Galatians6chapter 6

Galatians 6:1-2

Restore translates katartizo, the word for setting a broken bone or mending a torn net: the spiritual are to repair a brother overtaken in a fault, not amputate him. The spirit of meekness and the warning to consider thyself keep the surgeon humble. Bearing one another's burdens is then named the law of Christ, love's fulfilment of 5:14 put into practice.

Galatians 6:3-5

Self-measurement against a neighbor breeds either conceit or despair, so each man is to prove his own work and find his rejoicing there. Verses 2 and 5 use different words: the burdens we carry for each other are baros, a crushing weight, while every man's own burden in verse 5 is phortion, a soldier's pack, the personal responsibility no one can shoulder for him. The two verses stand together without contradiction.

Galatians 6:6-8

The taught are to communicate, share material support, with the teacher, and the sowing figure follows at once: several commentators read verses 7 and 8 as extending that very point before it widens to the whole moral life. God is not mocked; the harvest answers the seed and the field. Sowing to the flesh reaps corruption, sowing to the Spirit reaps life everlasting, the letter's flesh-and-Spirit thread stated as a law of harvest.

Galatians 6:9-10

The farmer's patience governs the promise: in due season we shall reap, if we faint not, for the interval between sowing and harvest is where weariness does its damage. Opportunity in verse 10 is kairos, the season while it lasts. The household of faith has first claim on that doing of good, and all men after them.

Galatians 6:11

The Greek is pelikois grammasin, with how large letters, and Paul takes the pen from his amanuensis to close in his own oversized hand. The reason is read two ways: emphasis, the apostle's own hand underscoring the whole argument, or weak eyesight, urged from 4:15 where the Galatians would have given him their own eyes. Both readings have their holders and the verse settles neither.

Galatians 6:12-13

The circumcision party's motive is named twice over: a fair show in the flesh, and escape from persecution for the cross of Christ, since a circumcised convert cost them nothing with the synagogue. Verse 13 adds the exposure that they themselves do not keep the law they impose; the converts' flesh is a trophy to glory in. The letter's quarrel ends where it began, with the cross against every credential.

Galatians 6:14-15

Against their glorying Paul sets his only boast, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the crucifixion chain of the letter reaches its last beat: the world crucified unto me, and I unto the world, a double death that ends the world's claim on him and his on it. Verse 15 draws the standard beneath the whole dispute: neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but a new creature. The new creation, not the old badge, is what God is making.

Galatians 6:16

the Israel of God: Peace and mercy rest on as many as walk according to this rule, and upon the Israel of God, a phrase read two ways since the fathers. One reading takes the kai as and, a distinct blessing on believing Jews within the church, Israelites indeed who have received their Messiah; the other takes it as even, naming the whole believing church. The grammar allows both, holders stand on both sides, and Romans 11 keeps any reading from meaning that God has cast away his people.

Galatians 6:17-18

Stigmata were the brands burned into a slave to mark his owner, and Paul bears in his body the scars of stonings and scourgings as the brand of the Master he serves, his answer to every demand for the mark of circumcision. Let no man trouble me: the branded servant's credentials are closed. The benediction then commends grace to their spirit, the word the whole letter has fought for, and ends a severe epistle with Brethren.