Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Galatians 6:5

For every man shall bear his own burden.

5. For every man burden ] For no man can escape from his own moral responsibility. The verse reads like a proverb. The ‘burden’ is the ‘load’ of accoutrements and provisions assigned to each soldier to carry on a march. Others regard the metaphor as taken from shipping affairs, and render the word ‘freight’. This is quite admissible as a verbal translation; but the phrase, ‘each man shall carry his own cargo’ may appear less satisfactory. There is no paradox or contradiction to the precept of Gal 6:2 except in the English version which renders two distinct words in the original by the same English word ‘burden’.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

For every man shall bear his own burden – This seems to be a kind of proverbial saying; and it means here, every man shall have his proper reward. If he is a virtuous man, he will be happy; if a vicious man, he will be miserable. If a virtuous man, he will have the source of happiness in himself; if a sinner, he must bear the proper penalty of his sin. In the great day every man shall be properly rewarded. Knowing this, we should be little anxious about the sentiments of others, and should seek to maintain a good conscience toward God and man. The design of this passage is, to prevent people from forming an improper estimate of themselves, and of the opinions of others. Let a man feel that he is soon to stand at the judgment-seat, and it will do much to keep him from an improper estimate of his own importance; let him feel that he must give an account to God, and that his great interests are to be determined by the estimate which God will affix to his character, and it will teach him that the opinion of the world is of little value. This will restrain his vanity and ambition. This will show him that the great business of life is to secure the favor of God, and to be prepared to give up his account; and there is no way so effectual of checking ambition, and subduing vanity and the love of applause, as to feel that we are soon to stand at the awesome bar of God.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Gal 6:5

For every man shall bear his own burden.

Here are some of the burdens which each man must bear for himself alone

1. The burden of personality. Each individual is open to manifold influence–may be impressed, drawn, turned, melted, inflamed, according to the powers that play upon him; but he is himself in all. He abides in the eye of God a separate, complete, individual soul for ever.

2. The burden of responsibility. This arises of necessity out of the personality. Man is moral, therefore responsible. The separate threads of each ones life are singled out by God for judgment.

3. The burden of guilt. Where guilt gathers, there guilt must rest until God shall remove it. And what a load it is. Tis this which turns the moisture into the drought of summer, which breaks the bones, drinks up the spirit, weakens strength by the way, quenches the light of hope, and cleaves and clings to the soul a burden of present judgment, and daily foretelling of doom.

4. Immortality is a mans own burden. Each is to live for ever–his own life and not anothers: carrying forward with him through eternity its accumulating elements of happiness or woe. (A. Raleigh, D. D.)

The individual burden

A man often ceases to feel it for a while. He mingles in some great and gay assemblage, and for the time feels as though his personality were gone, or in suspense. He is not as a separate drop, he is lost in an ocean of life. But in a little while the great assemblage melts all away–only the individuals are left; that which they constituted when they were together has gone for ever; and the man whose life seemed to be almost absorbed and lost in an ocean of multitudinous existence–where is he now? He is going home there pensively under the shadow of the trees, and deeply conscious of himself; with his own joys and sorrows, with his own thoughts and plans, with his soul in all its powers and affections untouched. He is bearing his own burden. Or, in a time of sorrow, other souls come around with watchful yearning love. He has letters breathing the intensest sympathy. He has visits of sincere and sorrowing affection, or he has in the house with him those who feel so deeply and truly with himself that they hardly seem to be divided in the grief. But, the letters are read, the visits are paid, the tears are shed, and then–he retires into his personality, and feels that his sorrow is his own, that none can tell the loss to him, that none can feel as he feels, that he possesses his sorrow because he possesses his soul, and that he, as every man, shall bear his own burden. A man is born alone–has his being moulded with Gods plastic hand, has all his powers implanted, and the awful image of God impressed, to be carried in glory or in ruin for ever. In all the stages really, and in all the critical and important times of his life consciously, he is alone, as distinct as a tree in the forest, separate as a star in the sky. And in death he leaveth all his friends, and goeth out along the darksome valley without a hand to help, without a voice to cheer–when the dying really comes. He goeth out bearing his own burden of life from one world into another–from the things which are seen to the things which are not seen, from those which are temporal to those which are eternal . We must think of this if we wish to be faithful and true men. It may be to some the taking up of the cross; but it must be done. Let a man examine himself. Let him sit down to weigh his burden and think: I am one–personal, complete. I cannot mingle my being in a general tide. I cannot lose one atom of my personality. I must be myself for ever! (A. Raleigh, D. D.)

The believers freight

The Greek word () is different from the word translated burden () in Gal 6:2; and signifies a burden or load, especially a ships freight or lading. Paul was a native of Tarsus, which was situated on the Cydnus, about twenty miles from the sea; and, in Pauls time, was in the Eastern basin of the Mediterranean almost what Marseilles was in the Western. It was a place of much commerce; and St. Basil describes it as a point of union for Syrians Cilicians, Isaurians, and Cappadocians. Such was the city in which Paul was born and brought up, and from which he must have repeatedly sailed as a passenger in merchant ships going from one port to another to take in or unlade their freight (). And thus, from his very childhood, Paul must have been quite familiar with this word as signifying a ships freight, and he could scarcely ever have connected it with any other idea than that of something precious and valuable. This is the only place in his writings in which he uses the word. May we not suppose that he here compares believers to vessels carrying off their respective freights, varying in value; and that he means, by this nautical phrase, that each one will receive his due reward at the last day? Elsewhere he speaks of the believers receiving a burden () of glory, which is a somewhat similar figure, and certainly not less harsh to our ears than the one here used (2Co 4:17). Thus translated, the connection is clear. Let each one take care to have his ground of rejoicing in his own consistent life, and not in the falls of others; and this is the reason why he should do so–viz., that each one will have a reward according to what his own life has been, without reference to what the lives of his brethren were. (John Venn, M. A.)

The separate burden of each soul

I hope you will not associate with burden-bearing anything menial or degraded. Remember that our Blessed Saviour consecrated labour with the axe and the adze and the mallet at Nazareth; and labour is a crown of glory, never of degradation. Everybody, high or humble, ought to have some work to do. I remember how, in the days of the old dispensation in America, before slavery committed suicide, I was once the guest of a hospitable planter, and I stood by the river bank and watched the long line of negro men and women carrying bags of rice on their heads to load a vessel, and chanting the rich melodious song with which Africas daughters seem to have cheered themselves in the hours of their bondage. They were carrying their burdens. I went into the house, and the head of the family said to me, very thoughtfully; Sir, it is a tremendous thing to be the owner of a hundred immortal beings. That was his burden then. The burden in the one case was physical, and in the other mental, moral, spiritual. Well, in the same way, everybody has his own burden. Bear that in mind. The merchant goes to-morrow to his warehouse, and he says, What an easy time my porter has! He has nothing to do but to load up the dray. He has no care. What an easy time my clerk has–my book-keeper. He has nothing to do but to perform my work and receive his salary, and I have the care of the whole establishment. But, on the other hand, says the workman: What an easy time my master has. He has nothing to do but to ride here in his carriage, and sign cheques, and go home to his country seat. Ah, and the brain of the employer is the bread of the workman, and the toil of the workman is the prosperity of the master. Capital and labour God has joined together, and what God has joined together let no agrarian or communist ever tear asunder. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)

Our burden our blessing

Here is a man, who has come in for a good fortune and a good business. He has not made either the one or the ether. Those who did make the business, who watched and nurtured it from a tiny seed to a great tree with many branches, nourished and organized it so wisely that, even after they are gone, it continues, at least for a time, to grow and thrive and bring forth fruit well-nigh of itself. The man has no serious difficulties to encounter, no rubs, no hardships, no heart-tormenting cares. He lives at his ease, carelessly, luxuriously–drives down to his counting-house now and then, but gives most of his time to pleasure or to self-pleasing pursuits. Is he likely to be either a good man or a good man of business? It is nothing short of a miracle if he is. How should he feel the gravity of life, its solemn responsibilities, or even its true joys? For want of a burden he is only too likely to leave the straight path. With nothing to bear, nothing to conquer, and not much to do, he grows indolent, self-indulgent, fastidious, perhaps hypochondriacal; and, because he has no other burden, becomes a burden to himself. But here is another man who has had to begin life for himself. Under the pressure of necessity, he has been industrious, frugal, temperate, contriving; he knows all the ins and outs of his work; he has mastered the secrets of his craft, studied his markets, adapted himself to the time, won a good name, inspired his neighbours with respect for his ability, with confidence in his trustworthiness. In short, his burdens have made a man of him, and a true man of business. He is likely to succeed, and to be happy in his success. Up to a certain point, let us say, he has succeeded. He has a good and growing business, a considerable capital embarked in it, a comfortable home, a family trained in habits similar to his own. If you set such an one talking of his past career, you soon find that he sees how much he owes to his burdens. He will tell you himself that he thanks God for the very difficulties he once found it so hard to bear; for the obstacles which stood in his way, but which he has surmounted. If he is a thoughtful Christian man, he will also acknowledge that he has gained in character, in judgment, in patience, in energy of will, in faith in God, in charity with his neighbours, by the very trials and hardships he has had to endure. Nothing, indeed, is more common than to hear a self-made man refer boastfully, or thankfully, to the disadvantages, the unfavourable conditions, which he has overcome, and confess that but for these, and his resolute struggle with them, he would never have been the man he is. Whatever else, or more, a family may be, no one will deny that it is a burden. The fathers broad shoulders take a new weight with every child that is born to him. He must work harder; he must think and plan, and strive not for himself alone, but that he may feed, clothe, and educate his children. Most of you fathers have, no doubt, felt at times how heavy this load is; how sharp and painful is the pressure of the anxieties it entails. But you have also felt how this burden is your help and blessing. For your childrens sake you rule and deny yourselves. You know very well that if you would have them grow up with good habits, your habits must be good; that you cannot expect them to be punctual, orderly, temperate, industrious, considerate, kind, if you are unkind, thoughtless, indolent, passionate, disorderly, irregular. That you may train them in the way they should go, you try to keep the right way, to set them a good example. And thus they help you to acquire the very habits which make your own life sweet and pure, to keep the only course which leads to peace on earth or in heaven. Your burden is your benediction. Despite your good example and careful training, some of your children (let us suppose so cruel a case) do not turn out what you wish them to be: they are lazy, though you have tried to make them industrious; self-pleasing, though you have taught them self-denial; passionate and ungovernable, though you have striven to make them temperate and obedient; or even vicious, though you have done your utmost to keep them pure. And as the sad conviction grows on you that your labour has been lost, that they are settling into the very habits from which you would have made any sacrifice to preserve them, your heart fails you, and you almost give up the hope of reclaiming them. This new burden is, you say, heavier than you can bear. Oh, weak and faithless that we are! Oh, thankless and inobservant! Though every past burden has helped us, no sooner is a new and strange burden laid on us than we declare it beyond our strength. How does God prove Himself the perfect Father? What is it that we most admire in His paternal goodness? Is it that He sits among His unfallen children, shedding a heavenly bliss into their pure obedient hearts? Is it not, rather, that He comes into this fallen world to dwell with us–His prodigal and unthankful children–to suffer in and for our sins, to bear our sorrows, to pursue us with His lovingkindness and tender mercy? Is it not, rather, that He will not cease to hope for us, however hopeless and wicked we may be; that He lavishes His love upon us, even when we do not love Him, and saves and conquers us at last by a goodness which has no limit, and will not be repelled? And how shall we be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, unless we, too, bear the burdens of the weak and erring, patiently endure the ingratitude of the thankless, and overcome the evil of the wicked with our good? How shall you, fathers and mothers, become, and prove yourselves, perfect parents if you can only love the children that love you, if you cannot be patient with the disobedient, if you cannot take thought and pains to bring back those who have gone astray? This new terrible burden of sorrow and care is a new honour which God has put upon you, a new call to perfection. It is because you are strong that He asks you to bear the infirmities of the weak. It is because you are capable of the most heroic tasks of love that he taxes your love, and, by taxing, strengthens and deepens it. But take, for one example, the burden of mystery which lies on the sacred page. Most thoughtful men have felt its weight; in these days, indeed, it is hardly possible to escape its pressure. When we seek to acquaint ourselves with the truth, which is one, lo! we find it manifold; the simple and sincere Word bristles with paradox and contradiction; it opens up depths we cannot fathom, and suggests problems we cannot solve. Yet is not this burden a veritable blessing? If the inspired Word were simple and plain through-out–if it were level to the meanest understanding, and disclosed its inmost secrets to the most cursory and fugitive attention, could we study and love it as we do? (S. Cox, D. D.)

Burden-bearing strengthens

The Christian gets stronger for his load, or he ought to. Train up your boy indoors; give him as much spending money as he wants; never put the boy to any work; and the poor little flabby creature will get to be mere pulp. But turn him out to work for himself, load on him study, toil, the necessity of supporting himself, and you graduate him to manhood. That man, at whose departure a world is mourning, fought his way up from poverty by hard struggle, until he attained that place which he filled in the eyes of the country and of the world. Now, that is the way God deals with His children. He burdens them to make them strong. He says to one of His spiritual children, Every man shall bear his own burden; carry that; and to another, Every man to his work; do that: and to another, Every man his own cross; carry that. Between here and heaven lies many a Hill of Difficulty, as Bunyan describes it, where you and I have got to give over running for walking, and to give over walking for climbing on the knees. I have lived long enough to thank God for difficulties. They make you strong, they sinew your heart; they enlarge your faith; they bring you near to God. Burden-bearing strengthens; grappling with difficulties gives us what we so much need, and that is force; and in Gods school some hard lessons have to be learnt. I think we learn our most precious lessons when we look at them through tears which make a lens for the eye. I have found the hardest lesson in this world is–what? It is to let God have His way; and the man or woman who has learnt how to let God have His way has attained the higher life–the highest on earth. (S. Cox, D. D.)

Religion must be personal

A little girl, whom we will call Ellen, was some time ago helping to nurse a sick gentleman whom she loved very dearly. One day he said to her, Ellen, it is time for me to take my medicine, I think. Will you pour it out for me? You must measure just a table-spoonful, and then put it in that wine-glass close by. Ellen quickly did so, and brought it to his bedside; but, instead of taking it in his own hand, he quietly said, Now, dear, will you drink it for me? Will I drink it? What do you mean? I am sure I would, in a minute, if it would cure you all the same; but you know it wont do you any good, unless you take it yourself. Wont it, really? the gentleman replied. No, I suppose it will not. But Ellen, if you cant take my medicine for me, I cant take your salvation for you. You must go to Jesus, and believe in Him for yourself. In this way he tried to teach his little friend that each human being must seek salvation for him-self–repent, believe, obey, for himself: that this is a burden which no man can bear for his brother.

Doing duty by proxy

Bishop Burnet, in his charges to the clergy of his diocese, used to be extremely vehement in his declamations against pluralities. In his first visitation to Salisbury he urged the authority of St. Bernard; who being consulted by one of his followers, whether he might accept of two benefices, replied, And how will, you be able to serve them both? I intend, answered the priest, to officiate in one of them by a deputy. will your deputy suffer eternal punishment for you too? asked the saint. Believe me, you may serve your cure by proxy, but you must suffer the penalty in person. This anecdote made such an impression on Mr. Kelsey, a pious and wealthy clergyman then present, that he immediately resigned the rectory of Bernerton, in Berkshire, worth two hundred a year, which he then held with one of great value.

Burden-bearing

I. Self-help.

1. This is inevitable. Each has his burden of

(1) work;

(2) sorrow;

(3) responsibility;

(4) bodily infirmities;

(5) waiting.

2. This is salutary.

(1) To utilize our powers.

(2) To develope our excellences.

II. Brotherly help (Gal 6:2). The carrying of our own load gives strength to carry the burden of others.

(1) The burden of trial.

(2) Of poverty.

(3) Of bearing a wandering brother to Christ.

III. Divine help (Psa 55:22).

(1) The burden of anxiety.

(2) Of sin. (T. L. Cuyler.)

I. Man is independent, , ones own proper burden, a packmans bag, a soldiers kit. Responsibilities of life, of parents, masters, teachers, is not a curse but a privilege, which is thrown away when we endeavour to throw it on others.

2. Fruits of past conduct.

II. Men are interdependent (Gal 6:2), , burdens which may be shifted or borne by another.

1. A mans infirmities, temptations, poverty, stumblings (Gal 6:1).

2. The mutual blessedness of this interdependence.

III. Men are absolutely dependent. (Psa 55:22): burdens sent as a portion from God.

1. Affliction.

2. Consciousness of guilt. (D. A. Taylor, M. A.)

Burdens

I. Our own.

II. Our brothers (Gal 6:2).

III. Our Lords (Gal 6:17) By bearing the first we relieve our Lords trouble: if every man bore his own burden, instead of shirking it, the will of God would be done on earth as it is in heaven. By bearing the second we relieve our brothers trouble. Either by sympathy or substitution. By bearing the third we relieve our own: the trouble of doubt, of sin, of controversy.

IV. Personality an awful gift. This short verse–

I. Singles us out from all the multitude around us.

II. Bids us remember, what the world would hide from us, that we are each of us one.

1. This is a great thought.

2. An awful thought.

3. A thought we cannot shake off.

III. Ordinary life witnesses to this truth.

1. All deep thinking people live apart from others.

2. Sympathy may lighten their burden, but still it is their own.

3. Pain and death prove this.

IV. The present life cannot explain all this. We must go to Revelation: there we find–

1. That this great mystery is the gift of individual being from God (Gen 2:7).

2. That we have a will that can resist the almighty will of God.

3. That the whole volume is a history of the conflict of the human will with the Divine, and of Gods endeavour to win the human will by redemption.

4. That every healed will owes its healing to Divine grace.

V. Hence the unspeakable worth of every life.

1. The will is either hardening itself against God, or–

2. is being drawn into harmonious action with the will of God.

VI. Practical lessons.

1. The great importance of acting in the remembrance of our responsibility.

2. The necessity of securing times for self-examination and prayer.

3. The need of claiming our place in Christ the new and living man. (Bishop Samuel Wilberforce.)

How to bear our burden

The world proposes rest by the removal of a burden. The Redeemer gives rest by giving us the spirit and power to bear the burden. (F. W. Robertson.)

Burden-bearing

I. This, then, is my first proposition, namely, that every one must bear the burden of his own sins, both as concerns this life and the next. The results of sin are strictly individual. It is with the soul as with the body, with the spirit as with the flesh. 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. In morals there is no copartnership, no pro rata division of profit and loss. Each man receives according to the summation of his own account.

II. I have alluded to the individuality of moral responsibility. I have striven to show you that each one must endure his own sufferings, and abide the result of his own actions, and that in this no one can share with him. Not only is this true in respect to moral responsibility, but it is equally true in respect to moral growth. You may place two trees side by side, so that their branches shall interlace, and the fragrance of their blossoms intermingle, and yet in their growth each is separate. Covered by the same soil, moistened by the same drop, warmed by the same ray, the roots of either collect and reinforce the trunks of each, with their respective nourishment. Each tree grows by a law of its own growth, and the law of its own effort. The sap of one, in its upward or downward flow, cannot desert its own channels and feed the fibres of the other. So it is with two Christians. Planted in the same soil, drawing their sustenance from the same source, they, nevertheless, extract it through individual processes of thought and life. In daily contact and communion, whether in floral or fruitful states intermingling, equal in girth and height, equal in the results of their growth, the spiritualized currents of the one mind cannot become the property of the other. They cannot exchange duties. They cannot exchange hopes. I cannot think for you, or you for me. We cannot meditate for one another. Soul-food, like bodily food, is assimilated by each man for himself. See what determination the world manifests in pursuit of carnal things; over what sharp obstacles men mount to honour and wealth. A worldly man asks no help from another. He plays the game of life boldly, asking no odds. When he comes to an obstruction, he puts his shoulder bravely against it, and rolls it aside or climbs over it. Nay, more, out of the very fragments of a previous overthrow he erects a triumph. Nothing overawes him nor discourages him. He asks no one to bear his burden. He bears it himself, and finds it to be a source of strength and power. And shall a Christian shrink from what a worldling bravely attempts? Shall we unto whom the heavens minister, faint when those to whom the gates of power are shut persevere? These things ought not so to be. What is a slip? What is a scar? What is a fall? They will all testify to the perils you endured, and the heroism of your perseverance, at the Last Day. Think not of these. Write on your banner, where, living or dying, your eyes shall behold them, these words: He who endureth unto the end shall be saved. (W. H. H. Murray.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 5. Every man shall bear his own burden.] All must answer for themselves, not for their neighbours. And every man must expect to be dealt with by the Divine Judge, as his character and conduct have been. The greater offences of another will not excuse thy smaller crimes. Every man must give account of himself to God.

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

That is, God will judge every man in the last day, according not to what others have done, but to what he himself hath done, 1Co 3:8. Therefore every one is concerned to

prove his own work; for at last his eternal joy and rejoicing, or sorrow and mourning, shall be according to what he himself hath wrought, not according to what others have wrought. If ever they enter into the joy of heaven, they shall rejoice in their own work. And if eternal sorrow be their portion, they shall groan under their own burdens; they will not be the sins of others, but their own sins, which will sink them into eternal misery. For though superiors shall answer to God for the sins of their inferiors, yet it shall not properly be for their inferiors sins, but for their own sins, in neglecting to warn and to reprove them, and to do what in them lay to have hindered them in their sinful courses.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

5. For (by this way, Ga6:4, of proving himself, not depreciating his neighbor bycomparison) each man shall bear his own “burden,” orrather, “load” (namely, of sin and infirmity), theGreek being different from that in Ga6:2. This verse does not contradict Ga6:2. There he tells them to bear with others’ “burdens”of infirmity in sympathy; here, that self-examination will make a manto feel he has enough to do with “his own load” of sin,without comparing himself boastfully with his neighbor. Compare Ga6:3. Instead of “thinking himself to be something,” heshall feel the “load” of his own sin: and this will leadhim to bear sympathetically with his neighbor’s burden of infirmity.SOP says a man carriestwo bags over his shoulder, the one with his own sins hanging behind,that with his neighbor’s sins in front.

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

For every man shall bear his own burden. That is, either do his own work, which God has allotted him to do, whether in a more public or private station of life; which, because it is generally troublesome to the flesh, is called a “burden”, and “his own”, being peculiar to himself, and in which no other is concerned; and which he should patiently bear, cheerfully attend to, and constantly and faithfully perform while in this world: or he shall give an account of his own actions, and not another’s, to God, in the other world; he shall be judged according to his own works, what they are in themselves, and not by a comparison of other men’s, who have been more wicked than he; which will be no rule of judgment with God, nor of any advantage to man. Every wicked man will bear his own burden; that is, the punishment of his own sins, and not another’s; so the judgments of God, inflicted on men in this world, are often called

, “a burden”; see Isa 13:1 and so may the punishment of the wicked in another world, which will be grievous and intolerable. The saints will be exempt from bearing this burden, because Christ has bore it for them, even all their sins, and all the punishment due unto them; but another burden, if it may be so called, even an exceeding and eternal weight of glory, shall be bore by them; and every man shall receive his own reward, and not another’s; and that according to his own works and labour, and not another’s; not indeed for his works, but according to them, the nature of them, according to the grace of God, from whence his works spring, and by which they are performed. This the apostle says to take off men from dwelling upon, and censuring the actions of others, and from making use of them to set off their own, and buoy themselves up with vain hopes, because they are better than others; and also to engage them to attend strictly to their own actions, and consider them simply and absolutely as in themselves, and not as compared with other men’s, since they will be accountable for their own actions, and not other men’s; and will be judged according to their own works, and not in a comparative view to others.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Each shall bear his own burden ( ). is old word for ship’s cargo (Ac 27:10). Christ calls his light, though he terms those of the Pharisees heavy (Mt 23:4), meant for other people. The terms are thus not always kept distinct, though Paul does make a distinction here from the in verse 2.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Bear ye one another’s burdens : every man shall bear his own burden. A kind of paradox of which Paul is fond. See Phi 2:12, 13; 2Co 6:8 – 10; 2Co 7:10; 2Co 12:10. Paul means, no one will have occasion to claim moral superiority to his neighbor, for [] each man’s self – examination will reveal infirmities enough of his own, even though they may not be the same as those of his neighbor. His own burdens will absorb his whole attention, and will leave him no time to compare himself with others.

His own burden [ ] . For idion own, see on 1Ti 6:1. With fortion burden comp. barh burdens, ver. 2. It is doubtful whether any different shade of meaning is intended. Originally barh emphasizes the weight of the burden, fortion simply notes the fact that it is something to be born [] , which may be either light or heavy. See Mt 11:30; Mt 23:4; Psa 37:4; Luk 11:46. Comp. Act 27:10, the lading of a ship.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “For every man,” (hekastos gar) “For each person,” each accountable individual – regarding personal salvation, and personally accountable service to both God and one’s fellowman – Matters that can not be delegated to others, Rom 14:11-12; 2Co 5:10.

2) “Shall bear his own burden,” (to idion phortion Bastasei) “Will bear his own bur n,” the one no other can share or bear, as his accountability to God for service to a companion, a son or daughter, elderly parents, widows, orphans, neighbors etc.– The word from which “burden” is derived means “a soldiers pack”, while on the march, even a soldier of the Lord, Rom 2:4-11; 1Co 3:8.

RELIGION IS PERSONAL

A little girl, whom we will call Ellen, was some time ago helping to nurse a sick gentleman whom she loved very dearly. One day he said to her, “Ellen, it is time for me to take my medicine, I think. Will you pour it out for me? You must measure just a tablespoonful, and then put it in that wine-glass close by.” Ellen quickly did so, and brought it to his bedside; but, instead of taking it in his own hand, he quietly said “Now dear, will you drink it for me?” “Will I drink it? What do you mean? I am sure I would, in a minute, if it would cure you all the same; but you know it won’t do you any good, unless you take it yourself.” “Won’t it, really?” the gentleman replied. “No, I suppose it will not. But, Ellen, if you can’t take my medicine for me, I can’t take your salvation for you. You must go to Jesus, and believe in Him for yourself.” In this way he tried to teach his little friends that each human being must seek salvation for himself –repent, believe, obey, for himself: that this is a burden which no man can bear for his brother.

-Bib. III.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

5. For every man shall bear his own burdens. To destroy sloth and pride, he brings before us the judgment of God, in which every individual for himself, and without a comparison with others, will give an account of his life. It is thus that we are deceived; for, if a man who has but one eye is placed among the blind, he considers his vision to be perfect; and a tawny person among negroes thinks himself white. The apostle affirms that the false conclusions to which we are thus conducted will find no place in the judgment of God; because there every one will bear his own burden, and none will stand acquitted by others from their own sins. This is the true meaning of the words.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(5) Every man shall bear his own burden.The word for burden here is different from that which had been used above, though its meaning is very much the same. The distinction would be sufficiently represented if we were to translate in the one case burden, in the other load. The context, however, is quite different. In Gal. 6:2 the Christian is bidden to bear the burdens of others, in the sense of sympathising with them in their troubles. Here he is told that he must bear his own load, in the sense that he must answer directly to God for his own actions. His responsibility cannot be shifted on to others. It will make him no better that there are others worse than himself.

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

5. Prove your own work, for each one has a responsibility laid upon him for his own work. You are as responsible for the style and spirit in which you restore him, as he is for the fault from which you work to restore him.

Every man You, as well as the transgressor.

His own burden Each must, in the final hour, bear his own burden of frailty, sin, and guilt. We can put shoulder under each other’s burdens for awhile, but the time must at length come when each shall answer for himself alone. The contradiction in form, with consistency in truth, between Gal 6:2; Gal 6:5, is intended by St. Paul, in order, by the apparent paradox, to fasten the thought upon the attention and memory.

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

Gal 6:5 . Reason assigned, not for the summons to such a self-examination, but for the negative result of it, that no one will have to glory : for every one will have to bear his own burden . No one will be, in his own consciousness, free from the moral burden of his own sinful nature, which he has to bear. The future does not apply to the last judgment, in which every one will render account for his own sins (Augustine, c. lit. Petil . iii. 5; Luther), and receive retribution (Jerome, Theodoret, Erasmus, Calvin, Grotius, Calovius, Estius, Bengel, Michaelis, Borger, Rckert, and others; comp. also Hofmann), a view which, without any ground in the context, departs from the sense of the same figure in Gal 6:2 , and also from the relation of time conveyed in in Gal 6:4 ; but it denotes that which will take place in every man after the self-examination referred to in Gal 6:4 : he will, in the moral consciousness, namely, produced by this examination, bear his own burden; and that will preclude in him the desire of glorying .

The distinction between and (which is not diminutive ) consists in this, that the latter denotes the burden in so far as it is carried (by men, beasts, ships, waggons; hence freight, baggage , and the like), while the former denotes the burden as heavy and oppressive; in itself the may be light or heavy; hence: (Mat 23:4 ; Sir 21:16 ), and (Mat 11:30 ); whereas the is always burdensome. The expression is purposely chosen here from its relative character.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

5 For every man shall bear his own burden.

Ver. 5. For every man shall bear ] Be thorough therefore in the work of self-examination. Sparing a little pains at first, doubles it in the end; as he who will not cast up his books, his books wilt cast up him at length. The misery of most men is, that their minds are as ill set as their eyes, neither of them look inwards. How few are there that turn short again upon themselves so as to say, What have I done? Woe to all such when God shall send out summons for sleepers, when he comes to search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on their lees, &c., Zep 1:12 .

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

5 .] And this is the more advisable, because in the nature of things, each man’s own load (of infirmities and imperfections and sins: not of ‘ responsibility ,’ which is alien from the context) will ( in ordinary life : not ‘ at the last day ,’ which is here irrelevant, and would surely have been otherwise expressed: the must correspond with the above, and be a taking up and carrying, not an ultimate bearing the consequences of) come upon himself to bear .

here, hardly with any allusion to sop’s well-known fable (C. and H. ii. 182, edn. 2), but, as distinguished from , in which there is an idea of grievance conveyed, the load imposed on each by his own fault. The future, in this sense of that which must be in the nature of things, is discussed by Bernhardy, pp. 377 8.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Gal 6:5 . . This word was applied to the pack usually carried by a porter or a soldier on the march. In Mat 11:30 Christ employs this figure to describe the burden which he lays on each of his disciples ( ), and here it denotes the regular daily burden laid on Christians. It is necessary to distinguish this from the heavy loads ( ) to which Gal 6:2 refers as needing the help of Christian brethren for the relief of overtaxed carriers.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Galatians

BURDEN-BEARING

Gal 6:5 .

The injunction in the former of these verses appears, at first sight, to be inconsistent with the statement in the latter. But Paul has a way of setting side by side two superficially contradictory clauses, in order that attention may be awakened, and that we may make an effort to apprehend the point of reconciliation between them. So, for instance, you remember he puts in one sentence, and couples together by a ‘for,’ these two sayings: ‘Work out your own salvation’; ‘It is God that worketh in you.’ So here he has been exhorting the Galatian Christians to restore a fallen brother. That is one case to which the general commandment, ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens,’ is applicable.

I cannot here enter on the intervening verses by which he glides from the one to the other of these two thoughts which I have coupled together, but I may just point out in a word the outline of his course of thought. ‘Bear ye one another’s burden,’ says he; and then he thinks, ‘What is it that keeps men from bearing each other’s burdens?’ Being swallowed up with themselves, and especially being conceited about their own strength and goodness. And so he goes on: ‘If a man think himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.’ And what is the best cure for all these fancies inside us of how strong and good we are? To look at our work with an impartial and rigid judgment. It is easy for a man to plume himself on being good, and strong, and great; but let him look at what he has done, and try that by a high standard, and that will knock the conceit out of him. Or, if his work stands the test, then ‘he shall have rejoicing in himself, and not’ by comparing himself with other people. Two blacks do not make a white, and we are not to heighten the lustre of our own whiteness by comparing it with our neighbour’s blackness. Take your act for what it is worth, apart altogether from what other people are. Do not say, ‘God! I thank thee that I am not as other men are . . . or even as this publican’; but look to yourself. There is an occupation with self which is good, and is a help to brotherly sympathy.

And so the Apostle has worked round, you see, to almost an opposite thought from the one with which he started. ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens.’ Yes, but a man’s work is his own and nobody else’s, and a man’s character is his own and nobody else’s, so ‘every man shall bear his own burden.’ The statements are not contradictory. They complete each other. They are the north and the south poles, and between them is the rounded orb of the whole truth. So then, let me point out that:

I. There are burdens which can be shared, and there are burdens which cannot .

Let us take the case from which the whole context has arisen. Paul was exhorting the Galatians, as I explained, in reference to their duty to a fallen brother; and he speaks of him–according to our version–as ‘overtaken in a fault.’ Now, that is scarcely his idea, I think. The phrase, as it stands in our Bibles, suggests that Paul is trying to minimise the gravity of the man’s offence; but just in proportion as he minimised its gravity would he weaken his exhortation to restore him. But what he is really doing is not to make as little as possible of the sin, but to make as much of it as is consistent with the truth. The word ‘overtaken’ suggests that some sin, like a tiger in a jungle, springs upon a man and overpowers him by the suddenness of the assault. The word so rendered may perhaps be represented by some such phrase as ‘discovered’; or, if I may use a ‘colloquialism,’ if a man be caught ‘red-handed.’ That is the idea. And Paul does not use the weak word ‘fault,’ but a very much stronger one, which means stark staring sin. He is supposing a bad case of inconsistency, and is not palliating it at all. Here is a brother who has had an unblemished reputation; and all at once the curtain is thrown aside behind which he is working some wicked thing; and there the culprit stands, with the bull’s-eye light flashed upon him, ashamed and trembling. Paul says, ‘If you are a spiritual man’–there is irony there of the graver sort–’show your spirituality by going and lifting him up, and trying to help him.’ When he says, ‘Restore such an one,’ he uses an expression which is employed in other connections in the New Testament, such as for mending the broken meshes of a net, for repairing any kind of damage, for setting the fractured bones of a limb. And that is what the ‘spiritual’ man has to do. He is to show the validity of his claim to live on high by stooping down to the man bemired and broken-legged in the dirt. We have come across people who chiefly show their own purity by their harsh condemnation of others’ sins. One has heard of women so very virtuous that they would rather hound a fallen sister to death than try to restore her; and there are saints so extremely saintly that they will not touch the leper to heal him, for fear of their own hands being ceremonially defiled. Paul says, ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens’; and especially take a lift of each other’s sin.

I need not remind you how the same command applies in relation to pecuniary distress, narrow circumstances, heavy duties, sorrows, and all the ‘ills that flesh is heir to.’ These can be borne by sympathy, by true loving outgoing of the heart, and by the rendering of such practical help as the circumstances require.

But there are burdens that cannot be borne by any but the man himself.

There is the awful burden of personal existence. It is a solemn thing to be able to say ‘I.’ And that carries with it this, that after all sympathy, after all nestling closeness of affection, after the tenderest exhibition of identity of feeling, and of swift godlike readiness to help, each of us lives alone. Like the inhabitants of the islands of the Greek Archipelago, we are able to wave signals to the next island, and sometimes to send a boat with provisions and succour, but we are parted, ‘with echoing straits between us thrown.’ Every man, after all, lives alone, and society is like the material things round about us, which are all compressible, because the atoms that compose them are not in actual contact, but separated by slenderer or more substantial films of isolating air. Thus there is even in the sorrows which we can share with our brethren, and in all the burdens which we can help to bear, an element which cannot be imparted. ‘The heart knoweth its own bitterness’, and neither ‘stranger’ nor other ‘intermeddleth’ with the deepest fountains of ‘its joy.’

Then again, there is the burden of responsibility which can be shared by none. A dozen soldiers may be turned out to make a firing party to shoot the mutineer, and no man knows who fired the shot, but one man did fire it. And however there may have been companions, it was his rifle that carried the bullet, and his finger that pulled the trigger. We say, ‘The woman that Thou gavest me tempted me, and I did eat.’ Or we say, ‘My natural appetites, for which I am not responsible, but Thou who madest me art, drew me aside, and I fell’, or we may say, ‘It was not I; it was the other boy.’ And then there rises up in our hearts a veiled form, and from its majestic lips comes ‘Thou art the man’; and our whole being echoes assent– Mea culpa; mea maxima culpa –’My fault, my exceeding great fault.’ No man can bear that burden.

And then, closely connected with responsibility there is another–the burden of the inevitable consequences of transgression, not only away yonder in the future, when all human bonds of companionship shall be broken, and each man shall ‘give account of himself to God,’ but here and now; as in the immediate context the Apostle tells us, ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ The effects of our evil deeds come back to roost; and they never make a mistake as to where they should alight. If I have sown, I, and no one else, will gather. No sympathy will prevent to-morrow’s headache after to-night’s debauch, and nothing that anybody can do will turn the sleuth-hounds off the scent. Though they may be slow-footed, they have sure noses and deep-mouthed fangs. ‘If thou be wise thou shalt be wise for thyself, and if thou scornest thou alone shalt bear it.’ So there are burdens which can, and burdens which cannot, be borne.

II. Jesus Christ is the Burden-bearer for both sorts of burdens.

‘Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ,’ not only as spoken by His lips, but as set forth in the pattern of His life. We have, then, to turn to Him, and think of Him as Burden-bearer in even a deeper sense than the psalmist had discerned, who magnified God as ‘He who daily beareth our burdens.’

Christ is the Burden-bearer of our sin. ‘The Lord hath laid’–or made to meet–’upon Him the iniquity of us all.’ The Baptist pointed his lean, ascetic finger at the young Jesus, and said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God which beareth’–and beareth away–’the sin of the world.’ How heavy the load, how real its pressure, let Gethsemane witness, when He clung to human companionship with the unutterably solemn and plaintive words, ‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death. Tarry ye here and watch with Me.’ He bore the burden of the world’s sin.

Jesus Christ is the bearer of the burden of the consequences of sin, not only inasmuch as, in His sinless humanity, He knew by sympathy the weight of the world’s sin, but because in that same humanity, by identification of Himself with us, deeper and more wonderful than our plummets have any line long enough to sound the abysses of, He took the cup of bitterness which our sins have mixed, and drank it all when He said, ‘My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ Consequences still remain: thank God that they do! ‘Thou wast a God that forgavest them, and Thou didst inflict retribution on their inventions.’ So the outward, the present, the temporal consequences of transgression are left standing in all their power, in order that transgressors may thereby be scourged from their evil, and led to forsake the thing that has wrought them such havoc. But the ultimate consequence, the deepest of all, separation from God, has been borne by Christ, and need never be borne by us.

I suppose I need not dwell on the other aspects of this burden-bearing of our Lord, how that He, in a very deep and real sense, takes upon Himself the sorrows which we bear in union with, and faith on, Him. For then the griefs that still come to us, when so borne, are transmitted into ‘light affliction which is but for a moment.’ ‘In all their afflictions He was afflicted.’ Oh, brethren! you with sad hearts, you with lonely lives, you with carking cares, you with pressing, heavy duties, cast your burden on the Christ, and He ‘will sustain you,’ and sorrows borne in union with Him will change their character, and the very cross shall be wreathed in flowers.

Jesus bears the burden of that solemn solitude which our personal being lays upon us all. The rest of us stand round, and, as I said, hoist signals of sympathy, and sometimes can stretch a brotherly hand out and grasp the sufferer’s hand. But their help comes from without; Christ comes in, and dwells in our hearts, and makes us no longer alone in the depths of our being, which He fills with the effulgence and peace of His companionship. And so for sin, for guilt, for responsibility, for sorrow, for holiness, Christ bears our burdens.

Yes! And when He takes ours on His shoulders, He puts His on ours. ‘My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.’ As the old mystics used to say, Christ’s burden carries him that carries it. It may add a little weight, but it gives power to soar, and it gives power to progress. It is like the wings of a bird, it is like the sails of a ship.

III. Lastly, Christ’s carrying our burdens binds us to carry our brother’s!

‘So fulfil the law of Christ.’ There is a very biting sarcasm, and, as I said about another matter, a grave irony in Paul’s use of that word ‘law’ here. For the whole of this Epistle has been directed against the Judaising teachers who were desirous of cramming Jewish law down Galatian throats, and is addressed to their victims in the Galatian churches who had fallen into the trap. Paul turns round on them here, and says, ‘You want law, do you? Well, if you will have it, here it is–the law of Christ.’ Christ’s life is our law. Practical Christianity is doing what Christ did. The Cross is not only the ground of our hope, but the pattern of our conduct.

And, says Paul in effect, the example of Jesus Christ, in all its sweep, and in all the depth of it, is the only motive by which this injunction that I am giving you will ever be fulfilled. ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens.’ You will never do that unless you have Christ as the ground of your hope, and His great sacrifice as the example for your conduct. For the hindrance that prevents sympathy is self-absorption; and that natural selfishness which is in us all will never be exorcised and banished from us thoroughly, so as that we shall be awake to all the obligations to bear our brother’s burdens, unless Christ has dethroned self, and is the Lord of our inmost spirits.

I rejoice as much as any man in the largely increased sense of mutual responsibility and obligation of mutual aid, which is sweetening society by degrees amongst us to-day, but I believe that no Socialistic or other schemes for the regeneration of society which are not based on the Incarnation and Sacrifice of Jesus Christ will live and grow. There is but one power that will cast out natural selfishness, and that is love to Christ, apprehending His Cross as the great example to which our lives are to be conformed. I believe that the growing sense of brotherhood amongst us, even where it is not consciously connected with any faith in Christianity, is, to a very large extent, the result of the diffusion through society of the spirit of Christianity, even where its body is rejected. Thank God, the river of the water of life can percolate through many a mile of soil, and reach the roots of trees far away, in the pastures of the wilderness, that know not whence the refreshing moisture has come. But on the wide scale be sure of this: it is the law of Christ that will fight and conquer the natural selfishness which makes bearing our brother’s burdens an impossibility for men. Only, Christian people! let us take care that we are not robbed of our prerogative of being foremost in all such things, by men whose zeal has a less heavenly source than ours ought to have. Depend upon it, heresy has less power to arrest the progress of the Church than the selfish lives of Christian professors.

So, dear friends, let us see to it that we first of all cast our own burdens on the Christ who is able to bear them all, whatever they are. And then let us, with lightened hearts and shoulders, make our own the heavy burdens of sin, of sorrow, of care, of guilt, of consequences, of responsibility, which are crushing down many that are weary and heavy laden. For be sure of this, if we do not bear our brother’s burdens, the load that we thought we had cast on Christ will roll back upon ourselves. He is able to bear both us and our burdens, if we will let Him, and if we will fulfil that law of Christ which was illustrated in all His life, ‘Who, though He was rich, yet for our sakes became poor,’ and was written large in letters of blood upon that Cross where there was ‘laid on Him the iniquity of us all.’

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

burden. Greek. phortion. Only here and Mat 11:30; Mat 23:4, Luk 11:46 (Compare Gal 6:2). This is the burden that cannot be shared.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

5.] And this is the more advisable, because in the nature of things, each mans own load (of infirmities and imperfections and sins: not of responsibility, which is alien from the context) will (in ordinary life: not at the last day, which is here irrelevant, and would surely have been otherwise expressed: the must correspond with the above, and be a taking up and carrying, not an ultimate bearing the consequences of) come upon himself to bear.

here, hardly with any allusion to sops well-known fable (C. and H. ii. 182, edn. 2),-but,-as distinguished from , in which there is an idea of grievance conveyed,-the load imposed on each by his own fault. The future, in this sense of that which must be in the nature of things, is discussed by Bernhardy, pp. 377-8.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Gal 6:5. , a burden) either heavy or light. Comp. , Gal 6:2.-, shall bear) in the Divine judgment. The future, the antithesis to which is in the present [Bear ye] in Gal 6:2. There is however a semiduplex oratio in these words, so that the one is simultaneously indicated by the other.[61] Glorying is used as an ad hominem argument, because the other exhibits [shows on his part] false glorying: this is taken away from him, and the peculiar testimony of a good conscience is also in the meantime called glorying, in the way of paraphrase.

[61] See App. The present is understood in Gal 6:4, where the future is used; and the future is understood in verse 2, where the present is used.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Gal 6:5

Gal 6:5

For each man shall bear his own burden.-Every man is accountable to God. As said in verse 2, one may help another out of his difficulties and so assist him in bearing his burdens, but in the end he must give an account for himself. One cannot excuse himself before God because others failed to do their duty to help him. Another can help only as he enables one to bear his burdens.

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

Isa 3:10, Isa 3:11, Jer 17:10, Jer 32:19, Eze 18:4, Mat 16:27, Rom 2:6-9, Rom 14:10-12, 1Co 3:8, 1Co 4:5, 2Co 5:10, 2Co 5:11, Rev 2:23, Rev 20:12-15, Rev 22:12

Reciprocal: Job 19:4 – mine Jer 23:36 – for ye Jer 31:30 – General Eze 14:10 – they shall Eze 18:30 – every Rom 14:12 – General Gal 6:2 – Bear

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Gal 6:5. -For each one shall bear his own burden. The does not indicate an ellipse-such comparative rejoicing is worthless, for; but rather it refers to the last clause-and not in reference to the other. No one can glory in reference to his neighbour; for he will find on that self-inspection recommended that he has many frailties in himself-something which clings to him, and ever rebukes conscious or self-exultant comparison. This is more natural than the connection with the clause, Let every one prove his own work-for every one must bear his own burden,-the connection of Beza, Matthies, Hofmann; but the intervening clauses declare against it. -a diminutive in form only-is something which one carries, a pack. Sir 21:16, ; Xen. Mem. 3.13, 6, . But the of Gal 6:2 means loads-heavy loads, which they are asked to carry in sympathy, which some refused to carry; while is a burden which each one has-something individual, and of which one cannot rid himself. The are always heavy; but you may have on the one hand , Mat 23:4, and on the other a , Mat 11:30. The Vulgate and Claromontane wrongly render both Greek words by onus; but the Syriac rightly renders the first by , onus, and the second by , sarcina. This burden is not punishment, as is supposed by Theodoret, Jerome, Luther, Erasmus, Calvin, Grotius, a-Lapide, Estius, Bengel, and Rckert. For the is borne now; and because each one now bears it, and feels its weight, he is not to form hard opinions or pronounce unjust decisions about others. Nor is it simply responsibility (Gwynne), but his own peculiar () present sin and weakness, which ought to lead him to be charitable. The idea of either future punishment or responsibility is foreign to the course of thought. And the future has its ethical signification-shall bear = must bear, from the very nature of things. Winer, 40, 6; Bernhardy, pp. 377-8; Khner, 446, 3. The verse expresses a general truth which is or shall be ever realizing itself as a thing of moral necessity. Bisping and Windischmann take the future as the previous -he will find at the end of his self-examination that he is to bear his own burden. This is unnecessary. In fine, there is no discrepancy between this and the second verse. The two verses are like two stars revolving round each other. The second verse enjoins sympathy and mutual burden-bearing; while this verse describes that individual load which each one carries, and which no one can bear for him.

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

Gal 6:5. This verse might seem to contradict verse 2, but they are in perfect agreement for they are speaking of burdens that are altogether different; the word in this verse is from PHORTION. Thayer explains that the burdens in the Greek word indicated are, “the obligations Christ lays upon his followers,” and it is clear to all that no man can discharge the “obligations” of another. He can help others in the trials and hardships of life, but each man is individually responsible to God. That is the reason he should test his life by the word of God, and not by comparing it with the lives of others.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

Gal 6:5. For each man shall bear his own burden. No contradiction to Gal 6:2. Those who bear their own burden are best able to sympathize with others and to share in their burdens. Those who pray most for themselves pray most for others. Each is to prove his own work and not to leave it to be accomplished by others, and at the same time each is to help all others as often as he can find opportunity. And the opportunity to bless others is itself one of the greatest of blessings. Paul is fond of paradoxes and antithetic expressions of complementary truths (comp. Php 2:12-13; 2Co 12:10; when I am weak, then I am strong).

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

For each man shall bear his own burden. [Greek, phortion, burden or responsibility. Bear one another’s burden of trial and suffering, those burdens which come by reason of infirmity of the flesh, and so fulfill the law of Christ, which bids us love one another (Joh 13:34; Joh 15:12; 1Jo 3:23). For if a man think himself to be something, etc., i. e., so good that he can not be tempted, or so strong that he can not fall, or so perfect that he will never need the patience and sympathy of his brethren, when in reality he is nothing, i. e., no better than other men, he deceives himself. But let each man prove his own work instead of criticizing and judging the work of others, and then shall he have glory in himself alone, and not because he seems superior to his neighbor by comparison of his work with that of his neighbor. And it behooves us to be concerned about our own work, and to thus test it, for each one of us shall bear his own load of duty and accountability, for which alone he shall be called to answer in the judgment.]

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

Verse 5

For every man, &c.; that is, his happiness must depend upon his own inward character.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

6:5 {4} For every man shall bear his own burden.

(4) A reason why men ought to carefully watch themselves not others, because every man will be judged before God according to his own life, and not by comparing himself with other men.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

This verse gives a reason for the injunction in Gal 6:4. Every Christian is responsible to carry his own weight. We all have a load to bear, but it is comparatively light (Mat 11:30). The burden in Gal 6:2 is an excessive burden. The load in Gal 6:5 is our normal burden of responsibility. Paul used two different Greek words to describe these two burdens (bare and phortion respectively).

"Those are best able to sustain another who have proved their own power to be sustained in trials of their own." [Note: Guthrie, Galatians, pp. 144-45.]

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