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Certain encounters in my early twenties permanently changed the course of my life. Meeting Amanda-Sue. Discovering theology and Greek and language full stop. And the Bible teaching of B.B. Warfield, R.C. Sproul, Jonathan Edwards, and Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

Above all learning about God’s holiness, my sin, and why Christ had to die on the cross.

I had encountered the Gospel.

In Galatians 1-5 Paul explained and fiercely defended the Gospel. In the sixth and final chapter he brings in the harvest. He does this in a flurry of short commands.

This is the justified, Cross-transformed, Spirit-filled life. This is how the Gospel changes everything about our life now and forevermore.

Note seven things:

1. Restore one another

Galatians 6:1 Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a trespass/sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person in a spirit of gentleness. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.

Until we go to be with the LORD we will continue to struggle with sin. Our failures will be recurrent and serious. “Forgive us our trespasses” is a daily prayer. Knowing our own weakness the failures of others frighten us. “There but for the grace of God go I.”

So we should tend to the falls of others with gentleness, consideration, humility, meekness. This is the penultimate fruit of the Spirit.

In church we do not just learn about the Bible. We strive to live it out. Without church discipline, urging one another to put the Word into practice, a church is no longer a church. It is just a classroom with singing.

We should, like a healthy family, relentlessly encourage and correct, praise and rebuke one another. Loving parents do not ignore and indulge their children’s manifest faults and failures. Neither does a loving church shut its eyes to manifest sins of commission or omission. We will restore others – the same word describes James and John mending their nets – with love and humble gentleness.

With what wisdom, firmness, and gentleness did Jesus restore the Samaritan woman at the well. This is the model of church discipline. It always aims for restoration.

Do not be the ass who despises correction. Ask for it and welcome it. “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.” (Proverbs 27:6)

2. Carry each other’s burdens.

Galatians 6:2 Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.

Here is a great moment in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. Cosette is still a little girl with skinny arms. She is the slave of the Thénardiers, her cruel and selfish guardians. Late at night she hauls water for them with her thick wooden pail. As she slips and stumbles under her heavy load in the black of night, in a moment of exhaustion and creeping terror, she is amazed to feel the bucket lighten. Jean Valjean has finally found her. He lifts the bucket from her exhausted grasp. He lifts and carries her.

Valjean is powerful and kind. He has come to help and free her from her misery.

Do you know your church brothers and sisters? Do you want to know them? They carry heavy burdens of grief, sickness, poverty, family breakdown, loneliness, disappointment, failure, and guilt. Just like you.

If you are concerned to fulfil God’s law then come alongside others with the love and the strength of Christ. Help to lift their burdens. Help them as you would want them to help you. Bring a listening ear. Practical help. Financial help. Encouragement. Prayer. Commitment.

Presence is very powerful.

Keep going with Christ. Don’t stop, don’t give up. Press on.

3. Be Humble

Galatians 6:3–5 If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. ⁴Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, ⁵for each one should carry their own load.

Social media is all about comparison. To pit yourself against others. To show, overtly and crassly, or subtly and cleverly, that you are bigger, better, stronger, happier, richer, more beautiful. Social media does not cause the comparing. It is innate to our egotism. TikTok is just a tool for ego, for a nature which Martin Luther described as incurvatus in se, curved in on itself.

Constant comparison with others is unloving, exhausting, harmful. Laughable.

Is it reasonable to look down upon the poverty of a man in Haiti? The spiritual blindness of a woman in Medina or North Korea? The meagre education of a girl in Afghanistan? The social dysfunction of a fatherless boy in Roebourne?

It is generally stupid to look down on others. Like us they bear much unseen baggage.

Nor will a Christian look down on others for their self-inflicted wounds and burdens. Grace-born humility forbids this.

4. Encourage Your Teachers

Galatians 6:6 The one who receives instruction in the word should share all good things with their instructor.

Here is a specific example of burden-bearing. As a travelling apostle Paul depended on others’ hospitality. He brought a profound knowledge of the good Word. He skilfully applied it to life and worship in the marriage, family, church, workplace, and public square. They gave what he needed to give himself fully to this task. How beautiful when churches and their pastors care for each other like this.

5. Sow to the Spirit

Galatians 6:7–8 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. ⁸Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

Jesus said the same. “People do not pick figs from thorn-bushes, or grapes from briers.” (Luke 6:44)

God has made a cause-and-effect world. As a rule, frugality brings riches, waste brings poverty. Moderate eating and drinking maintains health. Overconsumption strains our hearts. And pants. Careful reading brings knowledge and skill. Wasting time on screens, lazy reliance on AI, brings ignorance and foolishness. Sexual integrity brings happiness. Sexual sin devastates, especially those around us.

Read Proverbs over and again.

Give your time, energy, thought, and focus to your flesh. You will reap “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.”

This brings destruction now. Then eternal destruction in the unquenchable fire. No matter what we say about Jesus, if our life sows to our godless self then our faith is counterfeit and eternal punishment is certain.

Give time, energy, thought, and focus to the Spirit. You will reap a harvest of “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” Fruit which proves a true faith in Christ. The beginning of an eternity in the renewed earth and heaven.

Stop sowing to the flesh!

Sow only and always and abundantly to the Spirit. “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” (2 Corinthians 9:6)

6. Persevere in doing good

Galatians 6:9–10 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. ¹⁰Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family/household of faith.

The flesh tires of sowing to the Spirit and worshipping God. Perversely, we rest by sinning. We transgress God’s laws. We fail to do our duty. We damage ourselves and our family. This brings a bitter harvest.

Keep going with Christ. Don’t stop, don’t give up. Press on.

Charles Dickens was the great author of Oliver Twist and Hard Times, and a champion of the poor. But he was cruel to Catherine, his wife of twenty years and mother of his ten children. He tried to have her committed to an asylum in order to continue his affair with actress Ellen Ternan.

Paul scorns public saints who are private devils. We all do. Nor should “caring for my family” be a coverup for my greed.

Let your goodness be ripples in a pond. Starting with your family, then spreading outward. To your household of faith, your neighbours, and finally to the world.

Even Jesus’ earthly ministry began with his immediate circle.

7. Boast only in the Cross of Christ!

Galatians 6:11–16 See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand! ¹²Those who want to impress people by means of the flesh are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. ¹³Not even those who are circumcised keep the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your circumcision in the flesh. ¹⁴May 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. ¹⁵Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation.

Boast is an ugly word. The Greek kauchaomai,καυχαομαι, sometimes means ugly grandstanding. But it can also be a lovely pride in the good of others.

The Circumcision Party took ugly pride in their recruits. “Look how many follow us and copy us!” Hundreds of “likes.”

Paul took pride in only one thing. The shameful, humiliating crucifixion of Christ. He counted the godless ways of the world as crucified and dead to him. He counted himself crucified to the world. Dead to its godlessness.

Religious ritual counts for nothing. All that counts is the new creation that Christ has wrought within us. Which we begin to live out now. Which will be brought to full and cosmic completion at his return.

The Gospel transforms everything about our lives. Pursue Paul’s seven marks of a Spirit-filled life.

Galatians 6:16–18 Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule—to the Israel of God. ¹⁷From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. ¹⁸The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters.

Amen.

– Campbell Markham