2 Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ. 3 For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4 But each one must examine his own work, and then he will have reason for boasting in regard to himself alone, and not in regard to another. 5 For each one will bear his own load.
Two complementary tasks: bear one another’s burdens and bear one’s own load. That doesn’t sound fair, it’s not a 50-50 proposition. But living a life of grace towards others means doing more than one’s share. If everyone set a goal of doing no more than their share, then much would be left undone, because we all fall short in our abilities to bear our own burdens and others’ as well. The only solution is the one of grace, where we don’t keep score, and we simply take on the burdens of others as though they were our own. This doesn’t relieve us of our responsibility to bear our own load though, lest grace degenerate into laziness.
What are these burdens and loads? They are anything that weighs us down as believers, the normal struggles of life including relational conflicts and hardships of various sorts. We have been called into a grace community relationship with God through Jesus Christ, where we are not judged by how well we keep the Law. So also, in our grace community with others we do not judge according to some objective standard—which inevitably leads to favorable judgment of ourselves as compared to others. Is that not the reason we often do not help others with their burdens? We tend to think of ourselves as better than they. We saw earlier that in restoring a fallen brother, we should do it humbly for we too could easily be tempted and fall as well (6:1). So we also should help with the our brother’s hardships, because we ourselves are weak.
Self-centered pride is not becoming a Christian who is captured by grace. We need to be reminded of this often, because we can so easily deceive ourselves in this matter. If anything, our self-thoughts must be sober (see Romans 12:3), comparing our own works and efforts with ourselves, what we used to be apart from the grace of our Lord and the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Then as we see this growth in grace, we can boast. This is not a boast of comparison with others, but rather a boast in what God has done in us (this anticipates Galatians 6:14 where our boast is in the cross of Christ alone). Thus the law of Christ is fulfilled as we bear other’s burdens and don’t demand that others bear our load. This is true community!
Lord, help me move from expecting others to bear my load and instead show me today someone whose burden I can help lift.
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