The Cross and Nothing Else

When I had finished writing of the Spirit's fruit, I turned to the plainest test of it — how you treat a brother who has fallen. "If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness" (Galatians 6:1). Mark that word — restore. Not expose, not crush, not stand back in cold safety. And I add the guard that keeps you from pride: "considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted." The one who forgets he could fall is the one already falling. This is how you "bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2) — the law that is love, the law he kept and I could not.

Do not mistake me: to carry a brother's crushing load is not to carry no load at all. "Every man shall bear his own burden" (Galatians 6:5). Before God each of us answers for his own walk; you cannot lean on another's faith, nor blame another for your sin. Test your own work, and let your boasting be in what is truly yours before God, not in measuring yourself against the man beside you.

Then I set down a law as fixed as the harvest: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" (Galatians 6:7). Sow to the flesh, and you reap corruption; sow to the Spirit, and you reap life everlasting. So I plead — "let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not" (Galatians 6:9). The field looks bare a long while before the grain comes up. Keep sowing. Do good to all, and above all to the household of faith (Galatians 6:10).

Now hear where all of it lands, why I took the pen in my own hand to write it large. Men were troubling you to be circumcised, to add something of the flesh to Christ, that they might boast in you. But I will boast in one thing only: "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Galatians 6:14). There is my worth and there is yours — not in circumcision, not in any mark you make on yourself, but in this: "in Christ Jesus... a new creature" (Galatians 6:15). Born again by his death, made new by his rising.

I carry no ornament of my own righteousness. "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus" (Galatians 6:17) — the scars of loving him. So restore the fallen gently, carry each other, sow to the Spirit without fainting, and glory in nothing under heaven but a crucified Savior. "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen" (Galatians 6:18).