Sermon Cloud

TEXT

Galatians 6:1-10: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. 2 Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. 3 For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4 But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. 5 For each will have to bear his own load. 6 One who is taught the word must share all good things with the one who teaches. 7 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. 9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. 10 So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

INTRODUCTION

Christianity is so realistic.  This list is incredibly sobering.  Paul assumes there will be problems now that you are a Christian.  For instance: 

V.1: Paul seems to indicate you’re going to fall into sin or someone you know as a brother or sister will fall into sin.  V. 3-5: There is going to be jealousy, and people who are close to you and love you may hurt you.  V. 6-9: Deals with the difficulties that come up between Christian ministers and those who are Christian.

One of the differences between a cult and real faith is that the cult says to take this magic pill, chant this magic prayer, give a certain amount and your troubles will all be over.  But true Christianity teaches us that if you get the Gospel, you’ll be ready deal with the stream of suffering that will definitely come your way.  Christianity doesn’t say, “Just believe and be good and all will go well,” it says, “The Gospel will give you a glory that will rise you above the suffering, but not remove it.”  Every one of these verses deals with relationships.  Every two or three verses could be different sermons.  But we’re going to preach the whole passage and come back to a part of it next week. 

Let’s look at verses 1 and 2.

Ministry of Truth and Tears

Verses 1-2: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. 2 Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

In a relationship, we should have two things: truth and love.  Without these, the relationship will not be based upon the Gospel and will be weak at best, harmful at worst.

There should be goodness and tenderness in your relationships with one another— power and sweetness. But who can put that together on their own?  Usually we are either very direct or extremely diplomatic and non-confrontational.  Naturally, we don’t and we won’t put these two things together.  This is the reason why when we lose track of the Gospel, our relationships suffer.  The Gospel says that we are more wicked than we dared believe and more loved and accepted than we dared hope for.  Therefore, the Gospel can take the other half missing in your relationships and add the supernatural to it.  The way you can tell you’ve forgotten or have diminished the Gospel is that the supernatural half of your relationship dies.  For instance, if you’re the sweet and gentle type, you become a coward and unable to confront someone.  If you’re the direct type, you become harsh and not very gracious.  Again and again, the Scripture speaks to us about this.

Ephesians 4:15: “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ”

In John 11, Jesus responds to Martha and Mary in two totally different ways, though they said the same thing to Him. 

John 11:20-36: “So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. 21 Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.’ 23 Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ 24 Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’ 25 Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?’ 27 She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.’ 28 When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, ‘The Teacher is here and is calling for you.’ 29 And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. 31 When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. 34 And he said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ 35 Jesus wept. 36 So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’”

This is such an amazing picture of Christ ministering exactly the way that is needed to two sisters with different personalities.  He essentially rebukes Martha with his response, but with Mary he is grieved and weeps with her. 

What this shows us is that we need Christ-likeness through the Gospel because we fail so very often in giving people the response they really need to whatever ails them.  Christ perfectly responds to each person in a way that cuts through their character and gets right to the heart.  We, on the other hand, are more concerned about our own feelings, so we allow whatever natural tendency in our personality to dictate our responses, and we find that we end up not saying enough to someone or saying too much without grace.  Both are in error because both are not driven by the courage and sweetness of the Gospel of grace.

What’s great about these two sides of Jesus—the ministry of truth and the ministry of tears, toughness and sweetness—is that they are dealt with in this passage pretty well.  You get a few different angles on how we are to respond to others in a way that is Christ-like in our relationships. 

Let’s take a closer look at verse 1.

The Ministry of Truth

Verse 1: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.”

This short passage tells us six things about the ministry of truth.

When do you have a ministry of truth in confrontation?  When do you talk to someone about their sin?

When do you restore?

Look carefully, because it’s not every time.  It’s going to take some real wisdom to confront someone about their sin with the truth of the Gospel. 

1. This is not a law which says, “Whenever you see someone sinning, approach them!”  It says, “if anyone is caught in any transgression.”  That is the qualifier.  It is someone who is in repeated sin. 

You’re not supposed to jump in every single time you see someone sinning and say, “you’re sinning!”  This goes against 1 Peter 4:8 which teaches us that love covers a multitude of sins, and 1 Cor. 13 which essentially is teaching us that love gives the benefit of the doubt.  You’re not supposed to have a critical eye towards people.  But what it does say is that if you see someone “caught” in sin, then speak to them.  The word “caught” means overtaken, or held captive. 

This is speaking of sin that is repeated over and over.  This is something that goes on and on; it isn’t speaking of confronting someone the first time they irritate you. 

2. It does not just mean repeated, it means that someone is blinded to it. 

To be caught in this context means you don’t really know you’ve been overtaken or are being held captive.  If you know you’re caught in a sin, and you know what that sin is, you’re not really that caught.  At the very least you’re aware of it, and if you’re a Christian you’ll be seeking the Gospel to be released from it.  This is speaking of someone who is a Christian, but is caught in a sin that they’re really not aware of. 

For all of us: whatever sin has really caught us is the sin that we really don’t know much about.  It’s the one we don’t really see that has caught us.  You’re almost in denial about it.

This is important because you might see someone that sins in a particular way but already knows it and is grieved over it and they’re praying about it and working on it.  You don’t need to crush them with more guilt; you need to pray for them.  Confronting them is more of an exercise in pointing out the obvious.  They are aware, they want to change, and they’re doing all they can to seek change even if that means they aren’t quite experiencing the liberation from that sin just yet.  If you know you’re caught in a sin, you’re not nearly as caught as when you didn’t think you were caught.  It was much worse then. 

So, it’s someone who’s repeating the same sin and it’s someone who is blinded by it.

3. This is not typically someone who has sinned against you.

When the Bible speaks about someone sinning against you, usually the Bible gives instruction on how you can restore the relationship.  But in this passage in Galatians, you’re not out to restore the relationship; you’re out to restore that person’s relationship to God. 

If someone has sinned against you, generally speaking, you may not be the best person to confront them.  This doesn’t mean that you never confront someone, but usually you are not the best one to do it.  You’re simply not the best one to give a bad message.  Usually if you’re confronted by someone that you’ve hurt, you don’t quickly say, “Oh, yes, I see… thank you for telling me about my sin against you and the pain I’ve caused you.” 

Usually the best person to confront the one who’s sinned against you is someone who is familiar with the situation, but who is not emotionally invested in the issue, meaning that they aren’t the one who’s been sinned against.  This is often the best person to confront them because they can do it objectively and peacefully.  They aren’t bottled up with all the emotional weight behind their message, which can do more damage than necessary to the person being confronted. 

Usually a person that you haven’t hurt, who is coming to you with an objective eye, and whom you are not embarrassed in front of because you didn’t harm them, is the one who you’ll receive the counsel from best. 

The person who says, “I saw what happened, but it really didn’t hurt me or affect me” might be the best one to speak to the one who has sinned.

In other words, you don’t just run right in whenever someone has sinned. 1: It has to be repeated.  2: The person is caught or blinded to it.  3: You need to be someone you think that person will listen to.  That’s when to do it.

Who do you restore?

When it says, “Brothers…you who are spiritual…watch yourself lest you be tempted,” it is speaking about a brother or sister in Christ. 

This can be misleading, but let me preface this with caution by saying this is not every time, but as a general rule it isn’t good for Christians to run around confronting non-Christians about their behavior or sin.  One, you’d be doing it all day long, and two, it often does more damage to the Gospel than good for the Gospel if you are a type of sin-sniffer who feels led to let unbelievers know that this action or that action is a sin. 

You see, what the person really needs is not compliance to this or that behavior or law, but Jesus.  It’s not just ineffective to run around confronting non-Christians about this or that sin, it distorts the Gospel. 

Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones wrote:

Christianity is not primarily a teaching nor a philosophy nor even a way of life.  It is before everything else a relationship to a person.  The New Testament, in a sense, will not even discuss with us how we’re going to live until we’ve come to a satisfactory answer about Him.  All along, the Bible shuts us down to this one matter, and holds us up against this one thing, and refuses to even discuss our questions or problems with us. Before we can discuss how to live- WHAT HAVE WE MADE OF HIM?

If someone comes to you now and says, “I’m thinking about becoming a Christian, but does that mean when I do that I have to stop doing this or that?”  What is the right answer?  Well, it’s not exactly wrong to say, “Yes, you should stop doing that once you’ve become a Christian,” but it’s misleading. 

Until you come to Christ, you don’t even know how to view these things, behavior and attitudes.  You don’t see them through the right lens yet.  To tell someone to stop this or that before they’re a Christian will cause them to look at Christianity primarily as a moral life you live or the moral things you’re not supposed to do.  Christianity then becomes viewed as what you can or can’t do rather than a person who, when you know Him, will change your view of what you want to do or not do.

A person who is not yet a Christian is asking you that question because they don’t want to give up that sin yet.  That sin is still pleasurable to them.  They don’t see it as sin.  They don’t see it rightly.  Until they know Christ, their view of that sin is seen through the wrong lens. 

To become a Christian is not to simply pick up a new set of rules to live by.  It’s to get a whole new center for the solar system of your life around which everything must orbit.  It was orbiting around something else, but now it’s going to orbit around Christ.  With this new found center, everything you see will look different. 

When you say, “Will I be able to do this when I’m a Christian?” the right answer is, “First figure out who Jesus is.”  If Jesus is who He said He is, that question is mostly irrelevant.  If Jesus is who He said He is, it doesn’t matter what you want now, when you want Him, this desire and that desire will look totally different than it does now.  Looking at this desire or that desire now, without first looking at Jesus and believing upon Him, is irrelevant. 

You and I as Christians have to realize that when you take a person who does not center their life on Christ and attempt to change them from the outside first, before the inside, you are actually preaching a false Gospel to them that says to have favor with God, or what God wants most, is to keep His Law through your moral actions.  This is not so.  You can not keep His law until you meet the one who kept it for you!  When you are in relationship to Jesus Christ, which then brings you to the Father as His child, what becomes central to your life is your relationship to Him before anything else. 

We can’t run around attempting to correct someone’s behavior when they don’t even know Christ yet!  This has gotten Christianity in more trouble than anything because the very ones who are judging others and correcting others to make them good moral people are themselves immoral and sinners!  When they sin, everyone they’ve roasted will say, “See, I knew Christianity was a bunch of nonsense.”   Why?  Because this is what they think it means to be Christian. 

But, once they have Jesus, then you can go about restoring them with the truth so that their witness to the world is so sparkling, others will inquire why they live and love the way they do. 

Who does the restoring? 

Verse 1: “…you who are spiritual should restore him…”

Now, immediately you think this has to do with those who are super-Christians and have met the standards of being the “spiritual” ones.  But this isn’t what this means.

“You who are spiritual…” means anyone with the Holy Spirit.  This is a way for Paul to say that it isn’t reserved for the moral elite.  It’s for all those who have the Spirit of God in them. 

What does it mean to restore someone?

“Restore” is a very specific word in Greek which means to set a bone back in its place.  That little word is really rich, and it has pretty profound implications.

Paul is telling us that sin is like dislocated joints.  It isn’t the prevailing view that sin is something outside of us, like a bullet, that comes and lodges itself in us and we need to extract it.  That’s not what he’s saying. 

When someone says, “My biggest problem is drinking, so I have to get alcohol away from me,” they haven’t totally understood sin yet.  Of course they do need to be very careful when it comes to alcohol, but alcohol isn’t their biggest problem.  It is a problem, but it isn’t the major problem. 

Sin isn’t like a bullet that is foreign to the body and needs to be removed.  Sin is like a bone that belongs to the body but is in the wrong place.  It is something good that belongs there, but has become dislocated.  Your main problem is never stuff that you should stop doing, but the relationships to the stuff you have that has become disjointed.  Sex shouldn’t be taken away from your life; it should be relocated and put back in place because it’s dislocated.  Food, alcohol, family, power, control, and comfort should all be in your life like a bone.  But when that thing becomes dislocated, it begins to destroy you.  You don’t take out a bone because it’s out of joint; you put it back into place.  If Christ is the center of your solar system, then these things can’t be.  If they are, then they’ve become dislocated and they need to be put back.

The word “restore” then means that if you’re going to someone to talk about their sin, you’re not going to wound them, you’re going to heal them.  Now, we all know there is no way to put a bone back in place without it hurting, but the goal is that they are made whole and brought back in step with the Gospel.  We’re not to go and confront someone for the purpose of getting it off our chest, or being honest, or telling them like it is.  If you’re going to do that, you’re not going as someone who wants healing, but as someone who needs healing and you think the way for you to be healed is to get out the splinter and place it in them. 

Everything you should be doing in your tone of voice and the way you use your words, the timing you choose to speak with them, the setting, everything should be considered so as not to further wound, but to restore. 

How do you restore?

The text says, “in a spirit of gentleness.” 

The Ministry of Tears

Verse 2: “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

This is such a beautiful picture. 

How do you carry somebody’s burden?  There are three things to consider if you want to carry someone’s burden with them:

1. You have to listen until the person feels understood.

How do you bear someone’s burden when they are under a crushing weight?  You have to get under the burden with them, in their shoes.  You have to get right next to them.  The word “understand” means to “stand under.” 

The first thing you need to do is listen to them until you understand the burden and you feel their feelings and you let them know it. 

I can’t tell you how many times my wife has come to me with a burden and before she finished speaking, I had a diagnosis and prescription for her to follow rather than listening to her and trying to understand what she’s being burdened by.  But, the times that I’ve really tried to understand what she’s going through, when I’ve tried to come along side of her, without having given her one suggestion, she’s felt release and relief just from knowing that I understand.  Isn’t that odd?

Have you ever experienced that?  You’ve shared with someone some burden you have, you’ve opened your heart and spilled it out and you knew they understood, and just from them really understanding, you felt better even though the problem hadn’t gone away.  I have.

2. You have to let some of the weight become yours; you have to suffer.

Sometimes that is emotional, physical, perhaps spiritual, and even financial suffering along with them. 

Jonathan Edwards, in one of his lectures on giving, responds to people who people claim, “Well, I’m too poor to give” by saying:

If our neighbors difficulties and necessities be much greater than our own and is not likely to be otherwise relieved, we should relate with him to take part of his burden on ourselves.  How else will that rule of bearing one another’s burdens to be fulfilled?  If we are never obliged to relieve one another’s burdens without burdening ourselves, we will not bear our neighbors burden when we bear no burden at all?

Whenever you say, “I can’t afford the time,” what you mean is, “I don’t want any of that person’s burden to come to me.”  When you say, “I can’t afford to give,” what you mean is that you don’t want their burden to become yours and burden you.  You simply don’t want to be bothered.  You don’t want to be inconvenienced so that you aren’t able to do certain things.

To bear someone’s burden means to some degree, whether financially, emotionally, physically, or whatever, you’re allowing their burden to affect you and take it on with them.

If you’re not engaged in people’s lives to the point of suffering, you’re not bearing one another’s burdens. 

3. You have to carry their burden, not yours.

Now, if you begin to carry their burden and you start sinking and are yourself crushed, you’re not any good to anybody. 

How can you hit it just right?  How can you get to a place of understanding them and come under their weight and suffer with them without yourself being crushed? 

Fulfill the law of Christ!  What is the law of Christ?  It is the example of Christ’s life and work. 

The reason we can bear each other’s burdens and not be crushed by each other’s burdens but not avoid each other’s burdens, is because Jesus Christ was crushed for our iniquities. 

Psalms 34:18: “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

The Psalmist didn’t yet know exactly why!  In Isaiah 53 verse 4 we’re told why.

Isaiah 53:4-5: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.”

There is one burden you must never attempt to carry on your own.  There is one thing that if you try to bear it, will utterly crush you: your own salvation. 

Your salvation has to crush whoever attempts to bear it up, and it has already crushed Jesus.  If you attempt to bear it, you will be crushed yourself. 

If you attempt to bear someone’s burden to the point of acting like their messiah to save them without relying on Christ yourself, you will become crushed. 

If you do this, you’re not really helping that person; you’re using them to prove to yourself that you’re ok.  You’re not bearing their burden; you’re using them to save yourself. 

That’s why you’re not helping them.  You’re not really being crushed by their burden, you’re being crushed by THE burden, the one Jesus Christ came to be crushed for.  It is a double insult to God.  You’re disobeying this passage because you’re not really bearing their burden for their restoration, AND worst, you’re saying to God that what He did in Christ is not enough.  Jesus being crushed is not enough for you, you want to use others to attempt to save yourself and therefore you are insulting God’s grace.  He already crushed His own perfect Son, yet you are trying to act like the spotless lamb and bear it yourself.