being, each soul is like a star, and dwells apart. There, in the solitary circuit of its own being, it must patiently revolve, for no star can move in the orbit of another star; it cannot pass the silent deep that lies between; it is alone, and shines in solitary beauty. How then, you ask, is it possible to obey the command of the apostle: Bear ye one anothers burdens? My only answer is that which is implied in the words of the text, that it is only by bearing one anothers burdens that we can really bear our own. Does that seem to be a paradox? If you consider deeply you will not think so, you will see that it is really the law of Christ–the highest phase of that law which rules the rhythmic harmony of the universe–that the true life of man is something higher than a life of individual isolation or of personal interest, and that to attain this you must give up your individual will, you must rise into a life which is your own, and yet not your own, and of which the highest expression must always be, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

1. Take first the illustration which Christ Himself gave in the simplest phase of growing life, the living unity of the tree: I am the Vine, ye are the branches. In the economy of a tree you know there is a function which every member must perform, and without which the vigour of life cannot be maintained. If any part should, so to speak, refuse to exercise its function and to bear the burden of the others, itself must pass away. Give it a separate existence, give it the individuality to which it aspires, and what is the result? When it formed a part of the tree joyfully bearing its own burden, and so also bearing the burden of the others, it shared the glory and the freshness of its life, and all its bloom and beauty.

2. The same principle which is thus exemplified in the tree is seen also in the phenomena of sentient life. It is true that the same law holds throughout the realm of our inorganic life, and even in the subtler relations of organisms as collections of modified cells, with unity of origin and coordination of function, it is clearly shown that life cannot be sustained without that mutual burden-bearing which is part of the very law of God. While each individual member has its part to play, its burden to bear, there is a life of the organism to which it must contribute. The members are not independent of each other, but linked together and mutually helpful. The eye cannot say to the hand I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have need of you. Each member must bear its own burden, and in so doing it will bear the burdens of the others.

3. You have seen the principle illustrated in the life of the body. In the structure as it rises from base to summit each stone bears its own burden, and from foundation to cope stone there is none which is useless, all alike sustaining and sustained, rising in gradual ascent according to the plan in the mind of the architect, and growing up into that ideal of beauty and of serviceableness after which he strove, exemplifying in the simplest as well as in the most elaborate form the same principle, and showing that the law which gives its nameless grace to the tiny arch gives also its imposing grandeur to the great cathedral, rising as it does, in ever ascending glory, from its pillars of over-vaulted gloom, with architraves and arches of majestic beauty, like a primeval forest, till all the building fitly framed together grows into a holy temple, meet for the worship of God.

4. And if we pass from these suggestive illustrations we shall also find in the life of man and in the arrangement of society equally forcible illustrations of the same principle; a principle which is indeed the very law of society, and without which society could not cohere. Take, for instance, the very common principle of the division of labour, a principle which was slowly adopted, but which is now one of the axioms of economic science. It is not only of direct utility in increasing the power of labour, justifying the saying of the preacher, Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labours. But there is also a higher principle involved. For it is thus by their lower necessities that men are led to see that they have need of each other, and that each and all have their place. I might go on to speak of the basis that has been laid for the law of mutual burden-bearing in the natural constitution of man, in the power of sympathy and natural affection, in the love that binds parent to child, and friend to friend in the sweet charities of human life. There is a similar illustration which may be given in what is called the body politic. What is a State? The true idea of a State is not that of an unconnected collection of individuals, but rather that of an organism, with an organic life and an economy of members, each of which has its own part to play, its own burden to bear, and if it honestly bears that burden, it is also bearing the burdens of the others. For you cannot say that in making the demand Christ makes a demand which is contrary to the nature of things. He merely demands that you should submit yourself to a law which is the expression of Gods will, and which is the very law of life. He shows that which is the very glory of the Christian faith, that it does not stand in antagonism with any true principle of our nature. We are, as it were, a great army under marching orders. Day by day we are marching onwards. Each of us has his own burden to bear. Each of us must carry his own knapsack, and shoulder his own musket. And as our comrades fall beside us shall we not pause, and carry them to the rear? Would you call that man a true soldier who could see his fellow soldier fall and not seek to relieve him, who would quail before the shot of the enemy and run to save himself when his wounded brother fell? To this it is, my brethren, that the law of Christ calls you. You must renounce your own will, and bow to the will of God. You must give up your own freedom, and find it in a greater and nobler freedom. You must bear the burdens of others or you cannot bear your own. (A. W. Williamson, M. A.)

Bearing one anothers burdens

I. Enumerate some of the burdens of the Christian life.

1. The greatest of all burdens which the Christian feels is sin. It is this which makes the whole creation groan, and causes an apostle to cry out, Oh wretched man that I am; who shall deliver me from the body of this death? (Rom 7:24). David also complains and says, Mine iniquities are gone over my head; as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me (Psa 38:4).

2. Bodily infirmities and diseases are in themselves a burden, however providence may intend them for our good, and finally overrule them for our spiritual advantage.

3. Worldly losses, trials and difficulties, are the burden which some are called to bear, and of these there is a heavy load. The unkindness and ingratitude, the malice and opposition of enemies, press heavily on some: the undutifulness of children, and the breaches made by death, on others: and an endless train of disappointed hopes and expectations attend on all.

4. A state of distance from God, and the hidings of His face, are a great grief and burden to the believing soul. Thou hidest Thy face, says David, and I am troubled.

II. Our obligations to sympathise with one another, under the various ills and evils of the present life. We cannot so bear each others burdens as to transfer them to ourselves, or suffer in anothers stead. In this sense Christ bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows, and at length bore our sins in His own body on the tree; and He alone was able to do it.

1. Let us bear one anothers burdens by tenderly sympathising with those who are afflicted. Let us make their griefs, as well as their joys, our own.

2. We are to bear one anothers burdens by endeavouring to alleviate the afflicted, and comforting them under all their sorrows.

3. The motive by which this duty is enforced is, that in so doing we fulfil the law of Christ. It is according to the new commandment which He has given us, that we should love one another; and according to the old commandment that we should love God, and our neighbour as ourselves. (B. Beddome, M. A.)

Mutual burdens

I. We must take this text into the sphere of realism. Trouble is not to be treated sentimentally, curiously, inquisitively, but practically Reach out a heart of love and a hand of help to your brother man, not only touching his burden, but bearing it, so that it becomes a matter of prayerful thought, tender remembrance, and gracious kindness.

II. This is to be done with great tact and delicacy of feeling. Seek never to lower a brothers honour, while helping his need.

III. We must do this as the law of life. There is nothing occasional in the Christen spirit. Separate actions do not make good men.

IV. We must look at this great teaching along the line of true social economy. Help those who are trying to help themselves.

V. Cultivate a tender sense of brotherhood. In sympathising with, and bearing one anothers burdens, we realize the great fact that we shall have burdens to bear ourselves. So we shall. Those who have most, often say least about them. But God intends these trials to prepare us for Christian service. Every experience brings with it the power of bearing a burden. (W. M. Statham.)

Christian generosity

So deceitful is the heart, it must be constantly watched, lest under the semblance of piety and religious zeal, we should be led to indulge rancorous and unholy passions. This the apostle seems to have felt; hence the caution (Gal 5:13-16), the exposure of the fruits both of the flesh and the spirit (verses 19-23), and the exhortation which concludes with the text.

I. The duty enjoined. The term burden denotes something which, by uneasy pressure, exhausts the strength and spirits of the person oppressed by it. It may apply to–

1. A weight of labour or bodily toil. This is the effect of the original transgression (Gen 3:19). We may lighten it by manual assistance, by procuring the requisite help, or pecuniary, which would render the excess of labour unnecessary.

2. A weight of personal affliction (Job 7:20). The pressure of this may be relieved by medical aid, kind attendance, the soothing, sympathising language of friendship, or the considerations which religion affords.

3. Domestic affliction and cares.

4. Providential losses, poverty, embarrassment, oppression, etc.

5. Guilt and corruption. In this case especially, is Christian sympathy demanded.

6. Temptation (Ecc 4:9; Rom 15:1; 1Th 5:14).

7. Infirmities, whether of body or mind. Pity rather than upbraid a weak brother. Help his infirmities, instead of exposing them to others.

II. The enforcing motive.

1. This is worthy of the character of Christ, inasmuch as it is

(1) a law of equity,

(2) a law of benevolence,

(3) a law of general utility, by which society is benefited, the sum of evil being lessened, and that of happiness increased.

2. It is congenial with the Spirit of Christ (Php 2:5; 2Co 8:9; Col 3:12-13.)

3. It is agreeable with the example of Christ (Joh 13:13; Php 2:6-9; Heb 2:14-16).

4. It is deducible from the precepts of Christ (Joh 13:33-34; Joh 15:12; Joh 15:17).

5. It has, and shall have, the approbation of Christ (Mat 5:7; Mat 25:34-40). Concluding inferences:

(1) Seeing that the text expresses the peculiar genius of the religion by which we hope for salvation, the subject should awaken inquiry (1Jn 4:19-21).

(2) If examination should happen to lead us to humiliating views of past shortcomings, etc., it should also lead us to unreserved and constant obedience; which may be supported by a consideration of what we owe to

(a) ourselves;

(b) our brethren;

(c) our Saviour, who regards what is done to His followers as done to Himself;

(d) our God, who expects such return for His love (1Jn 4:9-11). (Theological Sketch-book.)

Bearing one anothers burdens

This world is full of burden-bearers. We cannot pass through it without taking a load. Nor can we help fulfilling the injunction of the text in some sense. We do, naturally and inevitably, bear one anothers burdens. Life is such that every man must take some share of the life of those around. To be in relationships means this; to be in a family as head or member, to be in business, to be one of a social and civilized community, implies it. The text is needed, then, to make that Christian which is simply natural, to change hard necessity into holy duty. Christianity speaks to men who are all struggling and suffering together, and says not, Throw off the burden, deny the mutual claim, restrain the hand of help, but, What you must do, do willingly; what you might leave undone, do more willingly still.

I. Some of the burdens we may help others to bear.

1. Poverty. Answers to objections–

(1) Many of the poor are born so, and do not feel their privations as a burden, not knowing any other state. True, but we must think of what they may be raised to The poorest man is a man altogether, and capable of all a man can be in soul and circumstances.

(2) There must be the different classes in society. Christ tells us we shall always have the poor with us. Yes, but Christ merely refers to a fact He does not commend it, or announce it as one of the laws of His Kingdom. The nature of His Kingdom is, in proportion as its principles prevail, to bring all evils to an end, and poverty undoubtedly tends to produce and perpetuate evil; e.g., it prevents the acquisition of knowledge, makes decency very difficult, quenches nobler strivings, makes life a drudgery. When very deep, it is twin-sister to famine, and behind them both are the darker forms of crime (Pro 30:8-9).

2. Infirmity. Weak goodness needs encouragement. Many who fall often are struggling hard all the time. Be willing and ready to hold out a helping hand. Suffer the hasty word to pass in silence, without answering again. Check the ungenerous judgment in your heart. Watch for the best opportunity of suggesting a more excellent way.

3. Trouble. To weep with them that weep is a ministration of love far more intense than to rejoice with them that do rejoice. A friendship of fellowship cemented by sorrow is often both more profitable and more lasting than the fellowship of health, and laughter, and mutual success. Christs fellowship with men is enduring and valuable because it includes all imaginable sympathy. You must fill your own heart with the trouble you would lessen. This is Christ in you, and is probably the presage of Christ in your suffering friend, with increase of soul-strength, and abundance of consolation.

II. Motives or inducements.

1. The frailty of human nature, and the uncertainties of human life.

2. It is the way to fulfil the law of Christ. And to fulfil that law is to fulfil all laws. More than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices, more than all ceremonial and observance, more than all philosophy, more than all morality, more than all religion besides. The keeping of it is the completeness of duty, the substance of goodness, the secret of happiness, and the best preparation for the ineffable glories and joys of heaven. (A. Raleigh, D. D.)

Poverty is the load of some, and wealth is the load of others, perhaps the greater load of the two. It may weigh thee down to perdition. Bear the load of thy neighbours poverty, and let him bear with thee the load of thy wealth. Thou lightenest thy load by lightening his. (Bp. Chris. Wordsworth.)

What is our whole religion but a burden-bearing? We have our own and also others burdens to bear. We are all on a journey; if one is like to give way, the other must refresh him; if one is likely to fall, the other must help him up. (Starke.)

Christian sympathy

The individual conscience, if sufficiently sensitive, and alive to its responsibilities, will daily find for itself manifold occasions of bearing others burdens. We may show our sympathy, for instance, with sickness and suffering, in our liberal support of hospitals and similar appliances for bringing excellent medical skill within reach of those who most need and can least afford it. Those who have leisure to do so, may show it by visiting the sick and afflicted, and alleviating, by gentle acts and kindly attentions, the suffering they find around them. We may sympathise with poverty, either by actual relief of want and destitution, or by the better method, where it is possible, of procuring for them the means of earning an honest livelihood. And our sympathy with such may be most clearly expressed by the delicacy with which the help is tendered, a matter which many benevolent people are apt to forget, and so mar the good they would otherwise do. We may sympathise with age and its attendant evils, by cheerfully tendering the deference and consideration which the better portion of mankind has always combined to accord to increasing years: we may show it, too, by patience of its tediousness, and querulousness, and by diverting attention from failing faculties and enfeebled powers of mind and body. We may sympathise with infirmities of temper in those with whom we may be thrown in contact, by tact and temper, and forbearance on our part, endeavouring to hit the due medium between an undue complaisance, which is no true kindness to the wayward, and a needless and irritating opposition. We may sympathise with ignorance, by excusing it where it is unavoidable and not culpable, by seeking to remedy it in every way that lies in our power, and by readiness to impart whatever knowledge we possess, at whatever cost of time or trouble. We may sympathise with the penitent sinner, if the providence of God has placed us in such a position as to minister to the wounds of a stricken conscience, by encouraging the confidence of those who would repose it in us, by hearing their griefs and troubles and by leading them to Him who alone can heal the ravages of sin and speak peace to the troubled spirit. We may sympathise with distracting doubts and difficulties, whether as to faith or conduct, by patiently hearing all the doubters perplexity, by offering in all humility solutions which have satisfied the minds of others, or, if it be so, by showing how we ourselves have groped our way amid such clouds of the mind from darkness to partial light: or at least we may do so by secret prayer, that God in His own good time will lead all who err or waver into the narrow path which struggles upward towards the truth. (Bishop Mitchinson.)

Lightening others burdens

The application of this law are manifold. Yonder is a poor woman who has more children than she can feed. Take one of them to your own house. Give employment to another of them in your store. That will lift up the load from her, and it will send you to your family altar with a new cause for thanksgiving and praise. Do you not know that in life, sometimes, the breadth of one inch in a railway truck determines whether the cars shall go over the embankment or on the straight track–just the pull of a switch one inch. I know some large-hearted, godly men, who stand by young men when they come to London or New York, and give them the helping hand of sympathy and prayerful support; and that act just pulls the switch one inch, and puts them on the road to success, to happiness, and to Gods blessing. We have in America our William E. Dodges who are the Lords switch-tenders. I am thankful that in London you have your Samuel Morley, and other faithful servants of the Lord, who rejoice to be Gods switch-tenders, to turn the needy, and the tempted, and the young into paths of sobriety, prosperity, and blessing. Do you not know that sometimes a very small lift is very timely? A word, an old familiar word–it is like a medicine. A kind word to your neighbour in trouble, an inquiry at the door when crape hangs there, the pressure of the hand: there is not a man in England so high that he is above the reach of the need of sympathy. One of our noblest women, Fidelia Fisk, tells us that when she was in Syria one day, preaching to the native women, she found herself very tired. Here are her own words–I had worked hard all day, and I had a prayer-meeting yet to attend that night, and I felt very weary. I longed for a little rest. Just then, as I was sitting on the floor, one of the native Christian women took hold of me, and pulled me over against her and said, Are you tired? Just lean against me; and if you love me, lean hard–lean hard. I did lean against her, and I found myself wonderfully rested. I attended the womens prayer-meeting, and I went home that night scarcely tired at all; and oh, how often the words of that woman came to me, If you love me, lean hard–lean hard. And then I thought how the Blessed Saviour says, If you love Me, lean hard. And mothers, mothers, do you not remember how, when you carried that burden of the dying child, pale, feeble, and the breath almost gone, you felt, Oh, if it loves me, let it lean hard. You man, remember you not the time when, night after night, you took up your beloved wife and carried her to her couch, sad at the thought that the load was becoming lighter every moment, and you were ready to say to her, My darling, if you love me, lean hard and close. Oh, blessed Jesus, teach us how to rest our weakness on Thee, and lean hard on the burden-bearer of our sorrows and our weaknesses! (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)

The Church a reliever, of burdens

In this work of supplying the conditions of human progress, the State has found from time to time its most powerful helper and its most eloquent teacher in the Church of Christ. And in proportion as the State has realized more and more its true idea it has seemed to some to trench upon the work of its best friends. The relief of poverty for instance, the guarantee, that is, of the conditions of life in its lowest form, was long the work of the religious orders. The poor law of Elizabeth was the direct outcome of the suppression of the monasteries. So, too, the education of the people. The Church made manful efforts to supply the defects which the State ignored by its system of parochial schools, and it was not till our own time that the truth came home to men, that national education is a matter of national interest, and can be guaranteed only by the nation itself. So, too, in earlier times the freedom and the sanctity of the individual person were recognized by the Church long before they became embodied in legislation, and in our own time it was the religious instinct of the nation which drove Parliament to sweep away the last trace of slavery. Are we then peevishly to complain of the growth of the responsibility, and activity of the State? Are we to look upon each fresh duty which it undertakes as an invasion of individual rights, or a sort of trespass upon what is the peculiar province of the Church? Shall we not rather see in every successive advance a fresh victory for the Church of Christ? for it shows that the Church has been true to its mission, and has taught its lesson to the world, and has made men feel the truth and the power of the words, Bear ye one anothers burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. (L. R. Phelps.)

Burden-bearing

I. Different kinds of burdens.

1. Those that are necessary.

2. Those that are superfluous.

3. Those that are imaginary,

II. What shall we do with them?

1. Reduce their number to the limits of necessity.

2. Some of these we are expected to carry ourselves. (American Homiletic Review.)

I. Bear ye one anothers burdens. The late George Moore was accustomed to say that sympathy was the grandest word in the English language. Sympathy overcomes evil and strengthens good, it lies at the root of all religion. The late Mr. Justice Talfourd lamented the lack of it. He said, If I were asked what is the great lack of human society, I should say that need is sympathy. Selfishness is said to be the very root of original sin, and it is the duty of Christianity to break down this selfishness. We have all burdens to bear, but not all equally, and it is the privilege of those who are less burdened than their fellows to minister to the relief of those by whom they are surrounded. Sometimes, under an apparently rough exterior, there is a gentle spirit and genuine kindness. But in offering to these the ministry of Christian love we should avoid everything that is likely to hurt their sensibilities. An air of condescension and a lofty tone of patronage are out of place in Christian service. Genuine Christlike sympathy must be practical. The shedding of sentimental tears will not suffice. It is a mockery and an insult to go to a man and offer him a tract when he wants a loaf, if you have a loaf to spare. Sympathy must be personal. In this age of societies and committees we are in danger of delegating our duty to other people. Real beneficence is simple prudence–to do good is to get good. Be the almoners of your own bounty. This ministry is to be mutual. Human life is very changeful, the picture is constantly being replaced. A man rejoicing to-day may be smitten down by a fell disease tomorrow. The hand that is now ministering to others may sorely need ministration itself. By observing the principles of the text we fulfil the law of Christ. There is a moral power in the human nature of the Lord Jesus Christ which is second only to His Divinity. It fitted Him for the ministry of solace. But we are to bear one anothers burdens in order to fulfil the law of Christ. We fulfil the law of Christs example, as witnessed in the incident at Nain, and at the grave of Lazarus. There Jesus wept in sympathy with Mary and Martha. We fulfil the law of Christs teaching, and that of His apostles. A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love another, as I have loved you. We fulfil the law of Christs administration. It is a law of the kingdom that all His people shall be mutually dependent. Society is bound together by mysterious but mighty ties.

II. Every man shall bear his own burden. The two statements of my text are perfectly consistent. There are burdens which we can help other people to bear. But there are others which neither they nor we can bear for purposes of mutual help. There is the burden of responsibility. Life is a magnificent thing. Life in this world may lead to life eternal in the world to come. Then there is the burden of guilt. This is a personal matter. Again, there is the burden of remorse. We all possess a faculty of conscience. Lastly, we have each a burden to bear in the hour of death. (M. C. Osborn.)

Fellowship in suffering

The apostle here goes even beyond what he has laid down in another very large and comprehensive precept, Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. He requires something more than sympathy–more at least than sympathy as commonly understood, though not perhaps more than sympathy in its strict literal import. One man is generally said to sympathize with another, who is pained, when and because that other is pained; and sympathy, as thus understood, is little more than pity or commiseration. But to suffer with another–which is actually to sympathize–this goes much beyond the weeping with another. It is the making the griefs of that other mine own; so that the blow is on me as well as on him, and the wound is in my heart as well as in his. The members of one family accurately sympathize, or suffer together, when death has come in, and snatched one from their circle. The loss is a common loss, affecting all equally, and the sorrow of each is literally the sorrow of every other. A Christian friend or minister may visit the disconsolate household, animated by the kindliest feelings, and sincerely desirous to afford them a measure of consolation, through the manifest interest which he takes in their grief; and he may succeed; for exhibitions of kindliness have the great faculty of going like balm to the heart. The tears which friendship sheds in our woe, possess the wonderful property of staunching our own. But nevertheless, this comforting visitor may rather feel for than with the afflicted. They have lost a brother or a sister, but he does not necessarily feel as though he had lost a brother or a sister. The blow has made them orphans, but he does not necessarily feel as though it had made him an orphan. And thus, whilst he may literally and thoroughly obey the injunction which requires of him that he weep with them that weep, he may yet be far off from that actual sympathy–that suffering with them that suffer–which is described in the text; where you are not only enjoined to commiserate with the oppressed, but so to put yourselves into their position as to bear their burdens. And yet it is evident that so far as Christianity succeeds in restoring the brotherhood which sin has infringed, it will substitute sympathy thus strictly understood, for that which in our present broken state has usurped the definition. It is only needful that I come to regard any one of you as a brother; and when he loses a kinsman, I shall lose a kinsman. I shall not merely be sorry for his bereavement, but I shall feel that the bereavement is my own. So far as two families can be made one, the sorrows of either are the sorrows of both; and if there were but one vast family on the face of the earth, whatsoever afflicted the individual would afflict the mass Who can tell us what Christian philanthropy would be, if the law of membership were felt and obeyed. You ought–this is what St. Paul seems to enjoin and exhort in the text–you ought to remember the imprisoned and burdened, not merely as being your fellow creatures, but rather as being, in a certain sense, yourselves. What a motive to exertion on their behalf! How earnest, how unremitting, would be that exertion, if that motive were indeed in full force. You tell me, for instance, of unfortunate captives who have fallen into the hands of cruel taskmasters. They are shut out from the cheerful light of day; they eat their bread in bitterness of soul, and almost long for death; and you say to me, Remember them, Remember them! Why, you have told me of myself! It is my own captivity which you have described; it is the clanking of my own chains which you have made me hear; and I must struggle for their emancipation, that my limbs may be free, and that I may breathe the fresh air of heaven. O Christians 1 what would be your benevolence, if you felt that they were your own members which you were invited to succour? And it is quite evident from the text, that nothing less is expected of you as professed disciples of Christ. The apostle introduces the principle of membership, just as he might the simplest and most elementary of truths. He is not proposing any rule or standard to which men were unaccustomed, but, on the contrary, one which, as being generally acknowledged, needed only to be indicated by a passing remark. And yet it is possible enough, that the doctrine which we have now endeavoured to lay down, will appear to many of you to have the air of a new and far-fetched speculation. Give us, you are ready to say, pictures or descriptions of distress; expatiate upon the miseries by which numbers are oppressed; and move our feelings by a touching tale of human grief; but as to wishing us to make the wretchedness our own–that we should labour for its alleviation, just as though it were pressing upon ourselves–that is altogether beyond nature, and its possibility is but the fiction of an exaggerated theology! Beyond nature, we confess it; but not beyond grace. The Christian is not to be content until, in relieving the distressed, he can feel that he acts upon the great principle of membership. It must not be enough for him that his heart yearns at the tale of calamity, and that he is ready to employ his money and his time in lightening the pressure of which he has been told; he must see to it that he have part in the bearing, as well as in the relieving of the calamity. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

Helping men to bear their own burdens

Many persons are caught with the most superficial contradiction. Here St. Paul says, Bear ye one anothers burdens; and in the fifth verse of this same chapter, be says, Every man shall bear his own burden. As if both of the statements could not be true! As if a man carrying a burden for which he is especially responsible, might not have it lightened somewhat by one who walked by his side and helped him! As if a little child carrying a heavily-laden basket–which it was his task and business to carry, and which he had to take care of–might not be helped by another child walking by his side and taking hold of the handle! so that it might be said to one of them, This is your burden, and you must see to it, and to the other, Help him with his burden. And yet, persons suppose, because here it is said, Bear ye one anothers burdens, and further on, Every man shall bear his own burden, there is some contradiction. No; there is co-operation. The reponsibility is on each man to carry himself and his trials and troubles through life. All the more, therefore, as far as in us lies, we should help each other. For, to bear one anothers burdens, does not mean to take them off from one anothers shoulders, but to help each other to carry them. We are to assist others in bearing their own burdens. We are to contribute to their strength and to their courage. We are to render them as much help as, by sympathy or otherwise, we may. Taken in connection with the preceding verse this precept means: Whatever thing tends to bend a man, to warp him in his habit of thought, in the conduct of his moral feelings, in the administration of his affections, in the whole range of his social life; whatever may be a mans imperfection, or misdemeanour, or fault, or failing, the command is–Help him. (H. W. Beecher.)

Helpfulness

To bear the burden of a person who has a heavy load of laborious duty, is either to assist him directly in the performance of it, or to act towards him in such a manner as shall make the performance of it more easy; to bear the burden of a person who is oppressed with affliction, is to commiserate him, and do what we can to relieve and comfort him; to bear the burden of one who is encumbered with mistaken views, mental weakness, strong prejudices, and bad temper, is patiently to bear the annoyance which these unavoidably occasion; at the same time employing all proper means for correcting these intellectual and moral obliquities, weaknesses, and faults To bear the mistakes and faults of our fellow Christians does not by any means imply that we flatter them in their erroneous opinions or improper habits: but it does imply that we, cherishing a deep-felt sense of our own intellectual and moral deficiencies and improprieties, bear patiently the inconveniences which their mistakes and faults occasion to us, and in a truly friendly disposition do everything in our power to remove these mistakes and faults. Chrysostom well says on this point–He who is quick and irritable, let him bear with the slow and sluggish; and let the slow, in his turn, bear with the impetuosity of his fiery brother; each knowing that the burden is heavier to him who bears it than to him who bears with it. When a Christian brother under his burden stumbles and falls, we are not to let him lie on the ground and recover his feet the best way he may; far less are we to insult him as he lies prostrate, and point him out to the scorn and derision of the world. We are to take him by the hand and raise him up; and as we have all our burdens, we are to journey on, hand in hand, endeavouring to keep one another from falling, and to press in a body forward along the prescribed course, that we may all obtain the prize of our high calling, in that better country, where we shall be relieved from all our burdens at once and for ever. (John Brown, D. D.)

The spirit that restores a fallen brother should pervade ordinary Christian relations

The burdens have been unduly narrowed in the definition of them. They are not weaknesses simply, as in Rom 15:1, but also errors, trials, sorrows, sins, without any distinct specification. And they are not merely to be tolerated; they are to be taken up as burdens (Mat 20:12; Act 15:10). Whatever forms a burden to our brethren we are to take upon ourselves, and carry it for them or with them, in the spirit of Him who bore our sins and carried our sorrows. The emphasis is on one anothers, giving distinctness to the duty as a mutual duty. Mutual interposition in sympathy and for succour in any emergency–fellow-feeling and fellow-helping–is the duty inculcated, as opposed to that selfish isolation which stands aloof, or contents itself with a cheap expression of commiseration, or an offer of assistance so framed as to be worthless in the time or the shape of it (2Co 11:29). (John Eadie, D. D.)

The best burden and the highest law

If you must needs impose burdens on yourselves, let them be the burdens of mutual sympathy. If you must needs observe a law, let it be the law of Christ. (Bishop Lightfoot.)

Christian socialism

No other law but the law of Christ ever taught this maxim; the proper discharge of social duties is regulated nowhere but in the law of Christ, which is the law of love, for love worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. All those social symptoms which rise like the foam out of the agitated elements of the present generation, disappear in rapid succession, because they have no other foundation than the wave which cannot rest; and they are at best but mere spurious imitations of that fraternity which was founded by Jesus Christ. It is some tribute to the origin of our holy religion, that men in their most extravagant aberrations, and amidst the wildest theories for promoting the happiness of the many, should appeal to the Divine founder of Christianity, as having first introduced the system which they are seeking to propagate; but, inasmuch as they know nothing of the law of love, which He taught us the moving spring of every good word and work, they do but wander on the outside of the Christian system . In the general history of mankind, the maxim of the text, so far from being acted out, has been reversed; instead of men sharing or bearing one anothers burdens, they appear to act upon the rule of laying them on each others shoulders, with the view of getting rid of their portion of the weight. In the times of classical antiquity, which our youth are taught to hold in admiration; in the days of heroism and splendid war, which poets have sung and historians have embellished, there were the degraded classes of the community, made to bear the burdens of the rest. The helots of Sparta, and the slaves of Greece, the gladiators of Rome, and the captives of barbarian invaders, were but the beasts of burden for the more favoured portion of the community. What cared the Roman citizen for the slave that went his round of ceaseless toil? What thought had the feudal lord for the drudge that wore out his brief existence in subterranean damps to do his masters pleasure? Who, even in our Christian land for many generations, heeded the heavy burdens laid upon the negro slave, or the tender females working in our mines, or the helpless children in our factories? What thought or care among hundreds and thousands now, who refuse to give to the man who has done his six days labour, the day of rest which is his due, because they will not forego one single particle of their ordinary luxury, nor bear any portion of their brothers burden? St. Paul here appears to take it for granted that every man has a burden; and shortly afterwards he says that every man shall bear his own burden. There must be no such shifting away of the trial or hardship, which, in the course of providence, he has to bear, as will exempt him from the ordinary lot of humanity. It is not at all a question of getting everything done for us, so that we may have a smooth and easy path at others expense and toil; but it is just that there may be a mutual succour, which will help every man to bear his own burden, such, e.g., as the burdens of poverty, affliction, excessive labour, etc. (R. Burgess, B. D.)

Loving ministrations

There lay recently, in an infirmary in New York, in a darkened room, helpless and sightless, a man made blind by cataract. He had crossed half a continent in the faint hope of finding a relief or cure. Beside him, when I saw him, sat his daughter, who, as I learned afterwards, had taken up his work–a work involving long and exposed journeys through a wild and thinly settled country on our western frontier, and who left it, now, only to minister to this helpless and suffering parent while he lay shrinking and quivering under the surgeons knife. It seemed doubtful whether the operation would be successful, and equally doubtful whether all this filial devotion would not be wasted time and worthless endeavour. But, as one looked at that womans face of heroic sacrifice and utter self-abnegation, one read in it how out of loves Divine unselfishness there comes a sweeter and nobler fruitage than any that could be garnered without it, even though to-morrow all sorrow and pain and helplessness should be swept out of the world for ever. (Bishop H. C. Potter.)

Sympathy aided by sight

Consider how you would act if these vices and monstrous passions, instead of being a part of the machinery of rational, intelligent, and responsible agents, were transformed in the actual forms of wild beasts. Is it intemperance? suppose you figure to yourself a lion in ambush springing out upon a man; suppose you saw the man trembling under the lions paw, how would you feel? But suppose, instead of being a lion, it was Satan in the form of an intemperate appetite, worse a thousand times to the man than any real lion of the desert? You would run to rescue a man from an outside lion: will you not do anything for a man who has one inside? What if it were sickness? What if it were a man swollen with dropsy? What if it were a man crying out for water, with lips parched by merciless fever? Would you not moisten his tongue and his brow, and fan the fever away? But is any fever of the body so pitiable as the fevers which come upon the soul? Would you have compassion upon a man who was attacked by an outward disease, and none for a man whose soul was diseased Are there no bearers of mens inward burdens? Are not these burdens to be borne, even though men may have brought them upon themselves? Are not bad men punished by what they suffer from their transgressions? Is it not enough that such men have to live with themselves, and take the consequences of their own actions? And is not a man, the consequences of whose conduct are going on, working, and laying up wrath against the day of wrath, to be pitied? Is not he to be pitied who for his transgression has to bear the infliction of law, of public sentiment, and of his own nature? In all ways of looking at it, he is most to be pitied who is most variously and most hopelessly wicked. (H. W. Beecher.)

Sympathy not separation

But it will be objected, Are we not commanded to abhor that which is evil, and to cleave to that which is good? Certainly; but are we anywhere commanded to abhor sinners because we abhor sin? What is it to abhor evil? Is it the sudden disgust which arises, which ought to be momentary, and which is designed to put us upon our guard, and to inspire us with self-defensory power, till we have time to lay our course more deliberately? Every man ought at the first impulse of the evil to feel repugnance at it; but that is not the higher kind of abhorrence of evil. It is an inspiration of a lower kind. He hates evil most who hates it so that he will annihilate it. There is animal hatred, and there is Divine hatred. Two men hate malaria. One says, I will not settle here; I will pack up my things, and clear out. The other says, I hate it; but I am going to work to morrow morning, with my whole force, to drain that marsh. He goes to work and digs a ditch through it, risking his health, and removes the stagnant water. Who hated the malaria most, the one who ran away from it, or the one who cured it? Is not a cure a witness of dislike more than neglect? A mother hates the disease that is in her child; but does she abandon the child, saying, I hate morbid conditions of every kind, and let the child die, as a testimony to her dislike of violations of natural law? Is it not a better testimony to her hatred of disease, that night and day she lingers over the little sufferer till she brings it back to good health? Is not that a better way of hating disease than the other would be? That is the true hatred of sin which kills it by kindness. (H. W. Beecher.)

Open hearts and ready hands

One day a teacher said to his class, Boys, you can all be useful if you will. If you cannot do good by great deeds you can by little ones. These boys said nothing, but the teacher saw by their looks that they thought he was mistaken. They did not believe that they could be of any use. So he continued: You think it is not so; but suppose you just try it for a week. How shall we try it? asked one of them. Just keep your eyes open and your hands ready to do anything good that comes in your way this week, and tell me next Sabbath if you have not managed to be useful in some way or other, said the teacher. Agreed, said the lads; and so they parted. The next Sabbath those boys gathered round the teacher with smiling lips and eyes so full of light that they fairly twinkled like the stars. Ah, lads, I see by your looks that you have something to tell me. We have, sir; we have! they said all together. Then each told his story. I, said one, thought of going to the well for a pail of water every morning to save mother the trouble and time. She thanked me so much, was so greatly pleased, that I mean to keep on doing it for her. And I, said another boy, thought of a poor old woman, whose eyes were too dim to read. I went to her house every day and read a chapter to her from the Bible. It seems to give her a great deal of comfort. I cannot tell how she thanked me. I was walking with my eyes open and my hands ready, as you told us, said the fourth boy, when I saw a little fellow crying because he had lost some pennies. I found them, and he dried his tears, and ran off feeling very happy. A fifth boy said: I saw my mother was very tired one day. The baby was cross, and mother looked sick and sad. I asked mother to put baby into my little waggon. She did so, and I gave him a grand ride round the garden. If you had only heard him crow, and seen him clap his hands, it would have done you good; and oh! how much brighter mother looked when I took the baby indoors again!

The value of sympathy

An eminent clergyman sat in his study, busily engaged in preparing his Sunday sermon, when his little boy toddled into the room, and holding up his pinched finger, said, with an expression of suffering, Look, pa, how I hurt it! The father, interrupted in the middle of a sentence, glanced hastily at him, and with just the slightest tone of impatience, said, I cant help it. The little fellows eyes grew bigger, and as he turned to go out, he said in a low voice, Yes, you could; you might have said Oh! Alas! how many of us children of a larger growth have gone away hugging our hurt, with a sadder hurt in our hearts for lack of one little sympathizing word. To most of us, in the great trials of life, sympathy comes freely enough; but for the small aches and hurts, the daily smarts and bruises, how many a heart hungers in vain for the meagrest dole! It is such a briery world! said a little girl one day, while making her way through a blackberry thicket. The briers meet us at every turn, and there is nothing like sympathy to ease their pricks and stings. (Christian Age.)

The power of a kind word

There are no readier or sweeter sympathizers in the world than little children, and they seem to know intuitively when sympathy is needed. A friend of ours had the misfortune to break a valuable dish not long ago, and naturally enough was inclined to blame herself for her carelessness. A little four-year-old girl looked up from her play as the dish fell to the floor, and touched by the mothers troubled face she stole to her side, and softly stroking her hand, whispered, Nice mamma. Blessed little comforter! What mother would not cheerfully have given the price of a dozen dishes for the sake of such sweet sympathy? And what mother in the world would have the heart to reprove such a child for a similar mishap?–for to reprove when the little one is already quivering with dismay at the mischief it has wrought, is sheer cruelty. It is a wise mother who at such a time folds the darling in her arms with a gentle, Never mind. (Mary B. Sleight.)

Fulfil the law of Christ–not fulfil, but complete

He says not fulfil, but complete; i.e., make it up all of you in common by the things wherein ye bear with one another. This man is irascible, thou art dull-tempered; bear therefore with his vehemence, that he in turn may bear with thy sluggishness; and thus neither will he, through thy support, transgress, nor wilt thou offend in the points where thy defects lie, through thy brothers forbearance. So do ye reach forth a hand one to another when about to fall, and one with another fulfil the law in common, each completing what is wanting in his neighbour by his own endurance. (Chrysostom.)

The bearing of burdens

These passages seem to be contradictory; but the opposition is only apparent, not real. One asserts a Christian obligation, the other states a solemn fact.

I. There are burdens to be shared. Our relationship to each other, and our possession of advantages and talents, involve us in manifold responsibilities.

1. Burdens of ignorance. It is our duty to diffuse the knowledge of God, and to attempt to remove the evils of darkness and superstition.

2. Burdens of sorrow. Calamities, distress, bereavement, appeal for sympathy and ministry; and we cannot escape the demands upon us for consideration and help.

3. Burdens of infirmity. All are in jeopardy. The strongest are not always strong. Christians are not to rejoice in iniquity, or affect a disdainful sanctity, but to seek with Christlike gentleness and grace the recovery of the erring one (Jam 5:19-20). The Christian has two noble attitudes or possibillties–he can look up, and he can lift up. Think of the animating motive, and so fulfil, etc. Christ taught the law of action by

(a) His precepts,

(b) His life,

(c) His death.

II. There are burdens which cannot be shared.

1. The burden of personal duty.

2. The burden of sinful character.

3. The burden of individual responsibility.

4. The burden of death.

Conclusion: Do you carry an anxious heart, or a weary soul, or a guilty conscience? Get rid of the heavy burden. Carry the load not a moment longer (Psa 55:22). (M. Braithwaite.)

Mutual help in burden-bearing

You have often noticed, if you have any special disease or malady, how strangely you begin to learn of others who have the same. There is this sympathetic instinct in our mental and spiritual maladies It is when we have learned in our own personal experience the struggles of mind and heart, the manifold bonds of human life, that we have gained the only power to help our fellow-men. It may be said most truly that it is only the man or woman who has suffered, who has any real feeling of kindred with the heart of man. The child is often cruel to the child, the young are impatient of the sight of sorrow, because they do not know the reality of it. The deepest cause of our uncharitableness is our ignorance. Who of us has ever known the weary burden of doubt, the earnest craving for a truth to rest on amidst the chaos of opinion, who that has at last found it does not know how many there are like himself who only need a word of wise counsel, a ray of kindly light, to lead them into the path? It is that spirit the Christian believer must cherish. And who, again, has felt the hard struggles of his conscience in this daily life, the temptations that have met him, the weakness of his own will, and yet through Gods grace has kept his purity, does not know somewhat of the burdens that crush others less happy than himself in the results of the trial? Yes, this is the lesson we all need We cannot change all the inequalities of the world, or heal all its diseases. But we can do much to help it by the spirit in which we strive to understand and reach human need. It is not our wealth or our cold, condescending pity men and women need; it is the Christian fellowship that makes them feel that we have all of us one human heart, that sees in every class or lot creatures of like passions with us, the same infirmities, and the same redeeming graces. It is this gospel which teaches no envy of the rich and no scorn of the poor, but that all these differences of lot, to the believer in Christ, are not barriers to sever, but bonds to bind us in one. And as we have so learned it in our personal experience, we have found happiness in this joy of human sympathy. Our grief is healed as we go out of our own cell of brooding thought to find our fellow-sufferers. It is the only antidote. For then we learn always that there are sadder hearts to be healed, and we feel ashamed of our own trouble in the presence of a greater, and as we minister to them the mercy of our God steals into our own souls, and brings the consolation we never knew before. And so our happiness is enlarged only as it enters into the enlarged heart. If we have brought our sunshine into the life of others, if we have given of our comfort to those whose lot is less fortunate, we can enjoy the wealth with a new sense of His goodness who has made us stewards. I have read of a Christian man, who, to know the reality of poverty, put on the dress of a beggar, and went into the hard lodging-house, where the poor outcasts have a comfortless pallet of straw and a ration of bad food, and after a week of experience gave this evidence, that it was worth to him ten years of study, and the source of the most intense pleasure in his lifetime. Such a voluntary exile is not often sought or found by most of us. But each in his degree, if he have come face to face with human wretchedness, has learned the meaning of this Christian experience. Each has found the recompense of the reward; as we have borne the burden of others, we have borne our own more bravely. (E. A. Washburn, D. D.)

Burden-bearing

Galatians apparently fond of the law and its burdens: at least, they appeared to be ready to load themselves with ceremonies, and so fulfil the law of Moses. Paul would have them think of other burdens, by the bearing of which they would fulfil the law of Christ.

I. Community. Bear ye one anothers burdens.

1. Negatively. It tacitly forbids certain modes of action. We are not to burden others. We are not to spy out others burdens, and report thereon. We are not to despise them for having such loads to bear. We are not to go through the world oblivious of the sorrows of others.

2. Positively. We are to share the burdens of others. By compassion bear with their former sins (verse 1). By patience bear with their infirmities, and even with their conceit (verse 3). By sympathy bear their sorrows (verses 2, 3). By assistance bear their wants (verses 6, 10). By communion, in love and comfort, bear their struggles. By prayer and practical help bear the burden of their labours, and thus lighten it (verse 6).

3. Specially: We ought to consider–The erring brother. Referred to in verse 1 as overtaken in a fault. We must tenderly restore him. The provoking brother, who thinks himself to be something (see verse 3). Bear with him: his mistake will bring him many a burden before he has done with it. The brother who is peculiarly trying is to be borne with to seventy times seven, even to the measure of the law of Christ. The greatly tried is to have our greatest sympathy. The minister of Christ should be released from temporal burdens, that he may give himself wholly to the burden of the Lord.

II. Immunity. For every man shall bear his own burden. We shall not bear all the burdens of others. We are not so bound to each other that we are partakers in wilful transgression, or negligence, or rebellion.

1. Each must bear his own sin if he persists in it.

2. Each must bear his own shame, which results from his sin.

3. Each must bear his own responsibility in his own sphere.

4. Each must bear his own judgment at the last.

III. Personality. Every man his own burden. True godliness is a personal affair, and we cannot cast off our individuality: therefore, let us ask for grace to look well to ourselves in the following matters:–

1. Personal religion. The new birth, repentance, faith, love, holiness, fellowship with God, etc., are all personal.

2. Personal self-examination. We cannot leave the question of our souls condition to the judgment of others.

3. Personal service. We have to do what no one else can do.

4. Personal responsibility. Obligations cannot be transferred.

5. Personal effort. Nothing can be a substitute for this.

6. Personal sorrow. The heart knoweth its own bitterness.

7. Personal comfort. We need the Comforter for ourselves, and we must personally look up to the Lord for His operations. All this belongs to the Christian, and we may judge ourselves by it. So bear your own burden as not to forget others. So live as not to come under the guilt of other mens sins. So help others as not to destroy their self-reliance. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Secret burdens

There is a gateway at the entrance of a narrow passage in London, over which is written, No burdens allowed to pass through. And yet we do pass constantly with ours, said one friend to another, as they turned up this passage out of a more frequented and broader thoroughfare. They carried no visible burdens, but they were like many who, although they have no outward pack upon their shoulders, often stoop inwardly beneath the pressure of a heavy load upon the heart. The worst burdens are those which never meet the eye. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Sympathy curative

When the child was dead, and the prophet came to heal it, he stretched himself out on the child, and put his lips to the childs lips, and his hand on the childs hand, and his heart to the childs heart. Then it was that the breath came back, and the child, sneezing, showed that life was returning to it. And I do not believe that there is anything which cures hearts in this world besides other hearts laid upon them, brooding them, and imparting to them something of their own sympathy and goodness. If a heart cannot be cured by a loving heart, it is incurable. (H. W. Beecher.)

What is included in the term Burden?

Whatever makes right living, according to the law of God, difficult to a sincere man–that is a burden. It may be in his mental constitution; it may be in his bodily health; it may be in the habits of his education; it may be in his relation to worldly affairs; it may be in his domestic circumstances; it may be in his peculiar liabilities to temptation and sin. It includes the whole catalogue of conditions, and influences, and causes, that weigh men down, and hinder them, when they are endeavouring sincerely to live lives of rectitude. What is the meaning, then, of Bearing? It is, generally, such a course of conduct towards our fellow-men, as shall enable them more easily to carry and manage their infirmities and troubles. It is a spirit of compassion and hopefulness excited in view of mens failures and moral obliquities, rather than a spirit of fault-finding and criticism.

I. Negatively.

(1) This teaching forbids all moral indifference to others. You have no right to be unconcerned, whether men act rightly or wrongly–whether they are good or bad, That spirit which says: I will take care of my own self, and let other men take care of themselves, is of the devil. The spirit of God is this: Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of another. That spirit which says of a mans conduct: Oh, it is his own look-out, not mine, is un-Christian. It is his own look-out; but it is yours, too. And no man has a right to call himself a Christian, who, living among men, finds that the only thing he cares for is himself–that the only things that affect his mind are moral considerations of his own purity and his own enjoyment.

(2) This Divine command also forbids the spirit of hard judging. It forbids severity and unnecessary blaming. If a man does not believe, when he has done wrong, that he is in the wrong, it is perfectly right for us to apply the rule of judgment to his case, and convince him of his error; but we are not to be stern, nor harsh, nor severe, but gentle, sympathizing, and all-loving and helpful.

(3) The text pointedly excludes all manner of pleasure in the wrong-doing of other men.

2. Positively. We are commanded to sympathize with men though sinful; and to have patience with them on account of their sins. We make up our minds to treat babes tenderly, because they are babes. We treat sick people with greater forbearance than we do the sound and healthy. We put ourselves out of the way for the sake of those that are blind and deaf. By as much as men are defrauded of any sense, or weakened in any power, we afford them protection. By as much as men are physically unfortunate, we have learned how to show them consideration and kindness. The same spirit must be enlarged in our treatment of men in respect to their interior state. We must expand this same rule of judgment, and apply it to mens characters.

If a mans understanding is darkened, and his conscience is perverted, we are to judge him accordingly.

1. Of course this passage inculcates the largest spirit of sympathy towards all men in trouble. If any trouble befalls those within the circuit of our affections, we need no exhortation on this point. Nature teaches us to bear the burdens of those we love. But this spirit should go out, quickened by the spirit of Christianity, beyond our own household. Every human being brought to our hands in trouble is a messenger of God. His trouble is a letter of introduction, his nature is a declaration of brotherhood, and his destiny links him to us with an irrefragable chain!

2. This sympathy and helpfulness should not be confined to troubles of bereavement–to trouble occasioned by disasters, so-called; but should include all the affairs of life. And the lowest should be helped first, and the most needy should be helped most.

3. But I go further: for these are things more frequently preached, and more obvious to your understanding. I remark, therefore, in the third place, that the spirit of our text requires that, in judging of men, and dealing with them, we should recognize the constitutional differences of mind which exist among them, and should not seek to compel all minds as if they were like our own. When, therefore, you go to a man, as a Christian and a benefactor, to bear his burdens, you must take into consideration what his nature and circumstances have been. If he has sunk low in the scale of being, you must ask, How came he here? Has he not been subjected to a power of down-pulling, such as I can scarcely form any conception of? I think the bitterest reprehensions of evil which we hear, would be spared, if men would only reflect upon these things.

4. We need only to vary this thought a little to make it apply to our requisitions in social intercourse. Much domestic unhappiness comes from the fact that people do not know, or do not enough recognize, the peculiarities of each others natures. They expect impossible things of each other. If a flaming, demonstrative nature, and a cool, undemonstrative nature, come together, neither of them understanding or making allowance for the peculiarities of the other, there can scarcely fail of being unhappiness.

5. We are to have a nice and tender regard to the peculiar circumstances of men–their external conditions. The health of men, and its relation to their disposition, strength, fidelity, and efficiency, is seldom enough pondered. Still less is education taken into account,

6. We must guard against a judgment formed of men from the effect of their mind-action upon us, rather than from a consideration of their real moral character. A man may make you feel happy, and yet be a bad man. A man may leave you unhappy, and yet be a good man. Your sensations of pain or pleasure are not to measure your fellow-mens character. Selfishness may gild you like sunshine. Vanity may court you, and pride may patronize you. But so, too, conscience in a good man may leave you stirred up. Truth may put you to discontent.

7. The spirit of this teaching forbids us to employ our rights of pleasure in such a way as to harm men.

8. The spirit of this passage forbids that we should make the failings of other men a source of amusement to ourselves. To watch to see what is awkward in others; to search out the infirmities of men; to go out like a street-sweeper, or a universal scavenger, to collect the faults and failings of people; to carry these things about as if they were cherries or flowers; to throw them out of your bag or pouch, and make them an evening repast, or a noonday meal, or the amusement of a social hour, enlivened by unfeeling criticism, heartless jests, and cutting sarcasms; to take a man up as you would a chicken, and gnaw his flesh from his very bones, and then lay him down, saying with fiendish exultation, There is his skeleton,–this is devilish!

Concluding remarks:

1. No man can fulfil the spirit of this Divine command, who does not dwell in the spirit of love. A momentary flush, kindled for the occasion, will not do. It must pervade all parts of the heart. It must have long dwelt with you, until your habits of thought, your instinctive judgments, the expression of your face, the outlook of your eyes, and your very tones, gestures, and attitudes, are animated with it–yea, till it is the spontaneous and inevitable outburst of life in you. Then you will be able to look at men in the right way. When you have this abiding spirit of love, so that all your faculties live in it, and have been drilled in it, then, no matter how large a duty seems to be, your performance of it will be just as easy.

2. When men are so pervaded, it is not hard, but easy, for them to bear other mens burdens–to be unselfish and unselfishly benevolent. When we speak of things being easy in Christian life, we always imply the presence in the soul of true love. Take an old gambler–or a young one, it makes no difference which; for they are both alike. With him cheating is inevitable. Gambling and cheating are only interchangeable terms. No man gambles that does not cheat. After such a man has gone through years and years and years, practising his various tricks and sleights of dexterity, if you talk in his presence of a man being honest, he will laugh at you. He will not believe that a man can be honest; or, if he does believe it, he will say to himself, What a power a man must require to enable him to be honest. Why, there was a man who was so situated that he could have possessed himself of a hundred thousand dollars, by just signing his name, and he did not do it I He must have had an almost omnipotent power, or he could not have resisted that temptation. And if you go to the man who did that thing, and ask him if he did not find it hard to refuse the money, he will say, It would have required omnipotence to make me take it. I could not do such a thing. I could not live with myself after committing a deed like that. Why? Because he has been trained to the very heroism of honesty. It is as inevitable for him to be honest as it was for the other man to be dishonest. It is not hard for a really refined man to be refined. It is the easiest thing he can do. If a mans heart is pervaded by Christian love, it is not hard for him to perform the deeds and works of Christian love. And Christian graces, as set forth in the New Testament, imply this atmosphere of love in the soul. If you read gardening books, they direct you how to raise flowers and plants; but it is not necessary for you to read to find out that certain plants require a certain kind of climate. The nature of each plant implies the particular kind of climate which is adapted to its growth. You do not need to be told that a warm climate is indispensable to the production of pomegranate and olive-trees. Now when God says Christian graces, he means climate also; and love is that climate. And when a man possesses the spirit of Christian love, it is not hard for him to live the life of a Christian.

3. When we are addicted to this love, we every day become more and more like God. (H. W. Beecher.)

Bearing one anothers burdens

If a company of travellers were journeying towards the same place, some heavily, and others more lightly laden, they could render the way less tedious and endear themselves to each other by mutual assistance, in bearing their burdens.

1. We are to do this, first with regard to the spiritual trials and difficulties of our brethren.

2. In the second place, the command of our text should be especially heeded in the family relation.

3. It is a rule, also, very applicable to Christian Churches. (W. H. Lewis, D. D.)

Individuality and brotherhood

Consider–

I. The souls individuality (verse 5).

1. This is one of the first facts of which our opening intelligence informs us.

2. We carry it with us everywhere.

3. It becomes more marked, and the consciousness of it more painful, through the action of sin and suffering.

4. It is taught by our life work.

5. It is brought home most emphatically in the hour of death.

II. Individuality tends to despair.

1. Life itself becomes bearing a burden when man has to bear it alone.

2. So with the sense of sin.

3. So with our life work.

III. The souls well-being is secured by ministering to the brotherhood.

(1) Not being ministered unto,

(2) but in ministering; which is

(a) to lighten our own burdens and

(b) to lighten others, so that they may fulfil the law of Christ. (S. Pearson, M. A.)

The law of Christ

I. Every man has a burden of his own.

1. All are burdened.

2. But all are not burdened alike.

3. Our estimate of human burdens is often false,

(1) because some are burdens which do not appear to be;

(2) because burdens are borne differently by different individuals.

4. Every man has a burden distinctly his own.

5. His burden is not necessarily a calamity.

II. Each is to bear the others burden.

1. This presumes that he is able to do so. Our individual burdens are not so heavy but we have some strength left to give away.

2. The requirement fits in to the general constitution of things, which is based on giving and receiving.

3. It has its reason and authority in our mental constitution, which is formed to pity.

4. Pity to others is kindness to ourselves.

III. To bear one anothers burdens is to fulfil the law of Christ.

1. The law of love.

(1) Not a mere passionate excitement or fluctuating sentiment,

(2) but a living principle and persistent habit divinely begotten and sustained.

2. This law is emphatically the law of Christ–as I have loved you.

(1) Love of the brotherhood,

(2) neighbours,

(3) enemies. (W. Stacey, D. D.)

Our individual burden often not the heaviest

An old fable tells us that Jupiter, finding that each man thought his lot the hardest, caused all men to be brought together for a mutual exchange of burdens. Promptly they came together, hoping that the exchange would lighten the burdens of life. Each man proceeded to display his sorrow. One had a concealed ulcer; another a sightless eye; another a besetting sin; another an intolerable debt; another a fearful recollection; another an awful apprehension; and when all the burdens were exposed to view, and each man bidden to make his own selection, every man preferred his own. (W. K. Marshall.)

Charity organization

Let us organize against professional beggars and impostors, but let us not organize almsgiving out of the Church as if the whole question were to be solved by the workhouse. Our workhouses, like our hospitals, may be due to Christianity, and standing evidences of that care for the poor which Christianity after the example of its Divine Founder enjoins. But the Christian Church is not to relegate all her poor to the workhouse; nor is the relieving officer the substitute for the Christian pastor and his Christian flock. (Canon Miller.)

The blessedness of sympathy and the vice of selfishness

Amid all the profuse waste of the means of happiness which men commit, there is no imprudence more flagrant than that of selfishness. The selfish man misses the sense of elevation and enlargement given by wide interests: he misses the secure and serene satisfaction that attends continually on activities directed towards ends more stable and permanent than ones own happiness can be; he misses the peculiar, rich sweetness, depending upon a sort of complex reverberation of sympathy, which is always found in services rendered to those whom we love, and who are grateful. He is made to feel in a thousand various ways, according to the degree of refinement which his nature has attained, the discord between the slightness of his own life and of that larger life of which his own is but an insignificant fraction. (A. Sedgwick.)

The difficulty of helpfulness arising from the suspicion of others

Just imagine a weary, footsore traveller tugging along with his pack on a hot summers day. A waggon comes up, and the kind-hearted owner calls out, Friend, you look tired. Toss that pack into my waggon; I am going your way. But the wayfarer, eyeing him suspiciously, mutters to himself, He wants to steal it; or else obstinately replies, I am obliged to you, sir, but I can carry my own luggage. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)

The blessedness of burden bearing

How few know the mystery that shadowed Lambs life! We are told that one day, in a fit of insanity, his sister killed a member of their family. The affair was hushed up, and things went on to outward seeming very much as before. The insane fury recurred but seldom, and was unsuspected by many intimate friends. But all the same it was there, a latent possibility, and it marked out a narrow pathway in which she would have to go softly to the end of her days. Charles, with opportunities of social advancement and domestic happiness possessed by few within easy reach of him if he chose, preferred the better part, and resolutely shutting out the bright future that might have been his, sacrificed himself to his sister. He never married, but spent his life in an affectionate guardianship of the dear one whose misfortune he made his own. Shall such renunciation go unrewarded? Nay, are they not their own exceeding great reward. (F. Hastings.)

Sympathy for others

Though the lower animals have feeling, they have no fellow-feeling. Have not I seen the horse enjoy his feed of corn when his yoke-fellow lay a-dying in the neighbouring stall, and never turn an eye of pity on the sufferer? They have strong passions, but no sympathy. It is said that the wounded deer sheds tears, but it belongs to man only to weep with them that weep, and by sympathy to divide anothers sorrows, and double anothers joys. When thunder, following the dazzling flash, has burst among our hills, when the horn of the Switzer has rung in his glorious valleys, when the boatman has shouted from the bosom of a rock-girt loch, wonderful were the echoes I have heard them make; but there is no echo so fine or wonderful as that, which, in the sympathy of human hearts, repeats the cry of anothers sorrow, and makes me feel his pain almost as if it were my own. They say, that if a piano is struck in a room where another stands unopened and untouched, who lays his ear to that will hear a string within, as if touched by the hand of a shadowy spirit, sound the same note; but more strange how the strings of one heart vibrate to those of another; how woe wakens woe: how your grief infects me with sadness; how the shadow of a passing funeral and nodding hearse casts a cloud on the mirth of a marriage-party; how sympathy may be so delicate and acute as to become a pain. There is, for example, the well-authenticated case of a lady who could not even hear the description of a severe surgical operation, but she felt all the agonies of the patient, grew paler and paler, and shrieked and fainted under the horrible imagination. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)

Real burden-bearing

A poor woman was reduced to extreme poverty by the loss of her cow, her only means of support. A neighbour, who was unable to give aid, personally went round to different friends to solicit money to buy another one. He went from one to another, and told the pitiful tale. Each offered sorrow and regret, but none practical assistance. He became impatient after being answered as usual by a plentiful shower of feeling, and exclaimed, Oh, yes, I dont doubt your feeling; but you dont feel in the right place. Oh! said he, I feel with all my heart and soul. Yes, yes, replied the solicitor, I dont doubt that either; but I want you to feel in your pocket. (Foster.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 2. Bear ye one another’s burdens] Have sympathy; feel for each other; and consider the case of a distressed brother as your own.

And so fulfil the law of Christ.] That law or commandment, Ye shall love one another; or that, Do unto all men as ye would they should do unto you. We should be as indulgent to the infirmities of others, as we can be consistently with truth and righteousness: our brother’s infirmity may be his burden; and if we do not choose to help him to bear it, let us not reproach him because he is obliged to carry the load.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Bear ye one anothers burdens; it is a general precept, and may be either understood with reference to what he had said in the former verse, so it hints our duty: though we discern our brethren to have fallen into some sin or error, yet if we discern that they are sensible of their lapse, and their sin is not a pleasure, but a burden to them, though we ought not to bear with them or connive at them in their sins, yet we ought to sympathize with them when we see their sin is become their load and burden, under which they groan and are dejected. Or else more generally, as a new precept commanding us to sympathize with our brethren under any lead of trials and affliction which God shall lay upon them. And so it agreeth with that precept, Rom 12:15. By

the law of Christ, he means the will of Christ revealed in the gospel; particularly the law of love, so nmch enjoined by Christ, Joh 13:15,33-35; 15:12. Which is not called the law of Christ because first given by him, (for himself maketh it the sum of the ten commandments), but because he received it and vindicated it from the corruption of the Pharisees interpretation, Mat 5:43,44; because he so often urged it, and so seriously commanded and commended it to his disciples; and set us the highest precedent and example of it, and hath by his Spirit written it in the hearts of his people.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

2. If ye, legalists, must “bearburdens,” then instead of legal burdens (Mt23:4), “bear one another’s burdens,” literally,”weights.” Distinguished by BENGELfrom “burden,” Ga 6:4(a different Greek word, “load”): “weights”exceed the strength of those under them; “burden” isproportioned to the strength.

so fulfilor as otherold manuscripts read, “so ye will fulfil,” Greek,“fill up,” “thoroughly fulfil.”

the law of Christnamely,”love” (Ga 5:14).Since ye desire “the law,” then fulfil the law of Christ,which is not made up of various minute observances, but whose sole”burden” is “love” (Joh 13:34;Joh 15:12); Ro15:3 gives Christ as the example in the particular duty here.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Bear ye one another’s burdens,…. Which may be understood either of sins, which are heavy burdens to sensible sinners, to all that are partakers of the grace of God; Christ is only able to bear these burdens, so as to remove them and take them away, which he has done by his blood, sacrifice, and satisfaction; saints bear one another’s, not by making satisfaction for them, which they are not able to do, nor by conniving at them, and suffering them upon them, which they should not do, but by gently reproving them, by comforting them when overpressed with guilt, by sympathizing with them in their sorrow, by praying to God for to manifest his pardoning grace to them, and by forgiving them themselves, so far as they are faults committed against them: or else the frailties and infirmities of weak saints, which are troublesome, and apt to make uneasy, are meant; and which are to be bore by the strong, by making themselves easy with them, and by accommodating themselves to their weakness, and by abridging themselves of some liberties, which otherwise might be lawfully taken by them; or afflictions may be designed, which are grievous to the flesh, and are bore by others, when they administer help and relief under them, whether in a temporal or spiritual way; and when they condole them, and sympathize with them, bear a part with them, and make others’ griefs and sorrows their own:

and so fulfil the law of Christ; which is the law of love to one another, Joh 13:34 in opposition to the law of Moses, the judaizing Galatians were so fond of, and by which Christ’s disciples may be distinguished from those of Moses, or any others. This is a law or doctrine which Christ has clearly taught, and recovered from the false glosses of the Pharisees; it is his new commandment, which he has strengthened and enforced by his own example in dying for his people, and which he, by his Spirit, inscribes upon their hearts. The Jews speak of the law of the Messiah as preferable to any other.

“The law (they say x) which a man learns in this world is vanity, in comparison of “the law of the Messiah”, or Christ;”

by “fulfilling”, it is meant, doing it, acting in obedience to it, and not a perfect fulfilling it, which cannot be done by sinful creatures.

x Midrash Kohelet, fol. 83. 1.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Bear ye one another’s burdens ( ). Keep on bearing (present active imperative of , old word, used of Jesus bearing his Cross in Joh 19:17. means weight as in Matt 20:12; 2Cor 4:17. It is when one’s load (, verse 5) is about to press one down. Then give help in carrying it.

Fulfil (). First aorist active imperative of , to fill up, old word, and see on Matt 23:32; 1Thess 2:16; 1Cor 14:16. Some MSS. have future indicative ().

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

One another’s burdens [ ] . The emphasis is on one another’s, in contrast with the selfishness which leaves others to take care of themselves. The primary reference in burdens is to moral infirmities and errors, and the sorrow and shame and remorse which they awaken in the offender.

So [] . By observing this injunction.

Fulfill [] . The verb denotes, not the filling up of a perfect vacancy, as the simple plhroun, but the supplying of what is lacking to fulness; the filling up of a partial void. Comp. 1Co 16:17; Phi 2:30; 1Th 2:16. 8 7

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

BURDEN BEARING RESPONSIBILITIES

1) “Bear ye one another’s burdens,” (allelon ta Bare Bastazites) “You all bear (or share) the loads of one another,” you all help lift crushing weights of care one for another, lend a helping hand to one another, Joh 13:34-35. The term “burdens” refers to specially depressing weight on body, mind, or spirit, such as toil, suffering and anxiety, Rom 15:1.

2) “And so fulfill,” (kai houtos anaplerosete) “And so doing ye will fulfill;” to help a needy brother or sister is the Spirit and attitude of obedience to Christ. Php_4:3; Heb 4:16; 1Co 16:16; Mat 25:40; Mar 9:4; Heb 6:10.

Has one fallen among thieves, robbers, or come to deep need, because of bad judgment, lend him an helping hand, give him a lift.

3) “The Law of Christ,” (ton nomon tou Christou) “The law of the Christ”; the law of Love, (Joh 13:34-35), the new commandment of Jesus, manifest in the fruits of love (kindness, goodness, gentleness, forbearance, long-suffering, etc.) one to another, Eph 4:1-3; 1Jn 3:14; 1Jn 3:17; 1Jn 4:7-8; 2Jn 1:5-6; Joh 14:15; Joh 15:14. The law of Christ, the law of love, in burden-bearing requires that a Christian be a doer of the Word of Christ, not a hearer only, to please the Master and hear a “well done,” at the end of life’s little day, Jas 1:22; Jas 2:15-16; Mat 25:21; Mat 25:23.

THE ICY END

One day, when I was serving my apprenticeship in a factory on the banks of the Merrimac River (says the Hon. N. P. Banks, late Governor of Massachusetts), a party of the hands saw a man a quarter of a mile down the river struggling among the broken cakes of ice. Of course the first care was to rescue him; but twice the victim slipped from the plank that was thrown him. The third time it was evident to our inner hearts that it was the man’s last chance, and so he evidently thought; but as he again slipped from the board, he shouted, “For the love of God, gentlemen, give me hold of the wooden end of the plank this time.” We had been holding him the icy end! How often do Christians make the same mistake. We turn the icy end of the plank to our fellows — and then wonder why they do not hold on, and why our efforts do not save them.

-Preacher’s Lantern

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

2. Bear ye one another’s burdens. The weaknesses or sins, under which we groan, are called burdens. This phrase is singularly appropriate in an exhortation to kind behavior, for nature dictates to us that those who bend under a burden ought to be relieved. He enjoins us to bear the burdens. We must not indulge or overlook the sins by which our brethren are pressed down, but relieve them, — which can only be done by mild and friendly correction. There are many adulterers and thieves, many wicked and abandoned characters of every description, who would willingly make Christ an accomplice in their crimes. All would choose to lay upon believers the task of bearing their burdens. But as the apostle had immediately before exhorted us to restore a brother, the manner in which Christians are required to bear one another’s burdens cannot be mistaken.

And so fulfill the law of Christ. The word law, when applied here to Christ, serves the place of an argument. There is an implied contrast between the law of Christ and the law of Moses. “If you are very desirous to keep a law, Christ enjoins on you a law which you are bound to prefer to all others, and that is, to cherish kindness towards each other. He who has not this has nothing. On the other hand, he tells us, that, when every one compassionately assists his neighbor, the law of Christ is fulfilled; by which he intimates that every thing which does not proceed from love is superfluous; for the composition of the Greek word ἀναπληρώσατε, conveys the idea of what is absolutely perfect. But as no man performs in every respect what Paul requires, we are still at a distance from perfection. He who comes the nearest to it with regard to others, is yet far distant with respect to God.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

IS THERE ANY SALVATION FROM SOCIAL DISORDERS?

Gal 6:2

THESE words of the Apostle Paul can surely receive a natural application to this problem. After all that has been said on this subject of ever increasing interest; after all the philosophies advanced regarding it; after all the proposed solutions of its difficulties, is there a sentence in literature more worthy of application to the problem than this, Bear ye one anothers burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. That sentence contains the soundest philosophy for both capital and labor, and its hearty adoption would solve at once all the difficulties that beset these powers in their relation to each other. It would end their controversies, and sound the death knell of their battles. We speak to this subject in the hope that what we say may yet be used of God to bring some to correct views of certain questions involved in the controversy between the upper and lower classes, so called, and aid each of us to be a representative of, and a counsellor for, the right. Our interest in labor is mightily influenced by the circumstance that we know, from many years experience, what it is to retire after fifteen or sixteen straight hard hours of service with every muscle of the body in sore need of relaxation and rest; and our interest in capital increases as we come to understand what an engine of power it is for good or ill according as it is rightfully or wrongfully used. To be able to say anything that would induce capital to consecrate itself to the cause of Christ; anything that would tend, in the least, to end the contention between these two, and effect their co-operation, is worth a masterly effort. And yet there are some things involved in this subject that have long burned for expression. We do not believe it will be possible for capital and labor to bear one anothers burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ, until each has set itself right. The first condition of doing right is to be right, and so let us consider first of all

SOME LESSONS LABOR NEEDS TO LEARN

It is not to be supposed that the average laborer imagines himself to be perfect, and therefore we count upon his patient attention to certain suggestions.

Labor needs to learn industry. By saying this we do not mean to make the wholesale charge of indolence against labor. It is perhaps safe enough to say that the majority of laboring men are thoroughly energetic. But there is a considerable class in society which is poorly fed, poorly clothed, and poorly housed simply because it is unwilling to do honest, earnest work. Every minister of the Gospel is appealed to by a multitude of men to intercede in securing for them employment, and in a mighty majority of cases we find, upon investigation, that they are out of a job because when they had one they did not work at it.

It is reported that Mark Twain had been successful in counselling men on how to get situations.

Whenever a man applied to him for assistance in that line he cheerfully responded by saying: I have a formula here which contains recommendations that never fail. For instance, if you want to work on a newspaper

(1) You are to apply for work at the office of your choice.

(2) You are to go without recommendations. You are not to mention my name or any ones but your own.

(3) You are to say that you want no pay; that all you want is work, any kind of work. You make no stipulation; you are ready to sweep out, point the pencils, replenish the inkstands, hold copy, tidy up, keep the place in order, run errandsanything and everything; you are not particular. You are so tired of being idle that life is a burden to you; all you want is work and plenty of it. You do not want a pennyworth of remuneration. N.B.You will get the place whether the man be a generous one or a selfish one.

(4) You must not sit around and wait for the staff to find work for you to do. You must keep watch and find it for yourself. When you cant find it, invent it. You will be popular there pretty soon, and the boys will do you a good turn whenever they can. When you are on the street, and see a thing that is worth reporting, go to the office and tell about it. By and by you will be allowed to put such things on paper yourself. In the morning you will notice that they have been edited, and a good many of your words left outthe very strongest and best ones, too. That will teach you to modify yourself. In due course you will drift by natural and sure degrees into daily and regularly reporting, and will find yourself on the city editors staff without anyones quite knowing how or when you got there.

(5) By this time you have become necessary, possibly even indispensable. Still you are never to mention wages. That is a matter which will care for itself; you must wait. By and by there will be a vacancy on a neighboring paper. You will know all the reporters in town by this time, and one or another of them will speak of you, and you will report this good fortune to your city editor, and he will offer you the same wages, and you will stay where you are.

(6) Subsequently, whenever higher pay is offered you on another paper, you are not to take the place if your original employer is willing to keep you at a like price.

Doubtless Twain has taken a radical position here, as is his wont; yet on the main proposition he is right. The industrious man may begin without salary, but he is very sure to end in excellent station. Heated air with which the balloon is filled has no more power to carry it up than industry has to lift the man whose life is possessed by it. The reason still more men only succeed in getting a bare subsistence out of life is often, not always, but often, we say, due to the indolence that wants a living without working for it, or the egotism that imagines itself to be above needful drudgery.

In Charlestown, Mass., the head clerk of a large firm was charged with the delivery of a bale of Russian duck to an old and good customer. The time of its delivery was 1 p. m. They hired a truckman to send him over to Boston to bring it. But the man was overcome with heat. This head clerk, having business to Boston, accidentally stumbled upon the exhausted man, and instantly took in the situation. It was now 12:30. The goods were due at 1:00 and the truckman was in a faint. Instantly the young man seized a wheel-barrow, and despite heat and dust, and indifferent to his own good clothes, young Wilder pushed that barrow to the place of delivery in good time. A Boston merchant who was acquainted with him passed him on the street and called to him, How is this, have you turned truckman? Yes, answered the clerk, these goods were promised for one oclock, and our truckman was overcome by heat, so I had to take his place in order to keep my word. The wealthy merchant went straight to the head of Wilders firm, and relating what he had seen, said, When Wilder goes into business you tell him my name is at his service for $30,000.

If it were possible to get at the history of the men who have achieved distinction in the various walks of life, in science, commerce, literature, art, and the church, it would be discovered that the overwhelming majority of them had begun life as common laborers, but through indomitable energy had risen step by step to their positions of eminence and honor. How to work! Oh, it is a great lesson to learn.

Labor also needs to learn prudence. We employ this word prudence because it expresses two thoughtseconomy and foresight. It is a sad fact that no small proportion of the laboring classes practice an intelligent economy. Haggai, the Prophet, has all too accurately forecast the customs of many of this class when he said: Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm, and then he gives the reasons: He that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.

One of the needful lessons for him who is to succeed is the lesson of controlling his fleshly appetites for the sake of future good. We know your men who, their age and attainments considered, are occupying wonderfully good positions now. But, notwithstanding the fact that their salaries are twice as large as their necessary expenses, they come up to the end of every month with a small balance against them. If they were to be taken sick tomorrow they would not have a cent with which to meet the bill at the hospital, or a dime to give the doctor for his services. All has gone into chewing gum, soda water, ice cream, cigars, and cigarettes, and so forth, and so forth, ad nauseum. So they are going their way through the world without education, and without that prudence which would put by the half, or at least a third, of the income against the day when they could get away to college, and by a complete education come to command capital, or at the very least compel its respect. When this lack of prudence involves not alone the interests of the man himself, but also determines the future of a family, the subject becomes more serious. How often it is that a laboring man, earning a wage out of which a little could be easily saved, and yet leave all in comfort, forgets to make any such provision against the day of non-employment, sickness or death, or the day when his children are larger grown, and should be sent to schools where books and tuition fees demand of the father a bank account.

In the city we buried a locomotive engineer who for years had held his position, receiving about $90 a month; and yet, when suddenly the end came, he left the young wife and four children destitute of funds, carrying not even the insurance of the Locomotive Brotherhood, not to speak of the greater amount for which he could easily have provided. Such improvidence is a sin, and if labor is ever to lift itself it must admit the same and make amends.

But, above these things labor must learn total abstinence. Mark you, total abstinence, not temperance. That term temperance compasses a compromise with which the devil is well content. The man who starts out to be a temperate man turns out to have been a fool. It would seem, indeed, that labor has had abundant opportunity to have learned this fact. Her representatives have sacrificed more on the altar of Bacchus than all other classes combined, and suffered in proportion to their sacrifice. They have suffered in purse. On one occasion when a deputation of workingmen waited on Lord John Russell, respecting the taxation levied on their people, that nobleman took occasion to say: You may rely upon it, gentlemen, that the government of this country dare not tax the working classes to anything like the extent to which they tax themselves in their expenditure upon intoxicating drinks alone. It would be interesting to know how much of the money received by a hundred workingmen on Saturday night found its way into the hands of saloon men before Monday morning. In Belgium a manufacturer marked seven hundred five-franc pieces and paid off his employees. Two days after the wages were paid more than three hundred of the silver coins were in the possession of the adjacent grog-shop keepers. When one adds to the loss of money the loss of life, the loss in intellect, the loss in physical ability, not to speak of the moral degradation, the sufferings imposed upon innocent wives and helpless children, the crimes, insanities and suicides that grow out of this drink custom as out of no other custom known to men, it seems singular that the preacher needs to preach total abstinence.

The commonest sort of sense, possessed by the commonest sort of a man, ought to make of him a total abstainer. A friend tells how a calf of his, getting into some sour mash, intoxicated herself. After one experience the brute could never be induced to touch it again. What a reflection on man! Calf-brains counsel more wisely than his much-boasted gray matter. All over the country strikes have been occurring, voicing the appeal of laboring men for better wages, and in some instances for shorter service. In almost every one of these instances my sympathies are with the strikers. They have occasion of complaint; they are not one whit more anarchistic in procuring their rights than organized capital is in its determined greed. But, after all, it ought to be remembered by the workingmen of this country that if they would cease from the accursed liquor, forsake their drink customs, they would save a half billion of dollars every year, and could easily buy up the Brooklyn street-car system, the Chicago street-car system, the St. Louis street-car system, Carnegies iron works, Pullmans Palace Car Works, Illinois coal fields, the Pennsylvania anthracite, and every other piece of property that has been a center around which capital and labor have recently waged their bloodiest wars.

Here is a table in illustration of this truth. The people of this country spend three hundred and seventy millions of dollars annually for flour, and nine hundred and fifteen millions of dollars annually for meat, and if you added to this our expense for all other table comforts, and our outlay for dress, your sum total would come far short of the combined liquor and tobacco bill of this country, which aggregates a billion and a halfa billion and a half spent for bloating bodies, blighting minds, and damning souls. Do you wonder, then, that any preacher who has any interest in the laboring classes should plead with them to learn the lesson of total abstinence?

We wish also to speak of

SOME NOTIONS CAPITAL MUST CORRECT

It must be cured of its conceit. There are many people of means who retain humble minds, but we are sorry to say that the majority of those who can rightfully be called capitalists entertain an overwhelming self-conceit, and seem to regard themselves as lords of creation. In fact, Col. Dyer, of England, sometime since voiced that very sentiment when, in a speech, addressed to the United Club, he affirmed that labor was no source of wealth, but only contributed to wealth as coal contributed to the generation of power. These are his words: Both labor and coal are inert masses until galvanized into life by intelligence. Capital took the savings of years, the power of organization, the education that enabled it to get orders and to build up credit, then it turned around to labor and said, What do you bring? They answered, We bring the labor of our hands. And what was that? It was an inert mass until it was invested with life by directions. It is difficult to imagine anything beyond that in the way of self-conceit. Such a speech calmly assumes that all laborers are ignorant and all capitalists are intellectualan assumption which opposes all history, and proves how easy it is for men to mistake dead money for a living mind, and lordly airs for real royal attainments. It is this conceit that accounts for much of the strife between the employee and his employer, and makes adjustment so well-nigh impossible. It is the same spirit that Nabal evinced when, with scorn, he asked of the noble David, and his demand of fair remuneration for services, Who is David? and who is the son of Jesse? and in answer to whose scorn David said to his servants, Gird ye on every man his sword; the same spirit that speaks of men employed in a mill as so many hands, as if they were machines without minds.

Capital must also cease from its intolerance. The corporations of this country have with forethought of purpose and malice of intent, maligned, through a prostituted press, every public-spirited citizen who has dared to protest against their methods of piling up millions, escaping taxes, buying up legislative bodies, bullying voters, and oppressing employed. If politicians have spoken against them no caricature has been vile enough to present the true spirit of their reply. If college professors, in the plain line of appointed duty, have taught true sociology, the money power has made impossible the continuation of their professorships. If preachers have kept faith with conscience and defied iniquities, they have had to pay for the privilege by hearing their names anathematized, submitting to wholesale publication of false reports, demands for resignation, harangues about heresy and all the rest. And yet the plainest duty of every public-spirited man in the land is to oppose this intolerance to a point where its continuance is impossible, and its subjects are brought to think soberly of themselves, as they ought to think and justly of their equals as God demands. It would be & sad circumstance if, under the present conditions of a press partisanized, the pulpit also should sell itself to silence or to such platitudes as would be acceptable to the small circle that worships at the altar of Mammon, and assumes to dominate all mankind.

Dr. Lorimer, in his address at the Baptist anniversary in Detroit, said of conscienceless corporations: As long as I live I will denounce them. May God give us more of his kind.

Capital needs also to restrain its greed of gain. Personally we rejoice in a man who can make money. We love a man no less because he is worth a million. If he has secured it by honest means we admire him the more. But we must voice the conviction that to get gain by grinding ones fellows is one of the most godless acts of which mortal man is capable. You have heard us speak on the slavery question, and know our feelings upon that subject, and our joy in that the blackest man in Dixie will never again be put at auction and sold. Yet we agree with Hon. E. McRea when he declares that mill-bondage in New England, in its dire effect upon its operatives, is far more degrading than plantation-bondage of the South.

There is one man to whose philosophies of life and to whose superb judgment of social questions all genuine Americans yield attention. I speak of our martyred president, Lincoln. We do well to remember that he said just about the close of the Civil War: It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of our country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people, till all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. These forty years since Lincoln made that speech have sufficed to prove this noble president to be also the peoples prophet; and the time is already on when all good men should join him in calling upon corporate wealth to cease its greed and listen to God, whose Gospel is the Gospel of giving versus that of getting.

So long as men continue to discuss their rights and to quarrel over their rights, just that long the social problem will remain unsolved. Josiah Strong says, Duties give; rights get. The social legislation of Jesusthe law of service and the law of lovewas aimed at the uprooting of human selfishness. Laws may resist greed in some measure; they may mitigate evils by making it harder to do wrong and easier to do right; but so long as men are grasping, and some are stronger than others, there will be strivings. The root evil is selfishness, and its removal is the only radical solution of this and every other social problem. That is the same doctrine that the Apostle Paul taught when he said, Bear ye one anothers burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

This leads me to speak of

SOME METHODS ESSENTIAL TO MUTUAL GOOD

The social maxim of our text should lead to the surrender of groundless suspicion. We do not say that all the feeling that has grown up between capital and labor is groundless. On the contrary there has been much of injustice and much of irritation. But suspicions, when the product of wrongs, are always out of proportion to the offense. It is not only possible, it is pretty certain, that while the laborer has more virtues than capital can see in him, the capitalist often enjoys a better character than the social reformer paints for him. There are those who make it their business to array army against army; to speak, always and everywhere, of capital and labor as hostile forces contending for a common ground which cannot be occupied by both, and fostering the spirit of extermination of one party or the other.

Those entertaining this sentiment do not always belong to the hard-working classes. A good article in the November, 1902, Review of Reviews shows, with some conclusiveness, that a plan was laid and systematically worked upon for over a year by the anthracite coal operators to destroy the prestige of Mr. Mitchells labor union, and so have, henceforth, the labor situation wholly in their hands.

The student of social economy must ask himself whether the extermination of either party would bring a blessing to the victor. Prof. Peabody, in his volume Jesus Christ and the Social Question, said: It may be urged indeed that to picture the field of economic activity as a battle-field is grossly to misconceive the nature of modern industry. Employer and employed, it may be pointed out, are in reality not hostile forces, but allies and partners in production. They prosper or suffer in the end together, and to assume a discord between their interests is not only unjustified, but suicidal. Would not the fostering of mutual confidence and affection the sooner bring the reform for which socialists pray? Would not a proper emphasis upon the industrial partnerships already formed, and the co-operative institutions already in existence hasten the hour of their general adoption more rapidly than the attempt to overthrow all society by utterly abolishing either laborer or capitalist, or both? Can the language of our text, Bear ye one anothers burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ, be literally obeyed if men are to follow the lead of agitators, and make it their business to build up antagonisms, and lay fuel on the flames of class hatred? There is an old adage to the effect that you cannot fight the devil with fire, which ought to suggest to sane men that you cannot banish distrust by a stab, or bring antagonism to an end by irritation. Christs sentence, if once accepted by capitalist and laborer, would sound the death knell of groundless suspicions all ye are brethren. And yet we are not pleading for a peace that shall mean a suppression of speech regarding any unjust economic condition. The man who pleads for mutual love must also present a righteous law, since, after all, abiding love is founded in strict justice.

With surrender of groundless suspicion as between capital and labor there ought to come the establishment of a proper ratio of profit-sharing. One need not go outside the city of Minneapolis to illustrate, both the beauty and utility of this suggestion. In 1894 an able writer contributed to the Arena an article in which he said: We all know how much energy it adds to a man if he owns the business or comes to be a partner in it. When the Pillsbury Flour Mills of Minneapolis gave their men a share in the profits, the energy, care and economy of the men so greatly increased that, after subtracting the $40,000 worth of profit that went to the men (an average of $400 to a man, or thirty-three percent, on their wages for the year) the part of the profits that went to the firm was more than the total it had had by the old pure wage system. That was also the experience of the LeClaire shops in Paris. It is always the case where profit sharing or co-operation is thoroughly tried under true conditions. That intelligent labor would be satisfied, could it once share in some just proportion in the output of combined energy is evident in the face that the Colby family, carrying on an extensive business in the east, and sharing with their men the profits of the business, have never known a strike. Alfred Dolge, the felt manufacturer, in thirty years of experience in profit-sharing, can say the same. When, some years since, he was compelled to make a cut of ten percent, in wages, it was accepted without complaint. Mr. Nelson, of LaClaire, Ill., manufacturer of plumbers supplies, says that because he had allowed his men a share in the profits, in the proportion of two percent, on wages, and one on capital, a reduction of wages in his shop was accepted by the men with applause. When, a few years since, The American Association of Profit Sharing made its report of one hundred companies in America, eighty in England, and one hundred and twenty-five in France they had yet to learn of an instance of dissatisfaction.

But, to make this surrender of groundless suspicions possible, and this sharing of profits in the proper ratio the greatest power for good, capitalist and laborer should worship the same God. The rich and the poor must meet together the Lord and Maker of them all. When we speak of worshipping we do not mean sitting in a splendidly cushioned pew for an hour while the preacher reads to us a moral lessonwe mean worship!

Did you ever read the story of Zacchaeus? He was a rich man. And yet, when once at the feet of the Son of God he saw what to do with ill-gotten gain, as well as what use to make of his more righteous possessions. Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house.

There is a great deal of capital in this country that will never find the Christ until it has responded to the appeal of need. Jesus loved the rich young ruler, but He could never say to him, This day is salvation come to [thy] house, simply because that rich young ruler found it easy enough to bow the knee to the Son of God, but impossible to sacrifice his wealth, and that, when demanded for righteousness sake. When the rich worship God all ill-gotten gain will go back again whence it was taken, and honest wealth will be laid upon the altar of love. There will not be a point of character at which the poor can point the finger of criticism. And when the poor worship God, their poverty will come to an end. David said: I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.

In a ministry of forty-five years we have yet to come upon an instance of starvation or rags as the lot of faithful follower of the Son of God. Luxuries are not promised; they are not a need. He who took the five loaves and two small fishes, and fed the multitude and gathered up the twelve baskets of fragments, will never send the famished away unfed, provided they are faint from having followed Him.

Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley

(2) Bear yo one anothers burdens.Take them upon yourselves by kindly sympathy. Our Lord Himself was said to bear the physical infirmities of those whom He healed. (Mat. 8:17 : He bare our sicknesses.)

So fulfil.The reading here is somewhat doubtful, and the balance of authorities interesting. On the one hand, for the Received text adopted in our version is a large majority of the MSS.; on the other hand, the reading, ye shall fulfil, is found in the Vatican and two good Grco-Latin[62] MSS., but has besides an almost unanimous support from the versions. As several of these were composed at a very early date, and as they necessarily represent a wide geographical dispersion; as, further, the MS. authority for the readingthough small in quantity is good in qualityalso representing the evidence of widely separated regions; and as, finally, the internal evidence or probabilities of corruption are also in favour of the same reading, it would seem, on the whole, to have the greater claim to acceptance. The meaning is that by showing sympathy to others in their distress, of whatever kind that distress may bewhether physical, mental, or moralthe Christian will best fulfil that new commandment bequeathed to him by his Master, the law of love. (See Joh. 13:34; 1Jn. 3:23.)

[62] Practically, these two MSS. can only count as one as both seem to have been copied from the same original.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

2. Bear Instead of triumphing over.

Burdens Frailties, and disgraces arising from frailties. Your brother had his heavy liabilities to this sin; he has now the weight of shame for his sin: instead of putting your holy foot upon his weakness, put your shoulder under his load, and share half or all the pressure. Thus you will enable him to tread the straight and narrow path again, without deviating from it yourself. St. Paul’s one another, implies that as fellow travellers, each carrying his knapsack, we shall perpetually need to lend each other a mutual shoulder.

Fulfil An equally good reading makes a future, ye will fulfil.

Law of Christ Namely, the law of love (v, 14,) and liberty. See Jas 1:25.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Gal 6:2. Bear ye one another’s burdens, “Bear with one another’s infirmities; help to support each other, under the necessary burdens and evils of life;and so fulfil the law of Christ.” See Rom 15:1 and 1Th 5:14. There were some among them very zealous for the law of Moses: St. Paul here puts them in mind of a law which they were under, and were obliged to observe; and he shews them how to do it; namely, by helping to bear one another’s burdens, and not by increasing their burdens by the observance of the Levitical law. See Joh 13:34-35.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Gal 6:2 . ] emphatically prefixed (comp. Gal 5:26 ), opposed to the habit of selfishness: “ mutually, one of the other bear ye the burdens.” , however, figuratively denotes the moral faults (comp. Gal 6:5 ) pressing on men with the sense of guilt, not everything that is oppressive and burdensome generally, whether in the domain of mind or of body (Matthies, Windischmann, Wieseler, Hofmann), a view which, according to the context, is much too vague and general (Gal 6:1 ; Gal 6:3 ; Gal 6:5 ). The mutual bearing of moral burdens is the mutual, loving participation in another’s feeling of guilt , a weeping with those that weep in a moral point of view, by means of which moral sympathy the pressure of the feeling of guilt is reciprocally lightened. [250] As to this fellowship in suffering , comp. the example of the apostle himself, 2Co 11:29 . It is usually taken merely to mean, Have patience with one another’s faults (Rom 15:1 ); along with which several, such as Rosenmller, Flatt, Winer, quite improperly (in opposition to , according to which the burdened ones are the very persons affected by sin) look upon as applying to faults by which a person becomes burdensome to others . But the command, thus understood, would not even come up to what was required in Gal 6:1 , and would not seem important and high enough to enable it to be justly said: . . and in this way (if ye do this ) ye will entirely fulfil the law of Christ , the law which Christ has given, that is, the sum of all that He desires and has commanded by His word and Spirit, and which is, in fact, comprehended in the love (Gal 5:13 f.) which leads us to serve one another. What Paul here requires, is conceived by him as the culminating point of such a service. He speaks of the of Christ in relation to the Mosaic law (comp. Gal 5:14 ), which had in the case of the Galatians and how much to the detriment of the sympathy of love attained an estimation which, on the part of Christians, was not at all due to it; they desired to be , and thereby lost the (1Co 9:21 ). A reference at the same time to the example of Christ, who through love gave Himself up to death (Rom 15:3 ; Eph 5:2 ) (as contended for by Oecumenius and Usteri), is gratuitously introduced into the idea of . The compound . is, as already pointed out by Chrysostom (who, however, wrongly explains it of a common fulfilment jointly and severally ), not equivalent to the simple verb (Rckert, Schott, and many others), but more forcible: to fill up, to make entirely full (the law looked upon as a measure which, by compliance, is made full; comp. Gal 5:14 ), so that nothing more is wanting. Comp. Dem. 1466. 20: , . 1Th 2:16 ; Mat 13:14 . See Tittmann, Synon . p. 228 f.; Winer, de verbor. cum praepos. compos. in N.T. usu , III. p. 11 f. The thought therefore is, that without this moral bearing of one another’s burdens, the fulfilment of the law of Christ is not complete; through that bearing is introduced what otherwise would be wanting in the of this law. And how true this is! Such self-denial and self-devotion to the brethren in the ethical sphere renders, in fact, the very measure of love full (1Co 13:4 ff.), so far as it may be filled up at all (Rom 13:8 ).

[250] Theodore of Mopsuestia, in Cramer’s Cat . (and in Fritzsche, p. 129), well remarks that the hearing of one another’s burdens takes place, , .

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

DISCOURSE: 2087
BENEVOLENCE RECOMMENDED

Gal 6:2. Bear ye one anothers burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

TO open and unfold the mystery of the Gospel, is doubtless an employment which, in point of utility to others, or of comfort to ourselves, may vie with any other, in which a human being can be engaged. But to inculcate the morality of the Gospel is also a most delightful office: and a minister of Christ, who feels averse to it, gives reason to fear that he has never yet entered into the spirit of the doctrine which he professes to teach. St. Paul manifestly delighted in this good work; for, in the close of all his epistles, he paid the most marked attention to it [Note: See Gal 5:19-24.]. Nor did he rest in general instruction, but descended to the most minute particulars; omitting nothing that could tend to advance the honour of God, or the welfare of mankind.

That we may enter into the precept before us, we will consider,

I.

The duty enjoined

Burthens of some kind every man is called to sustain
[Some may be comparatively freed from them; nor do they lie on any with the same weight and pressure at all times: but no child of man is altogether exempt from them. The body is subject to diseases, the mind to trials, and the outward estate to disasters, which no human foresight can prevent, no power on earth can avoid. They greatly mistake, who think that trouble is the exclusive portion of the poor. The rich, in their respective spheres, are as obnoxious to it as the poor; and, for the most part, by reason of their keener sensibility, they feel it more acutely.]

Nor can any support their burthens alone
[The king upon the throne needs the assistance of others, as much as the beggar upon the dunghill. The very necessities of our nature call for mutual aid. No one could support himself alone. It is by the division of labour that society is kept together, and every individual that composes it is made happy. All, taking on themselves some one office for the benefit of others, promote, at the same time, both their own welfare, and the welfare of the whole community. The artisan, the man of science, the practitioner in any useful line, supply the wants of others in common with their own; and, whilst depending on their employers for their own support, administer support in return to them. It is thus that the hungry are fed, the naked clothed, the sick healed, and the weak protected in their rights.]
But, not confining ourselves to the duty of our own particular station, we should endeavour, as God may enable us, to bear the burthens of all
[This may be done in a way of sympathy, and in a way of succour. As members of the same body, we ought all to care for each other [Note: Php 2:4. 1Co 12:25.], and to sympathize with each other under our several circumstances, whether of joy or sorrow. The Divine command is, Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep [Note: Rom 12:15.]. But sympathy must shew itself in deeds, and not in words only. It will be to little purpose to say to our destitute and naked brother, Be warmed, or, Be filled, whilst we withhold from him what is needful for his support [Note: Jam 2:14-16.]. True, indeed, we cannot all administer relief to others in the same way, or to the same extent: but what we can do, we should with alacrity and joy. The eye, the ear, the tongue, the hand, the foot, cannot all render the same service to the body: but, if they improve their respective energies and powers for the good of the whole, they answer the end for which they were formed. Thus we should consider what service we are best capable of rendering to every afflicted brother: and to that we should address ourselves with all diligence; blessing and adoring God, who has put it into our power to shew love to our fellow-creatures, and fidelity to Him. The word which St. Paul used, to express the assistance which the Holy Spirit affords to us in our necessities, marks the precise office which we are to occupy in assisting all who stand in need of help from us: we should take hold on the opposite end of their load, and bear it together with them [Note: Rom 8:26. .]. And this we may all do in some measure, yea, and must do, if we would approve ourselves faithful to the trust reposed in us.]

That we may be stimulated to this duty, let me endeavour to impress upon your minds,

II.

The consideration by which it is enforced

In executing this office, we fulfil the law of Christ
[The Lord Jesus Christ has enjoined it as our duty: These things I command you, that ye love one another [Note: Joh 15:17.]. He has gone further; and proposed himself to us as the pattern to which, in our exercise of love, we should be conformed: A new command I give unto you, that ye love one another: as I have loved you, that ye also love one another [Note: Joh 13:34.]. He has gone further still; and declared, that the love which we are here called to exercise is the distinctive badge of all his followers: By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. Nay more; he has told us that it is the test whereby he will try our fidelity to him in the day of judgment: to those who have administered to the necessities of others be will give a suitable reward; and to those who have neglected this great duty, a just and fearful doom [Note: Mat 25:34-46.].

Now, if he had only expressed it as a wish that we would perform such services for him, methinks it were abundantly sufficient to call forth all our exertions in his service. But when he issues it as his command, as his command which we must obey at the peril of our souls, who will venture to disobey it? Think but a moment what Christ has done for you: Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich [Note: 2Co 8:9.]. Has He, the God of heaven, left his throne of glory, that, through his own sufferings unto death he might exalt you to it: and will not you, a redeemed sinner, forego some small comforts, in order to administer to the necessities of your afflicted brethren; and especially when called to it by your Redeemer himself? ]

This law, then, I now call you to obey
[Let the affluent bear the burthens of the poor The healthy, of the sick The enlightened, of the ignorant The saved, of those who are perishing in their sins And let those who are not able to engage actively in the duties of benevolence spread the cases of their afflicted brethren before God in prayer, and bring down from God the help which they themselves are unable to impart ]

Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)

2 Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

Ver. 2. Bear ye one another’s burdens ] When after reprehension sin is become a burden, set to your shoulder, and help to lift it off. “Support the weak, be patient toward all,” 1Th 5:14 . Nature hath taught the deer to help one another in swimming, the cranes one another in flying; one stone bears up another in buildings contrived by art, &c.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

2 .] , prefixed and emphatic, has not been enough attended to. You want to become disciples of that Law which imposes heavy burdens on men: if you will bear burdens, bear ONE ANOTHER’S burdens, and thus fulfil (see var. readd.: notice aorist: by this act fulfil) the law of Christ , a far higher and better law, whose only burden is love. The position of I conceive fixes this meaning, by throwing into the shade, as a term common to the two laws. As to the , the more general the meaning we give to it, the better it will accord with the sense of the command. The matter mentioned in the last verse led on to this: but this grasps far wider, extending to all the burdens which we can, by help and sympathy, bear for one another. There are some which we cannot : see below.

., thoroughly fulfil: Ellic. quotes Plut. Poplicol. ii., , ‘filled up the Senate.’

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Gal 6:2 . . From its original sense of taking up, this verb acquires the most various meanings, e.g., carrying in Mat 20:12 , ministration in Mat 3:11 , robbery in Joh 12:6 . Here it signifies lending a hand to help by lifting heavy loads. This does not involve transference of the burden, for it is said in 2Co 8:13 , I mean not that other men be eased and ye burdened : and in Gal 6:5 it is added that each will have his own pack to bear; but Christian love must ever be careful to relieve each in turn when overtaxed by crushing loads.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

burdens. Greek. baros. Compare Gal 6:5. Baros is the burden we can bear by help and sympathy.

fulfil. Greek. anapleroo. See 1Co 14:16.

law. Cf. Joh 13:34; Joh 15:12.

Christ. App-98.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

2.] , prefixed and emphatic, has not been enough attended to. You want to become disciples of that Law which imposes heavy burdens on men: if you will bear burdens, bear ONE ANOTHERS burdens, and thus fulfil (see var. readd.: notice aorist: by this act fulfil) the law of Christ,-a far higher and better law, whose only burden is love. The position of I conceive fixes this meaning, by throwing into the shade, as a term common to the two laws. As to the , the more general the meaning we give to it, the better it will accord with the sense of the command. The matter mentioned in the last verse led on to this: but this grasps far wider, extending to all the burdens which we can, by help and sympathy, bear for one another. There are some which we cannot: see below.

., thoroughly fulfil: Ellic. quotes Plut. Poplicol. ii., , filled up the Senate.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Gal 6:2. , burdens) Every fault is indeed a burden: in Gal 6:5, ; is a burden proportioned to the strength of him who bears it; are burdens which exceed his strength.-, bear) constantly and steadily: do not give your help once and no more.- , and thus fulfil) [adimplete]. The imperative, including the future of the indicative, as Joh 7:37 : presupposes some defect to be made good [or, to be repaired] by the Galatians.- , the law of Christ) A rare appellation; comp. Joh 13:34; Rom 15:3. The law of Christ is the law of love. Moses has many other precepts. These words, burdens and the law, involve a Mimesis[59] in reference to the Galatians, who were eagerly trying to come under the burden of the law.

[59] See App. An allusion to the opinions or words of him whom you wish to correct.-ED.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Gal 6:2

Gal 6:2

Bear ye one anothers burdens,-Here the burden is the sense of weakness and shame, the sense of dishonor done to the name of the Lord Jesus, which is the portion of a believer who has been overtaken in a trespass. It is not uncommon in such case that the rest should hasten to repudiate the fallen brother and dissociate themselves from him, lest the world should suppose they were indifferent about wrongdoing; yet it may be readily discerned that not concern for the name of the Lord, but self-righteousness prompts this course. Here, in marked contrast to the way of men, is the law of Christ, who was at once jealous for the honor of his Father and meek and lowly in heart. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall (1Co 10:12), and with this sense of the community of danger let him seek the restoration of his fallen brother (2Co 11:29). When we see a brother overtaken in any trespass, weak and struggling to rise again, we should with genuine sympathy render him all the assistance possible. Sympathy with a man is to suffer with and for him.

and so fulfil the law of Christ.-To fulfill the law of Christ is to love thy neighbor as thyself. (Mat 22:39). Help him as you would yourself. Jesus came to bear our burdens and sins, so we must help others.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Burdens

Bear ye one anothers burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.Gal 6:2.

For each man shall bear his own burden.Gal 6:5.

The key-note of this Epistle, the key-note of Christianity, is struck in these two sentences. They seem to express a contradiction, but it is not really so. If we take them together they are a brief description of the essence of our religion; a definition, in short compass, of the spirit of the Christian life. For the Christian faith is based upon two great underlying principles which, though not strictly original to it, are yet, in their passionate expression, among the most precious of its gifts to man. They explain at once the mystery and comprehensiveness of its scheme of salvation for the individual soul; and also the Divine beauty and eternal reality of that great ideal of the Church as the Kingdom of God, a community of souls in which each individual member must bear his own burden, while all the members are bound together, bearing one anothers burdens, and united in Him who is the great Burden-bearer of humanity, who is the Head of the body, even Christ.

It is impossible to obey one part of this law without obeying the other; it is impossible to bear our own burden, without at the same time bearing the burden of others; it is impossible to realize the awful responsibilities of being, without at the same time realizing the claims of our brothers; impossible to find our own true life without giving up our individual will, without merging our personal interests in those of the human brotherhood.

So we have

I.The Individual Burden.

II.The Mutual Burden.

III.The Law that Lightens the Burden.

I

The Individual Burden

Every man shall bear his own burden.

1. When St. Paul says, Every man shall bear his own burden, he is speaking of the burdens which no man can transfer from his own shoulders to those of another, burdens which from the very nature of things he must bear, and not another. And he uses a word that carries this meaning. It is the word used by classical writers when speaking of a soldiers kit. St. Luke uses it in the Acts when speaking of the lading of a ship. And our Lord uses it when He says, My burden is light. In all these cases the idea is that of a burden which cannot be got rid of. A soldier on active service must carry his own knapsack, or he is not fit to be a soldier. A merchantman must carry her own lading, or she may as well be broken up. A Christian must bear the burden of Christ, whatever that burden may be, or he cannot be a Christian. There are, then, certain burdens which a man must himself bear, which he cannot transfer from his own shoulders to those of anotherwhich another cannot carry.

How many people cunningly and persistently contrive to shift their burden to the shoulders of their neighbours! They are not particular as to whom they saddle with their duty and care, but they determine to bear as little of it themselves as is possible. In youth somebody must fag for them; they treat their friend as a valet; their public life is parasitical; as husband or wife, they shuffle the whole weight of responsibility on their partner. The ingenuity of the ignoble to make themselves comfortable at other peoples expense is no small part of the comedy and tragedy of human life. How different the spirit of Christ! Let me manfully accept my own burden; and then, by thought, sympathy, influence, and substantial aid, let me lighten the burden of my neighbour. My Master was the great burden bearer of the race. Let me drink in His spirit and follow in His steps.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Gates of Dawn, 24.]

2. In creating man God has laid firm and deep the foundations of individual character and of individual life. There is no individuality in the case of a flock of sheep or a herd of cattle Doubtless no two sheep are exactly alike, and the shepherd knows the difference between them, however alike they may appear to the superficial; but there is no individual consciousness and no individual life. One primrose is like another primrose. It is a pity that this one should fade, but another will spring up in its place, and the hedgerow will be none the worse. But in the case of men God has laid firm and deep the foundations of individual character, individual condition, individual responsibility, and individual destiny. So it comes to pass that of two children born of the same stock, playing in the same nursery, brought up very largely with the same education and surroundings, each possesses his own individual character from the outset, sometimes in a fashion which puzzles parents who study their children closely; and, as soon as moral responsibility begins, each one begins of necessity to shape his own character, to choose his own course, to mark out his own path, and very largely to fashion his own destiny. And the burdens each one has to bear are those belonging to his individual lot.

Perhaps the most prominent Secession divine in Aberdeen who was a contemporary of Dr. Kidd was James Templeton, minister of what is now Belmont Street U. P. Church. He was a man of quiet power and singular shrewdness of observation. His mother wit, spiritual fervour, homely illustration, and unabashed vernacular gave him acceptance with the people. One Sabbath, speaking to persons who complained that their burdens in life were exceptionally heavy, he saidSuppose now you were to take all your separate burdens to the Castlegate and drop them doon there, and after examinin them and comparin them one with another, I am thinkin you wouldna be willin to exchange with any when you really saw what they were; but, pickin up your bit bundlie, each one of you wad gang awa hame mair contentit than when you went to the Castlegate.1 [Note: James Stark, Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, 140.]

(1) There is the burden of physical disability or disfigurement, such as lameness, blindness, or deformity of any sortalways a very grievous burden to be borne. St. Paul knew this burden, the shame and the sorrow of it. Apparently he suffered from some distressing physical evil that made him contemptible in the eyes of men and that injured even his ministerial usefulness. Some, indeed, have held that the thorn in the flesh was a moral weaknessa violent temper, a jealous nature, even a lustful passion. But no man ever received grace to bear these things, though thousands have received grace to get rid of them. The facts that the thorn was not removed and that grace was given him to bear it show conclusively that it could not have been a moral weakness but rather a physical defect, a disease. And there are thousands in the world to-day, like him, who have to bear unaided and alone the burden of physical weakness or deformity save for that Divine grace which helps them to overcome the shame and to endure the pain.

In one of Schillers poems a beautiful story is told to this effect: When God made the birds He gave them gorgeous plumage and sweet voices, but no wings. He laid wings on the ground and said, Take these burdens and bear them. They struggled along with them, folding them over their hearts. Presently the wings grew fast to their breasts and spread themselves out, and they found that what they had thought were burdens were changed to pinions.1 [Note: A. T. Pierson.]

(2) There is the burden of intellectual weakness. Men have not all the same mental powers, the same facility in acquiring learning, the same range of vision, the same foresight. One man succeeds in life because he has a greater power of forecasting the future, of calculating the changes in the money market, or industrial life, than his neighbour. The race is perhaps not always to the swift, but it generally is. The battle is not always to the strong, but it generally is. And in the race of human life a man, notwithstanding all his diligence and probity, may find himself outdistanced by one of keener intellect and greater foresight. He may think it hard that it should be so, but he must bear the burden of his own defects as best he may.

I would gladly bear your burden,

If it might be so,

But each heart its own must carry;

None may go

Altogether free, you know.

If I might, it would be easy,

O my friend, for me

Just to take your task and do it,

But, you see,

Such a thing could never be.

Though my heart aches, as I watch you,

Toiling through the day

Missing some of lifes old sunshine

From your way

Finding work instead of play

Yet I know that it is better

Know that you and I,

Looking back from Gods to-morrow,

By and by

Never more shall question Why?

By our losses He is leading

To eternal gain:

He will surely give us sunshine,

After rain

Calm for sorrowpeace for pain.1 [Note: Edith H. Divall, A Believers Rest, 78.]

(3) It may be some permanent or far-reaching consequence of a former act of our own; some neglect, or recklessness, or sin in the past, which has hung a weight about our necks. The sin may be repented of; the pardon may be assured. But the temporal consequences of the sin remain, and will remain so long as we have breath. This is the most irksome and the most painful form which a mans individual burden can take. If you thrust a knife into your arm, it does not affect me. You yourself feel the pain; you yourself must endure the agony. I may sympathize, I may pity, I may bandage the gash, but the severed flesh and the lacerated fibres are yours, and along your nerves nature telegraphs the pain. So it is with the soul. A man who stabs himself with a bad habit, who opens the arteries of his higher life with the lancet of his passions and drains them of the vital fluid, who inserts his head within the noose of appetite and swings himself off from the pedestal of his self-control, must endure the suffering, the weakness, and the loss which are the issue of his insane conduct.

Sin is often described by active and aggressive metaphorsit is a deceiver, a destroyer, an enemy, etc. This passive one is more dreadful, for it tells simply of the dead weight of fact. Facts are chiels that winna ding. Sin is, to Paul, this dead body; and the flaccid mass of inelastic flesh, at once soft and heavy, is horrible enough without the implied hint of decay. The worst thing about sin is just that it is therean irrevocable fact which the sinner has put there. When he realizes this he feels it as a burden: he cannot sleep, or eat, or work, or play as once he did. Yet that is a precious pain. The far deeper danger is that one should grow accustomed to it, as the Swiss peasant to the growing load of hay or Milo to his ox, until he is able complacently to draw iniquity with a cart rope. The unblushed-for pastthe dead weight of sinful facts faced deliberately and carried lightlythat is a doom far deeper than the most oppressive load.1 [Note: John Kelman, The Road, i. 3.]

3. Now St. Paul does not say that the burden shall be lifted from off our shoulders, or that it shall be borne for us, but that we shall be sustained in carrying it. If it is Gods gift, it is His will that we should keep it, at least for the time. There is some blessing in it for us, and it would not be kindness to us for God to take it away, even at our earnest pleading. It is part of our life, and is essential to our best growth. This is true of duty; however hard it is, to relieve us of it would be to rob us of the opportunity for reaching larger usefulness. It is true of struggle; all nobleness and strength of character come out of conflict. It is true of suffering; it is Gods cleansing fire, and to miss it would be a sore loss to us. Hence, while God never fails us in need, He loves us too well to relieve us of weights which are essential to our best growth and to the largest fruitfulness of our life. He does not take the load from our shoulder, but instead He puts strength in us to enable us to carry the burden, and thus grow strong. This is the secret of the peace of many a sick-room. It is the secret of the deep, quiet joy we see oft-times in the home of sorrow.

The seal of one of those Scottish Covenanters whom Claverhouse imprisoned on the lonely Bass Rock reads Sub pondere crescoI grow beneath the load.2 [Note: A. Smellie, In the Hour of Silence.]

Thy burden is Gods gift,

And it will make the bearer calm and strong;

Yet, lest it press too heavily and long,

He says, Cast it on Me,

And it shall easy be.

And those who heed His voice,

And seek to give it back in trustful prayer,

Have quiet hearts that never can despair,

And hope lights up the way

Upon the darkest day.

It is the lonely road

That crushes out the light and life of heaven;

But borne with Him, the soul restored, forgiven,

Sings out through all the days

Her joy and Gods high praise.1 [Note: J. R. Miller.]

II

The Mutual Burden

Bear ye one anothers burdens.

1. The Greek word for burden in this verse might be better rendered by load, for the idea is that of an adventitious and heavy burden. A mans family is, in a certain sense, a burdena burden that arises from his being a husband and a fatherbut it is not a burden of which he can rid himself. To him it is a light burden, as to the Christian Christs burden is light. But to this burden there may be added the burden of ill-health, or misfortune, or poverty. It is not in any ones power to say to him, I am to take up your burden. You shall no longer be weighted down with your family. You shall no longer be a husband. You shall no longer be a father. Your duties as husband and father shall no longer oppress you. We cannot say that. We might, indeed, remove his children from him, but that would not in any degree lessen his duty to care for them and train them and teach them and act a fathers part towards them. If we wish to help him it is his load, not his burden, we must bearthe crushing weight of poverty, or misfortune, or sorrow.

2. This burden-bearing means a different thing in each life. It is not a pretty sentiment, a mere figure of speech. It is the great and manifold service of love, which needs all the wisdom and strength and patience that we can bring to it, and which can be wrought in a thousand ways. Occasionally this burden-bearing can be done very literally when we can take on to our own shoulders for the bearing, and into our own hands for the doing, that which for another was too heavy and too hard. But more frequently it must take the form of the indirect and mediate service of sympathy. In the great league of pity and help to which we are all called, and in which, if only we are unselfish enough, we can all find a place, we ever find that the best thing we have to give to the world is our influence. No man liveth to himself. Every man is ever adding to or diminishing the burden of other lives. There is an infinitude of interactionmuch of it beyond our tracing; and in so far as we carry through life a cheerful, patient, responsive, and unselfish spirit we shall be doing something every day to make the burden of others easier to be borne.

Dr. Bells desire for sympathy, and his appreciation of it was touchingly intense, and yet he had a way of looking and speaking with almost flippant unconcern when feeling most deeply. This was at times when he knew that any display of emotion would upset everything. Thus many people who knew him well saw little of his inner self. They saw him as the hope-inspiring physician, smiling and chatting, cheering the sorrowful, soothing the sufferer, quick to see fun lurking near solemnity, taking up the burden of others with seemingly no burden of his own, bringing a gay good humour to meet anxious doubts and dreadful fears. When young, his bearing was that of a joyous nature on whom the gods had showered their good gifts. Even in later years when many bereavements had wounded his warm affections to the quick his smile was ready, and his sense of fun as fresh as ever. His self-control was perfect.1 [Note: Joseph Bell: An Appreciation, 34.]

The late Right Hon. W. H. Smith, when First Lord of the Admiralty, was leaving his office one afternoon, when his secretary, seeing him packing up a number of letters and other Government papers, asked him to leave them and have them forwarded to him by post as other Ministers did. No, was the answer, the fact is our postman has plenty to carry. I watched him one morning coming up the approach, and I determined to save him as much as I could.2 [Note: The Morning Watch, 1894, p. 10.]

(1) By the giving of sympathy you take away the worst weight of sorrow. You cannot take it all away, but you can lift off that in it which maims the life or slays the soul, if you love enough. Unloving sympathy has no tact, no inventiveness, no insight, no reverence. But the sympathy of loveand that you are bound to win, if you would obey this lawenters into the sanctuary of anothers sorrow with uncovered head and reverent stillness, sees the point where tenderness can touch and not hurt, has quickness of imagination to invent the means of bearing away the burden; rescues the sufferers before they are conscious of being rescued, and wins undying love. There is no happiness in life so delicate and pure as the doing of this beautiful thing. It is the happiness of God Himself.

(2) Joy may for the moment be as great a burden as sorrow. The heart may be oerfraught with delight, and nigh to breaking with it. When Lear awoke from his madness and saw Cordelia bending over him, and love in her eyes, he all but died of joy. We have no right, but have great wrong, if we treat with indifference the joy of the child or the rapture of youth. They want no sympathy, we say, or even with a scoff, He is happy! let him alone! Have we never repulsed young or old with a cold look when they came up full of their delight, longing for us to share their pleasure? It is an unkindly act; let us never do it again. Let us think rather that joy is a burden that you have to bear for others. Make the delight of others brighter by sympathy. Do not blow with a cold wind upon the rose in flower, lest you wither its leaves. Rejoice, said St. Paul, with his large knowledge of the needs of love, rejoice with them that do rejoice.

3. Different temperaments, like different plants, require different atmospheres. Some plants require a tropical heat before they will put on their beautiful garments. We have to create about them a mimic summer, and delude them into feeling that they are far away, at home in the burning clime. Other plants seek for our own temperate heat; they disburse their treasure, not to the soft calling of the luxurious breeze of the tropics, but to the robust, bracing, toughening winds of our own land. How we have to humour the plants if we would lure them out into blossoms and flower! This one must be set a little farther in the shade. That one must be lifted up into the light, to receive the baptism of the sun. Each one must be placed according to its temperament. And when vices cling about them in the shape of destructive little parasites, little insects which grow fat by draining up the sap, then how we have to medicate the atmosphere, to provide certain conditions which shall help the plants to deal with their enemies, and to throw off the burdens! Thus we create suitable conditions for individual plants; and thus we must create suitable conditions for the full and beautiful growth of individual men.

Looking back over these two years of illness, it is impossible not to be struck by the calmness and fortitude with which that illness was met. There were moments of terrible depression and of disappointment and of grief. It was not easy for him to give up ambition, to leave so many projects unfulfilled, so much work undone. But to him this illness grew to be a mount of purification,

Ove lumano spirito si purga,

E di salire al ciel diventa degno.

More and more there grew on him a deepening sense of the goodness of God. No one had ever suffered more from the Eclipse of Faith, no one had ever been more honest in dealing with himself and with his difficulties. The change that came over his mental attitude may seem almost incredible to those who knew him only as a scientific man; it does not seem so to the few who knew anything of his inner life. To them the impression given is, not of an enemy changed into a friend, antagonism altered into submission; rather is it of one who for long has been bearing a heavy burden on his shoulders bravely and patiently, and who at last has had it lifted from him, and lifted so gradually that he could not tell the exact moment when he found it gone, and himself standing, like the Pilgrim of the never-to-be-forgotten story, at the foot of the Cross, and Three Shining Ones coming to greet him.1 [Note: Life and Letters of George John Romanes, 351.]

III

The Law that Lightens the Burden

And so fulfil the law of Christ.

Here the Apostle directs his readers from the law given on stone to the law which should be written on the heart, from the Mount of Sinai to the Mount of Beatitudes, from the law of the letter which killeth to the law of the Spirit which giveth life. There can be little doubt that the Apostles words here were suggested by the controversy which had been raging in the Galatian Church.

The Galatians who were the object of St. Pauls attention had been showing much more interest in the outward marks of religion than in its inward power. They had come under the spell of that view which made religion a matter of rite and ritual, and here the Apostle would have them learn that such a view was altogether a mistake. Like his fellow-Apostle, he could enforce the truth that pure religion before God and the Father was not a matter of circumcision or of outward ordinances. It did not consist of attendances at synagogue at the proper hour or of keeping the feasts in all their strictness. Pure religion was something more than these. It was to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

1. This law is founded on the necessities of our human nature. It is not necessary to obey it because it is commanded; it is commanded because it is necessary. It fits into the wants of man. For we are all dependent on one another. As in our body each organ lives for itself only in living for the rest, as each part, even each atom, of our frame supplements the wants of the others, gives and receives, bears and forbears, dies and lives alternately for the life of the wholeso is it in the ever living body of humanity. The life of each nation, each society, each man, depends on the mutual giving and receiving, dying and living, bearing and forbearing of all the rest. So the moment we, through selfishness of life, divide ourselves from this living and dying for others, the moment we isolate ourselves, we pronounce our own sentence of death. The absolute loss of love is eternal death, as its absolute gain is eternal life. It was that Christ Jesus saw; it was that He proclaimed on Calvary. And it is the law of the life of the universe. Therefore, bear ye one anothers burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

To bear the burdens of others might well have seemed to St. Paul a dictate of the intuitive moral consciousness, and might well have been commanded by him on the ground of that inward intuition. But this is not the ground on which St. Paul commands it; he appeals to a positive historical authority, which he calls the law of Christ; and he asks men to bear the burdens of others, not because that precept was written in their hearts, but because it had been given by Him who was the object of their worship. In writing to these Galatians, wavering as they were between Christianity and Judaism, he evidently speaks of the law of Christ in contradistinction to the law of Moses. It is as if he had said, Do not think that, in coming from Judaism to Christianity, you are passing from a region of positive certainty into a world of mystic obscurity; we too have a historic Lawgiver, who has uttered His voice from the mount of God, and who speaks with an authority which Moses never wielded. You have received from Moses only the negative preceptthe command not to hurt your brother; we offer you a law of Christ which commands you to identify your brothers interests with your ownBear ye one anothers burdens.

When Dr. Temple resigned the headmastership of Rugby to become Bishop of Exeter, his farewell sermon to the boys was from the text, Bear ye one anothers burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. This new commandment of Christ, said the preacher, this law of love which Paul is here referring to, our Lord and the Apostles place above all other commandments. How is this? The older dispensation had placed the fear and love of God first, then the love of neighbours. Surely the highest rule must be to love first God, then truth, holiness, justice, and after these one another. Has the Gospel sunk below the law? No, for under the Gospel, by the incarnation of the Son of God, the two loves are united, can no longer be kept apart. There can be no love of God apart from love of man. Christ Himself has pointed out this love of each other as the special mode by which He would have us acknowledge Him. Let us help one another, then, at our Lords call, by courage, by patience, by cordial and tender sympathy in joy and sorrow, by faithful warning, by resignation. There are no bounds to the help which spirit can give to spirit in the intercourse of a noble life. When parted, we can still bear one anothers burdens by hearty, mutual trust. There is nothing which gives more firmness and constancy to the life of a man than loyal trust in absent friends.1 [Note: Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, i. 238.]

2. The bearing of our own burden in a Christian spirit prepares us for lifting the load of other people. Every experience carries with it the power of bearing a burden. Have you never passed through times when your own religious faith was at stake? Then how tenderly you can enter into the mental struggle of others. Have you never known the trouble of making both ends meet? Then you will sympathize with the burdens of those who dare not be generous, because, by Gods grace, they will first be just. Have you known what it is to go to your business, while some dear child was lying, like alabaster, in the sleep of death, and you had to keep down your feelings while you won lifes daily bread? Then how you can feel for others who have left their hearts in the great death-chamber with the closed door.

While it is true that by bearing our own burdens we learn best how to bear other peoples, the converse is no less true. There is no help towards bearing our own burdens so effective as the bearing the burdens of others as well. This is the moral paradox of our being. Are we sinking under the weight of our own burden? Then let us go up to our neighbour, and courageously shoulder his also. The two will be lighter, incomparably lighter, than the one was. Is not this demonstrably true? Is a mans heart wounded and bleeding with some recent sorrowa cruel bereavement, a disappointed hope, an outraged affection; and he broods over it until the pain becomes too terrible to bear? The only relief for his agony is found in ministering to the wants or consoling the sorrows of another. His sympathy is thus evoked; and with sympathy come new interests, new feelings, a new life.

Sad souls, that harbour fears and woes

In many a haunted breast,

Turn but to meet your lowly Lord,

And He will give you rest.

Into His commonwealth alike

Are ills and blessings thrown;

Bear ye your neighbours burdens; lo!

Their ease shall be your own.

Yield only up His price, your heart,

Into Gods loving hold;

He turns with heavenly alchemy,

Your lead of life to gold.

Some needful pangs endure in peace,

Nor yet for freedom pant;

He cuts the bane you cleave to off,

Then gives the boon you want.1 [Note: S. H. Palfrey.]

Describing David Hills itinerant tours in China, one of the missionaries, the Rev. T. Protheroe, says, I venture to add an incident which occurred on one of our journeys. He had a servant in training for the work of an evangelist. The servant had given over a bundle of rugs, which served as Mr. Hills bedding, to an old man who escorted us, and showed evident unwillingness to bear any share even in relieving the old man of his burden. It was a hot day. One word from Mr. Hill would have been enough, but he preferred to teach the much-needed lesson in another way, and said he should carry the bundle himself. Of course, I objected, and there was some dispute as to which of us should bear the burden but he won the day in the end by saying, Do let me have it; I want to teach him humility. 2 [Note: J. E. Hellier, Life of David Hill, 247.]

3. The measure of our love to one another must be the love that Christ showed to us. It is an infinite measure. There is no one who can say, I have done enough for my brother man. I have loved enough. Beyond our most eager efforts stretches the ever-expanding loving-kindness of Jesus. There is no one who can say, I have forgiven enough! If my brother sin again, if my enemy do me another wrong, I will forgive no more; for beyond our most amazing forgiveness extends the unwearied forgiveness of Christthe image, the reflexion and the revelation in man of the unconquerable desire to bless and to redeem, which is deepest towards us in the heart of God our Father. Therefore, in this illimitable demand upon us for love, we are greatly blessed. We are placed in the infinite, and kept in the infinite; we are freed from definitions of love, from maxims of forgiveness, from all the foolish casuistry that limits love. In this, at least, we are not to be content with our limitations. There are no limitations. We are challenged by God Himself to share in His infinity; never to endure finality in tenderness, never to imagine the end of love. It is a glorious call, and to answer it brings us into the infinite God Himself. So, as the Apostle Paul exhorts the Ephesians, walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love.

Thus will you fulfil the law of Christthat law which has its culminating glory in the atoning death of Calvary; its Divinest symbol in the cross. Then only does the higher life begin with us when we bow ourselves before the majesty of this supreme offering made by supreme love, because the need of man was great, when we feel the glow of a common life with the lost multitude for whom that offering was made, and behold the history of the world as the history of a great redemption in which we ourselves are fellow-workers in our own place and among our own people.

In the Pilgrims Progress, coming to the Cross is the last incident in the mans salvation. The cross, which used to be the emblem of slavery, now becomes the means of liberty and lightening. The point to notice here is that we are saved by what we see. The sinful man loses his burden upon realizing a fact, and the essence of Christianity is a magnificent realization. Sin had been too much for him, but now God has vanquished it. The joy that follows is inevitable. Bunyan tells us in his Grace Abounding, that, when the joy of this release came to him, he could have spoken of it to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed land by the wayside. The power and beauty of the simple sentence which tells of the burden tumbling into the mouth of the sepulchre make that passage one of the religious classics of the world. No commentary is necessary or possible except the memory of that experience in the hearts of those in whose lives it has happened.1 [Note: John Kelman, The Road, i. 71.]

Burdens

Literature

Ainsworth (P. C.), A Thornless World, 154.

Alexander (S. A.), The Christianity of St. Paul, 157.

Brooke (Stopford A.), Short Sermons, 12.

Burrell (D. J.), God and the People, 264.

Caird (Edward), Lay Sermons Delivered in Balliol College, 3.

Campbell (A. A.), Sermons Preached before the Queen, 3.

Cuyler (T. L.), A Model Christian, 21.

Hamilton (J.), Works, vi. 407

Lightfoot (J. B.), Ordination Addresses, 136.

Little (W. J. K.), Characteristics of the Christian Life, 140.

Maxson (H. D.), Sermons, 269.

Neale (J. M.), Sermons, ii. 139.

Neville (W. G.), Sermons, 312.

Murray (W. H. H.), in The American Pulpit of the Day, iii. 182.

Palmer (J. R.), Burden Bearing, 3.

Potter (H. C.), Sermons of the City, 220.

Rogers (J. Guinness), The Gospel in the Epistles, 131.

Selby (T. G.), The Strenuous Gospel, 357.

Talbot (E. S.), in Keble College Sermons, 187788, 1.

Temple (F.), Rugby Sermons, i. 144; iii. 281.

Thompson (J. R.), Burden, Bearing, 7.

Thomson (W.), Life in the Light of Gods Word, 299.

Tomory (A.), in Alexander Tomory, Indian Missionary, 109.

Trench (R. C.), Sermons New and Old, 50.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), vi. (1869), No. 631.

British Congregationalist, Oct. 4, 1906 (J. H. Jowett).

Christian Age, xlii. 34 (L. Abbott).

Christian World Pulpit, xxv. 58 (W. M. Statham); xxix. 49 (R. Eyton); xxxvii. 179 (J. L. King); xli. 214 (R. I. Woodhouse); xlii. 338 (J. Wills); l. 186 (I. Harthill); lxv. 36 (W. T. Davison); lxx. 298 (T. B. McCorkindale); lxxx. 42 (W. McMillan).

Church Family Newspaper, Oct. 11, 1912 (A. Robertson).

Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible

Bear: Gal 6:5, Gal 5:13, Gal 5:14, Exo 23:5, Num 11:11, Num 11:12, Deu 1:12, Isa 58:6, Mat 8:17, Mat 11:29, Mat 11:30, Luk 11:46, Rom 15:1, 1Th 5:14, 1Pe 2:24

the law: Joh 13:14, Joh 13:15, Joh 13:34, Joh 15:12, 1Co 9:21, Jam 2:8, 1Jo 2:8-11, 1Jo 4:21

Reciprocal: Gen 14:14 – his brother Exo 26:26 – bars of shittim wood Num 10:31 – instead of eyes Deu 22:4 – thou shalt surely Jos 1:15 – Until 1Sa 11:4 – lifted up 2Sa 10:11 – General 1Ch 19:12 – If the Syrians 1Ch 22:13 – to fulfil Ezr 1:4 – help him Job 6:14 – To him Son 5:8 – if ye Luk 5:7 – that they should 1Co 5:5 – that 1Co 12:26 – General 1Co 13:5 – seeketh 1Co 13:7 – Beareth 2Co 2:7 – ye 2Co 2:8 – that 2Co 11:29 – is weak Eph 4:2 – forbearing Phi 2:26 – ye had Col 3:13 – Forbearing Heb 13:3 – which suffer 1Jo 3:11 – that we 1Jo 3:18 – let Rev 2:3 – hast borne

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

MUTUAL HELP

Bear ye one anothers burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

Gal 6:2

There are two great forces for uplifting human life, when it is low in quality and low in material prosperity, which are more powerful and more necessary than any other of the processes of civilisation. One is mutual help, and the other Christian conviction and practice.

I. Mutual help.Nowhere are examples of mutual help so numerous and striking and beautiful as are to be found in the lowest abysses of poverty. Ah! yes, we who live where want and suffering most abound can bear witness to the truth of this. Our people are not thrifty, but they are generous; they are self-forgetful, but they are mindful of one another when real trouble comes. They fail in many things, but they excel all classes of the community in this thing. Here is the strength of the poor: they do assist each other; they do share with each other; they do stand by each other in ways which are often sublime in their meaning and heroic in their measure. But this strength of the poor has its accompanying weakness, and that weakness is this: the mutual aid which characterises the poor above every other class is not organised. It is chaotic. It works on no definite lines. It is not continuous. It is not disciplined and made to work for designed and continuously practical ends. And the result is that this magnificent force of mutual aid among the poor, which, if properly organised, would of itself work out the social salvation of the poor, is largely unutilised and lost. The remarkable development of trades unions, of friendly societies, of benefit societies, of loan clubs, which have sprung into existence of late years, is a sufficient indication of what the poorer classes can accomplish if they will but turn their minds seriously and perseveringly to this great and urgently required work. It is a work which the whole nation is waiting to see done. It is work which can only be done by the poorer working classes themselves. It is a work which must be done before better housing conditions, more adequate means of living, improved social habits, and increased happiness can come to those who now suffer most from these evils. Mutual help, which is self-help multiplied, is the law of progress for all men, specially men who are low down the scale of material prosperity.

II. History nowhere tells us of a nation which has reached greatness and goodness without the uplifting force of religion.And so we come to our second condition for the social plus the spiritual salvation of the suffering masses, viz. Christian conviction and Christian practice. There was a time when secular Socialists cried, Down with religion! we will have none of it. But that cry was not re-echoed by the general body of the poor. Their instinct was too strongly on the side of religion. They felt that, however much religious people and religious teachers had failed to come up to their own professed ideals, religion was still necessary for human life. And so secular Socialism is changing its tone about religion. But this service which religion can do for the suffering poor is one for which there need be no waiting for outside action. The poor can obtain it for themselves. They can help themselves in this matter just as truly and effectively as they can in the matter of mutual aid. Indeed, if they do not make religion a personal matter, if they do not seek out Jesus Christ for themselves and have direct and daily communication with Him, neither religion nor churches nor Christian workers will bring them the saving they need, and which their pitiable conditions cry for. That famous utterance of Jesus Christ, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God, is a principle which applies to all human life, but specially to crushed and afflicted human life. A poor man needs the new birth, which comes from the Holy Spirit of God, more than any man. He needs it, not because he is a greater sinner than a man who is not poor, but because he needs more courage, more hope, more patience, more high thought and feeling, more contentment, more strength to endure his hard lot, than men who are socially better off than himself. But the poor man needs this new birth, of which our Lord spoke, not merely that he may endure his lot, but also that he may improve his lot. In the early days of the Church the first Christians were mostly of the slave class. How did they become free and prosperous and powerful? The change was entirely due to the religion of Christ. It found them as slaves; it raised them to freedom, and to civil rights, and to prosperity. And the same result can be obtained in our crowded and poverty-stricken English cities, if only the poorer members of our communities will but recognise and lay hold of the spiritual and social salvation which is waiting for them in the Gospel of Christ. There lies their hope. There waits certain deliverance from their own human weakness and the crushing power of misfortune. Let the sufferers from cruelties of our modern civilisation turn their despairing souls to Him Who was the Carpenter of Nazareth, but who is now the Lord of Glory. Let them follow as He leads; let them do as He commands, and He will so transform them from weakness into might, from deadly despair into beautiful hope, from earth-meanness into God-like dignity, that life, instead of being, as it is now to the vast majority of them, a heavy burden, shall become a glorious privilege, and a blessed and blessing thing.

Rev. Canon Henry Lewis.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

Gal 6:2. -One another’s burdens do ye bear. This verse broadens the sphere of duty enjoined in the previous verse; or it presents that duty in a form not specialized as in the first verse: the spirit that restores a fallen brother should pervade ordinary Christian relations. The have been unduly narrowed in the definition of them. They are not weaknesses simply, as in Rom 15:1, but also errors, trials, sorrows, sins, without any distinct specification. And they are not merely to be tolerated, they are to be taken up as burdens; for the verb implies this. Mat 20:12; Act 15:10. Whatever forms a burden to our brethren we are to take upon ourselves, and carry it for them or with them, in the spirit of Him who bore our sins and carried our sorrows. The burden to be borne is not to be limited to . Theodore Mops. There does not therefore seem to be any covert allusion to the self-imposed burdens of the law (Alford). The emphasis is on , giving distinctness to the duty as a mutual duty: Weep with them that weep. Mutual interposition in sympathy and for succour in any emergency-fellow-feeling and fellow-helping-is the duty inculcated, as opposed to that selfish isolation which stands aloof, or contents itself with a cheap expression of commiseration, or an offer of assistance so framed as to be worthless in the time or the shape of it. The apostle exemplifies his own maxim, 2Co 11:29.

The reading of the next clause is doubtful. The Received Text has -and so fulfil the law of Christ. This reading is supported by A, C, D, K, L, , nearly all MSS., and is found in the Syriac (Philox.), and in many of the Greek fathers. It is also adopted by Griesbach, Scholz, Reiche, Alford, and Tischendorf in his 7th ed. The other reading is the future -and so ye shall fulfil the law of Christ. It is supported by B, F, G, two MSS., the Vulgate and Claromontane Latin, the Syriac (Peschito), the Armenian, Coptic, Sahidic, and Ethiopic versions, Theodoret (MS.), and some of the Latin fathers; and it is admitted by Lachmann, Meyer, and Ellicott. Diplomatic authority is in favour of the common text; but the versions give decided countenance to the other reading in the future, which Alford regards as a probable correction, the imperative aorist being unusual (Winer, 43). The difference is but that of a single letter, and one may suppose that a copyist might change the future to make both clauses imperative. The present would have been natural (Ellicott), but the seems to point to the future. It is impossible to come to a definite conclusion, and the meaning is not really affected whatever reading be adopted.

Borger, Rckert, Brown, and others are wrong in assigning the compound the mere sense of the simple . The preposition gives the idea of a complete filling, of a filling up. Col 1:24; Php 2:30; 1Th 2:16; Sept. Exo 23:26; Strabo, vi. p. 223; Joseph. Antiq. 5.6, 2; Tittmann, De Syn. p. 228; Winer, De verborum cum praep. composit. in N. T. usu, iii. pars 11.

The law of Christ is not simply the law of love, or His new commandment which is only one precept of His law (Theodoret, De Wette, Usteri), but His entire code, which indeed is summed up in love. Whoso, from right motive and in true form, bears the burdens of others, has so drunk into the spirit of Christ who carried our burdens, has so realized the gentleness and sympathy of His example who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, that he fully obeys His law,-a law which reprobates all hard, sullen, and self-absorbed individualism, and is fulfilled in love to God and to all that bears His image. The explanation of Chrysostom, -fulfil it in common by the things in which ye bear with one another, each completing what is wanting in his neighbour,-is not to the point. The injunction is meant for Christians, and there is a contrast recorded (Rev 2:2) in praise of the church of Ephesus: . There may be a tacit reference to the which the Galatians, under the teaching of the Judaizers, were taught to obey, but which was not in authority or contents the law of Christ. See under Gal 5:14.

Fuente: Commentary on the Greek Text of Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Phillipians

Gal 6:2. To bear means to take up

and carry a load. Burdens is from BAROS which Thayer defines, “heaviness, weight, burden, trouble.” It means the hardships and trials of this life, and Paul instructs Christians to help each other in such experiences. Fulfil the law of Christ. His teaching all through life was that the disciples should love each other, and that would be shown by lending a helping hand in the hardships of human existence.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Gal 6:2. Bear ye one anothers burdens, all sorts of troubles, cares, errors, and infirmities. Sin and error should be resisted and rebuked in a spirit of charity and meekness; but with all our faults we ought to esteem and love one another as brethren in Christ (Comp. Rom 15:1.)

And thus ye shall (completely) fulfil the law of Christ, namely, the law of love. (Comp. Gal 5:14; Rom 13:8; Joh 13:34; 1Jn 3:23.) The E. V. is based on another reading which expresses the imperative, instead of the future. The authorities are almost equally divided.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

This is a general precept, and requires us to sympathize with our brethren in all thier sorrows and sufferings, and to bear a part with them under the load and burden of oppressive wants and necessities; particularly, bearing with the weaknesses and infirmities of our brethren, seems here to be recommended to our care and practice in this apostolical injunction, Bear ye one another’s burdens. The encouragement to which duty follows, So shall we fulfil the law of Christ; that is, the law of love, the moral law which enjoins us to love our neighbour as ourselves.

But why is this called the law of Christ, when it was long before Christ; yea, before Moses, and as old as Adam himself, being part of the law of nature, which was written in Adam’s heart before there was any written Bible?

I answer, the law of love is very properly called the law of Christ; because he revived it, rescued it, recommended and enforced it, frequently urged it upon his followers, and exemplified it in his own life and conversation, therefore called a new commandment, and his commandment: This is my commandment, &c. A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, Joh 13:34 (see note)

Learn hence, 1. That to have our ear, our heart, and our hand, open to our brethren in distress, is a necessary Christian duty: our ear open to their mournful complaints, our heart open to sympathize with and mourn over them, our hand open to the relief of their necessities and wants. This is a burden which the law of Christ has laid upon us; Bear ye one another’s burdens.

Learn, 2. To bear a part of our brethren’s burdens with a compassionate heart and helping hand, is a fulfilling of the law of Christ; because much love, which is the fulfilling of the law, goes out, and is acted in the bearing of it; so fulfil the law of Christ.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Gal 6:2-5. Bear ye one anothers burdens Sympathize with and assist each other, in all your weaknesses, grievances, trials. The apostle alludes to the custom of travellers, who, when too heavily laden with their baggage, relieve one another by bearing the burdens of the weak or fatigued, and in that manner show their good disposition toward each other; and so fulfil the law of Christ Even that law of love, which he particularly and especially enjoins, terming it his new commandment, and making it the distinguishing mark of his disciples; and surely we may willingly receive that law from one who was himself such an unequalled example of love, and who with so gracious a sympathy bore our burdens of sorrow, and carried away the load of our guilt. For if a man If any one; think himself to be something Above his brethren, and take up an overweening opinion of himself; when he is nothing Like what he apprehends himself to be; and in particular if he be so conceited of his own sufficiency, as to imagine that he is able to resist temptation by his own strength, or by the strength of inherent grace, and thereupon insults over or despises his fallen brother, in comparison of himself, and is not compassionate and friendly to him; he deceiveth himself Is entirely mistaken in the judgment he forms of his own state and character. But let every man To prevent so great an evil; prove his own work Narrowly examine all he is, all he has, and all he doth; and then If his spirit and conduct be found agreeable to the rule God has given him, and so be approved by God; he shall have rejoicing in himself In what God has done for him and in him, by pardoning and renewing him, and enabling him to walk before him in all well-pleasing; he will find matter of comfort in knowing that his heart is right with God, and that he has his conversation according to the gospel; and not in another That is, not in the applause he receives from another, nor in glorying over others, as inferior to himself in gifts or graces, in holiness or usefulness. For every man In the day of final judgment; shall bear his own burden Shall give an account of himself to God; shall answer for his own actions only, and not for those of others.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Bear ye one another’s burdens [Greek, bara, burden, or distresses], and so fulfil the law of Christ.

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

This is one of those items where the church often falls down on the job. When another person is having a hard time, they are not the most pleasant person to be around. You feel uncomfortable because you don’t know how to help, indeed, often you can’t help. Sometimes the person is in a bad mood and strikes out at anyone that is around. It also takes time to get involved, and it often means you will be involved in the suffering to some extent. You may well begin to hurt with the person if it is related to death or injury.

HOWEVER, Paul tells us to do it. That is part of the support system of the church. We are to uphold one another so that we are all strong and standing for God.

One thing I give the Mormon Church – they know this principle and they practice it. If one of their people has a problem, they all have a problem until the trouble is over. They support their folks well in time of trouble.

This ability to care for everyone requires not only a willingness to become involved, but it requires that the church have some system of caring, of knowing when someone has a need. When a problem arises, many believers will just tuff it through on their own. Unless someone knows of the problem, the church can do nothing to assist.

Fuente: Mr. D’s Notes on Selected New Testament Books by Stanley Derickson

6:2 {3} Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the {e} law of Christ.

(3) He shows that this is the end of rebukes, to raise up our brother who is fallen, and not proudly to oppress him. Therefore every one must seek to have praise of his own life by approving himself, and not by rebuking others.

(e) Christ, in plain and clear words, calls the commandment of charity his commandment.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

2. Toward burdened Christians 6:2-5

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

In view of the context probably the burden Paul had in mind was an excessive burden of particular temptation and struggle with the flesh (cf. Rom 15:1). This could be a burden caused by social, economic, spiritual, or other conditions. Gal 6:1 deals with restoration and this section (Gal 6:2-5) with prevention. We can bear by praying and perhaps counseling together.

"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." [Note: Stott, p. 158.]

Paul probably referred to the "law of Christ" (cf. Gal 5:14; Joh 13:34; 1Co 9:21) to help his readers realize that freedom from the Mosaic Law does not mean freedom from all responsibility. The "law of Christ" encompasses the whole of Jesus’ teaching personally while He was on earth and through His apostles and prophets from heaven following His ascension (cf. Act 1:1-2). It boils down to the command to love God wholeheartedly and one’s neighbor as oneself (Mat 22:36-40; Joh 13:34-35; Joh 15:12; 1Jn 3:23).

"Galatians, which in attacking ’Jewish’ legalism proclaims the true freedom based on Christ, consequently contains more exhortation, admonition, and summons to obey the ’law of Christ’ . . . than any other letter, and to quite a remarkable degree-a third of the whole letter." [Note: Bornkamm, p. 83.]

The law of Christ is the code of commandments under which Christians live. It is the same as New Covenant responsibility. [Note: Femi Adeyemi, "The New Covenant Law and the Law of Christ," Bibliotheca Sacra 163:652 (October-December 2006):438-52.] Some of the commandments Christ and His apostles gave us are the same as those that Moses gave the Israelites. However this does not mean that we are under the Mosaic Code. Residents of the United States live under a code of laws that is similar to, but different from, the code of laws that govern residents of England. Some of our laws are the same as theirs, and others are different. Because some laws are the same we should not conclude that the codes are the same. Christians no longer live under the Mosaic Law; we live under a new code, the law of Christ (cf. Gal 5:1).

This may at first sound as if we are under law as Christians after all. Paul contrasted law with grace because the primary characteristic of the Mosaic Law was its legal character whereas the primary characteristic of the law of Christ is its gracious character. He did not mean that there is no law under grace any more than he meant that there was no grace under the Mosaic Law. The motivation for keeping the Mosaic Law was external for the Old Testament believer, but the motivation for keeping the law of Christ is internal. Our motivation comes from the indwelling Holy Spirit (Php 2:13), though Paul did not emphasize this motivation in chapter 6.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)