How To Carry Your Brother's Burden
Carry your brother's burden of consequence of sin.
Introduction
Mindful of the danger that not all those who purpose to live by the Spirit will always live thus, the apostle appends to the injunction of 5:25 an exhortation to those who live by the Spirit to restore any who fall, adds exhortations to mutual burden-bearing, and reminds them that each man has a burden of his own.
v.1
What this particular transgression was we do not know, nor can we be sure whether Paul was here referring to an actual “case study” that had come to his attention or whether, as seems more likely, he was providing a general guideline for dealing with serious moral lapses that were occurring with some frequency among the Galatians. Clearly Paul was responding to a real life situation in which concrete acts of wrongdoing such as those he had just listed among the works of the flesh were disrupting both the Galatians’ relationship to God and their fellowship with one another. What were the believers to do in such a situation?
This sentence is closely connected with the thought of chap. 5. Recognising the possibility, too sadly proved by experience, that one who has chosen the life by the Spirit may nevertheless fall into sin, the apostle exhorts those members of the community who have not thus fallen to care for him who has.
Clearly Paul was responding to a real life situation in which concrete acts of wrongdoing such as those he had just listed among the works of the flesh were disrupting both the Galatians’ relationship to God and their fellowship with one another. What were the believers to do in such a situation?