How It Shapes Our Relationships

Well, we're at the end of our Galatians series. By now, we've been dealing with the gospel for two or three months, and I'm hoping that we are all experts in the gospel. I'm hoping that you will be able to teach me about the gospel and will be able to correct me because this is all that the Galatian letter is. It is pure and simply the gospel. So you've heard it from A to Z, and we're wrapping up Z this morning.

If you have your bibles with you, let's turn to Galatians 6, and we'll read from verses 1 to 18, the whole chapter. Galatians 6:1. Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself or you may also be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way, you will fulfil the law of Christ.

If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one should test his own actions, then he can take pride in himself without comparing himself to somebody else, for each one should carry his own load. Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor. Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked.

A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction. The one who sows to please the spirit, from the spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have the opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand. Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. Not even those who are circumcised obey the law, yet they want to be circumcised; they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your flesh. May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything. What counts is a new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God. Finally, let no one cause me any trouble for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers.

Amen. So far, our reading. We're going to be summing up, I guess, the whole theme of the letter to the Galatians, and we're going to be breaking them down into a few segments here because Paul covers a lot in this last final chapter. Paul begins actually not in chapter 6, verse 1, but 5, verse 26. It's always hard when we have these chapter divisions because they can break up a flow of thought.

Paul begins a new point in verse 26 of the previous chapter. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other, which then flows into verses 1 to 5 of chapter 6. To be conceited, if you don't understand what that means, is to be proud or prideful. It is to seek your own glory. And within the context of relationships that Paul is talking about here in the first five verses, it talks about using relationships to somehow get glory for yourself.

Paul warns that gospel motivated Christians will not fall into the state where our treatment of other people will be tinged with selfishness, with self seeking. Why is that? Why won't Christians do that? Because the gospel undermines that selfishness. When someone is caught in sin, as verse 1 refers to, a conceited person would look down on someone who is caught in sin.

A conceited person would look down on them. They would be glad not to be like them, and they will feel good about themselves because of someone else's problems. And by comparison, they look much better. Pointing out their sin would merely be to underline how good they look in comparison to them. What will a person do who understands the gospel, however?

Someone who has read Galatians, who's an expert now in the gospel. Paul says that they will not ignore someone who is in sin. Interestingly enough, we might be tempted to say, okay, that's their problem. That's fine. We all have our problems.

Paul says, you will not ignore someone in that situation when they are caught in sin, but will gently restore someone. We cannot overlook someone that is caught in sin. This is an entanglement and an ensnarement that they cannot escape from. It's not a one time thing. It is a cycle.

It indicates a sinful behaviour which is a pattern, a sin that has gotten out of control, a sin that has gotten the upper hand over someone. It refers to a behaviour that a person will not be able to overcome without help. Without help. Don't be conceited. Gently restore.

Rebuild someone caught in this vicious cycle that they're in. So Christians are neither to be too scared or too timid to confront, and yet they are not to be too quick to criticise. From the context of the fruit of the spirit, which we just again read this morning in the previous chapter, Paul is saying, if you follow the desires of the spirit, you will restore your brother, your sister according to sin. This is the responsibility of all of those who have the Holy Spirit in them. The word to restore that's used here is used in a setting of someone who has a dislocated shoulder or a hip or a whatever joint.

And to restore it, in the Greek word, is to set it back into place. That's the idea here. To restore it into its original function. To put a bone back into place, and maybe we should get John here to talk about his hip. To put a bone back into place inevitably causes pain.

It causes pain. It's not a painless procedure, but it is a healing pain. There's healing at the end of it. It means we are to confront even when it will be painful, but our confronting must be aiming to prompt a change, to bring about healing. It must be for the good of the person in pain.

That's the difference. If we are proud, if we are self righteous, and we confront sin, it is about us being good. It's about us feeling better. Confronting and restoring someone caught in sin is a way to carry each other's burdens. For by this, you are fulfilling the law of Christ, verse 2.

In verse 2, Paul is bringing the practical example of what he talked about in chapter 5, verses 13 to 14 where he says, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command, love your neighbour as yourself. And Paul is giving the practical outworking of that this morning. By carrying your brothers, your sisters burdens, you will fulfil the law of Christ. Who was it that summed up the law?

Jesus, when he talked about loving your neighbour as you love yourself. That became the law of Christ. It's not a different law, but it's simplified. And it's exemplified in who? In Jesus himself.

In Jesus, the law is fulfilled. In Jesus, the law is exemplified. He loved like he told us to love. He is the embodiment of this law. We are not to let people carry their burdens alone.

These burdens can be responsibilities, raising a child on your own, renovating or moving a house, or they can be a difficulty or a problem. This is not necessarily just tied to practical problems. It's broad. Paul is vividly and practically teaching how a Christian relates to their neighbours. And the truth is, the reality is you cannot carry and help someone carry their burdens without becoming very close to that person.

Standing in their shoes, putting your own strength under that boulder that's on theirs. This is the law of Christ. It is a life centred upon the other rather than the self. It's not the old law anymore, but the law of Christ. We bear others' burdens because Christ bore ours.

So in a sense, verse 2 could be summed up as bear others burdens, and by doing so, you follow in the footsteps of Christ. Is there a habitual sin you see in a brother or sister that you can be gently restoring them from? Is there something that you've noticed, that the Lord has been prompting you about, but you've been too scared to respond to? Perhaps there's something in your life that a friend is trying to restore you from. Are you willing to listen?

Are you willing to understand that this is the law of Christ that they are responding to? This is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that is working in their life to love you. How do we restore people gently? By remembering your place, and that is what Paul moves on to in verse 3. If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, then they will be too self important to be servant hearted.

If someone thinks that he is something when he is nothing, they will be too self important, too self indulgent to have a servant heart. You won't be able to carry others burdens if you don't have a proper gospel based view of yourself. Jesus himself said, and it just breaks your ego, without me, you can do nothing. Without me, you can do nothing. It takes Christ centred humility to help others.

Other than that, you will be serving it out of some other negative motivation. Remember that you were rescued. You needed to be rescued. There was nothing in you that could save yourself. You weren't capable of doing anything.

So don't think you are able to do much to save others. That's God's job. Unlike being conceited, which leads a person to compare himself to someone else, Christian humility motivated by the gospel means we test our own actions. That's what Paul says here, test your own actions. Whilst we remain humble, remembering our place before Christ, we can, however, take pride, verse 4 says, by comparing ourselves not with others, but by God's expectation of us.

Let me explain. This means we are to assess our own spiritual gifts, our own opportunities to serve. God has placed us in a particular place, in a particular time, for a particular purpose. God has called us, and we measure that calling against ourselves and how we respond to that. In a sense, we measure ourselves against ourselves.

In light of what God has given us, how are we using our gifts? That is how we are to take pride in ourselves. How are we using the talents that God has given us? The spiritual giftings that he has enabled us to have. If we are able to say honestly, this person I'm helping, these people that I'm serving, with my wealth, with my health, with my gift of mercy, with my gift of hospitality, with my gift of evangelism, if I'm able to use these gifts for God's glory, we may take legitimate pride in ourselves.

But anything other than that is going to be false pride. Anything based upon what we do and our comparisons with those around us, we're going to gain a false pride in us. We are going to become conceited. So that's why Paul says in verse 5, each one should be able to carry his own load. This sounds contradictory because on the one hand, verse 2 says, carry others burdens.

And then verse 5 says, but each one should carry his own load. The difference is though, the burden and the load are two different things. The burden is this sin, this spiral that someone is caught in that we are to help to gently restore, and the load is the responsibility God has given us, the giftings God has given us, the place and the opportunity that God has given us, we must carry those things because ultimately, God is going to judge us or God is going to ask us on the final judgment day, how did you use these gifts? And in that sense, we can only compare ourselves with ourselves, with what God has given us. When we see progress in our individual load, we can take legitimate pride in it whether or not we are better or worse than someone else.

We will not compare ourselves with someone who has done less or more than us. God has given them a different load to carry and to serve him with. Not everyone is going to be a preacher. Not everyone is going to be an evangelist. Not everyone is going to have incredible mercy or faith. But you will have a gift.

That is a promise. You have been blessed to be a blessing. Our task is to carry our individual load, not someone else's in a way that pleases God. And once we get that, isn't that liberating? Because now we only have to answer for what we have been given.

We don't have to compare ourselves anymore. We don't have to feel guilty about the fact that we don't have the gift of the gab. In verses 1 to 5, Paul shares how the gospel makes us more compassionate and humble in our relationships. It's the gospel that motivates true humility to serve others in the best way. Now as he moves on to verses 6 to 10, he moves on to show how the gospel makes us more eager to do good to those around us, and this is in a more practical sense.

Paul makes a statement in verse 6. Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor. Now this may seem disjointed at first, but it fits into the overall theme of loving others. The Greek word for anyone who receives instruction is katekuminos. And you might recognise that it sounds similar to catechism.

It is someone who is being catechised. These believers are the ones who receive catechism or Christian teaching. They must share all good things with their catechiser. Now this term almost certainly the term to share all good things means financial support, interestingly enough. Paul is probably referring to the teaching elders of the Galatian churches like the Timothys and the Tituses were in those days.

Elsewhere in his writings, Paul said that an honest day's work deserves a fair wage. Don't muzzle an ox whilst it's treading grain. So it benefits both the categorised and the categoriser, the learner and the teacher if this instructor is supported to do their work. It fits in with this doing good to all of those around us. In this light, the word to share, koinonia, again, is a very deep word in the New Testament.

It means fellowship. This support that the catechiser, the teacher receives, is actually a fellowshipping with the students. The church members and the teacher go about in their life of instruction as partners together. The salary of a Christian teacher is not seen as a payment, rather it is the church that shares that fellowships, the financial gifts that God has given them with the teacher. It happens in the atmosphere or the context of love.

Your giving to this church which supports me is an act of love for me. It's a nice way to think about it, isn't it? This is a challenge for our modern day church, of course, because it challenges us not to be consumers who come to a church and simply pick the benefits of it without doing fellowshipping, sharing in the gifts that we have with the church. This theme of love then continues when Paul talks about sowing and reaping. Some call this the law of great returns.

Don't be deceived, Paul says. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. This is the most basic and the most profound. I remember that my granddad used to talk of this as the great boomerang.

Whatever you throw, it's going to come back and hit you. Throw good things, it's going to come back good. Throw bad things, it's going to come back bad. It comes on the back of the teaching on the fruit of the spirit in chapter 5. Now Paul again uses an agricultural metaphor like he did for fruit, and he uses an agricultural metaphor to talk about a spiritual reality.

The first reality in this teaching is that whatever you sow, whatever you sow, you will reap. If you sow tomatoes, you're not going to get pumpkins. Secondly, whatever you sow, you will reap. Though the seed you sow may lie dormant in the ground until the rain comes, it will eventually come up. It's unstoppable once that seed has been sown.

If you sow to please your sinful nature, Paul says, from that nature, you will reap destruction. Think you can flirt with sin? Be prepared to be hit by the consequences. Though your sin is neatly hidden away, though you can rationalise it away like a good defence attorney can, God isn't fooled. You cannot deceive him.

He knows about it all. The process of sowing and reaping, Paul uses here, is a natural metaphor. And that's interesting to note. That's important to note. Tim Keller says that the idea here isn't that God is the one sitting there and measuring out judgment as soon as you commit a sin.

You know, shooting lightning bolts every time you commit a sin. The idea here is of natural consequences almost. The natural fabric of human existence. Paul's talking about the process of the moral universe. Sin against God sets up strains in the fabric of the moral and the spiritual universe.

Just like eating fatty foods strains the fabric of your heart. If you sow poor seed, you reap a poor crop. Paul is saying that sin makes things fall apart by its nature. Sin makes things fall apart. So if you sow with dishonesty, you break the fabric of relationships, and the consequence is loneliness.

It makes sense. It's logical. If you sow envy, if you sow lust, you break the fabric of contentment, and you reap bitterness. You're discontent. Whatever you sow, you will reap.

Sin always brings destruction of some kind. You're not going to sow sin and receive life. Sow sin, you don't get joy. Sin will eventually come home to roost. But Paul says, the one who sows to please the spirit will reap eternal life.

The warning of sin is scary, but the promise of the spirit is beautiful. If we live by the spirit, if we sow by the spirit, if we sow in obedience to God's perfect will, if we keep in step with the spirit, if we nurture the gifts or the fruit of the spirit, then we will enjoy the approval and the assurance and the fulfilment and the joy of Christian life. How do we sow in the spirit? This is the next question. Verse 9 says, by not becoming weary of doing good.

It is to do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. That's what we just mentioned in our talk about the deacon. That shows what the Christian life is all about. It's not about meetings. It's not about church attendance.

It's not about programmes. It's not about head knowledge. It's not about spiritual warm and fuzzies. It's not the amount of conversions our church has. It is about doing good to the person in front of you, behind you, next to you.

Doing good is serving someone's need. And of course, have a need to be evangelised, but the word to do means we are to love in deed as well as in word. It means that cooking pancakes at a high school for breakfast is as much a ministry of Christ as preaching on a pulpit on Sunday. This love is directed, Paul says, to all people. To all people.

No one is excluded from this. Not even the tattooed bikeys living next door. But it also begins, he says, with the family of believers. It shows that we are a family. It shows the koinonia, the fellowship, the intimacy that we all share with one another.

We must do good intensely for those who we are in fellowship with. And then lastly, Paul moves to verses 11 to 18, and really, it's a summary of what he's been talking about this whole time. He makes his final appeal, makes his final reminder, and then he sends his greetings. And what he writes is a summary of his main argument. The gospel is what counts.

Don't lose it. This counts. Don't lose it. Verse 14 sums it all up. May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

That is a summary statement almost of Galatians. The message of Galatians all along has said, the heart of your religion is what you boast in. The heart of your religion is what you boast in. If you think the cross is just a help, it's just a nice thing to remind us of a nice feeling, then you have to complete your salvation with good works. If the cross is just a help, you have to complete your salvation with good works of some kind.

It becomes really your works which restores your relationship with God. Therefore, you boast in your flesh. You boast in your intellect. You boast in your capabilities. But if you understand the gospel, you boast only in the cross.

Our identity, our self image is based on what gives us a sense of dignity, a sense of purpose, a sense of significance. If we boast in the cross, our identity is in Jesus. In him, we are secure. In him, we are confident. And at the same time, we are humble because we know what it cost.

We know what it meant. We know that we needed Jesus to rescue us. As we finish this series on Galatians, if you've learned nothing else, remember this. If you've learned absolutely nothing from the last two months, remember this. If you truly boast in Christ alone, the world is dead to you.

The things around you cease to hold a power over you. If there's nothing anymore in this world where you go to locate your righteousness or your identity or your peace, then there is nothing in this world that controls you. Nothing that you must have. And that is liberating. Paul sums it all up in these verses.

The gospel changes what I fundamentally strive for. It changes the whole basis of my identity. Nothing in the world has any power over me anymore. I am free at last to enjoy both God and the world because I don't need the world anymore. I feel neither inferior to anyone or superior to anyone because I'm being made completely into something or someone entirely new.

What great news that is. What great peace, contentment that brings. We are being shaped. We are being made new. There's nothing in this world that needs to have power over you anymore.

You do not need to be caught, ensnared in sin. Jesus Christ has set us free. Let's pray. Well, if there's some of us here that have had this penny dropped this morning, we thank you for that. Lord, if there is nothing else that we remember but this, that in you, we have been crucified to the world.

The world does not have power over us anymore. The world cannot make us sad. The world cannot make us happy. It cannot define who we are anymore. The mirror that we look in to feel good or bad about ourselves does not matter anymore.

The weight of money in our wallet doesn't matter anymore. The feel of security in relationships, of being good parents in the light in the eyes of other parents, of being great students in the eyes of our parents. It doesn't matter anymore because we boast in the cross of Jesus Christ. We boast in the cross, Lord, that you have given it all for us. Our insecurities have been dealt with.

We are completely secure in you. Our flaws have been washed away as clean as white snow, so we are beautiful in your eyes. This is good news. This is the gospel. Lord, we pray that we will never ever forsake this message, that we will never ever lose it somehow, that we will never go back to the old way of thinking about things.

Sow it. Write it into our hearts, Lord. Thank you, Lord. That is all we can say. Thank you for this amazing gift that you have given us.

We praise you, Lord. We give our lives over to you as a living sacrifice for it. We pray, Lord, that you may do with us what you will. Help us to restore and to love those around us who need to be restored. Help us to do it with humility and with compassion.

Lord, help us to do good to others. Help us to be agents of mercy. Help us to help the poor. Give us a compassion and desire for them, that we may be completely other person focussed rather than selfish. Bring us to that point, Lord, so that we may bring you glory and honour and praise that you deserve. Amen.