Bearing One Another's Burden

There is a kind of weight a person was never meant to carry alone. Sometimes it is a sinful habit that clogs your stride and slows your race. Sometimes it is a hard blow of life: a financial loss, a job gone, the death of someone you loved. Sometimes it is relational, a marriage coming apart, a painful season with a child or a parent. And sometimes it is simply the quiet struggle to become the person you know you were made to be, and you just need someone to encourage you.

God never intended for you to shoulder that weight by yourself. He called us to be a church that loves and cares, because God is love. And when brothers and sisters actually dwell together in that kind of unity, something sweet happens that the Scriptures reach for pictures to describe.

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron, running down on the edge of his garments. It is like the dew of Hermon, descending upon the mountains of Zion; for there the LORD commanded the blessing—life forevermore.

Psalm 133:1-3 (NKJV)

When we are together in unity, we can bear one another's burdens. We can lift each other up. God Himself stands in our midst as a mighty man to help us. But how does that actually work when someone stumbles? Paul gives us the blueprint.

Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

Galatians 6:1-3 (NKJV)

The verse that holds it all together

Look closely at verse 3. It is easy to skip past, but it is the foundation the whole thing rests on, and it connects everyone in the room, the one who has been caught in a fault and the one who wants to help. It is the verse that keeps a community of grace from turning into a courtroom.

A Christian community is built on the gospel, the good news of what God has done for undeserving people in Christ. We who were nothing have been made something by God in Christ Jesus. That is the ground we all stand on. So Paul says a man who thinks he is something when he is nothing is only deceiving himself; he is not living according to the truth of the gospel.

Once you know that you are nothing whom God has made into something, everything changes about how you help a person who has fallen. It gives you the right perspective, it makes you the right person, it fixes your purpose, and it shapes your process.

See who they really are

Start with the word Paul uses. He speaks of someone overtaken by a fault. To be overtaken means to be caught up with, to be come upon suddenly. In other words, this was unexpected. This is not normal. Something that was supposed to happen has been overtaken by something that was not supposed to happen.

That means the thing this person did is not who this person is. To intervene rightly, you have to believe that. You are looking at someone who is living on the outside in a way that does not match who they are on the inside. You refuse to identify them with what they did or what they are going through. You choose, in effect, to walk in the Spirit in how you see them. You can look them in the eye and say, “My brother, my sister, I know this is not who you are.”

Until you can see the person that way, Paul strongly advises that you do not attempt any intervention at all. You will only wound them.

Watch Paul do this himself. When Peter caved to pressure and pulled back from eating with the Gentiles, Paul confronted him, but notice how. He said Peter “was not walking in line with the truth of the gospel.” He did not call Peter a hypocrite. He said Peter was not walking in step with who he really was. That perspective is the whole foundation for handling conflict and restoring a person a fault has overtaken.

Who is fit to help

Next, Paul names the person who should step in: “you who are spiritual.” He does not mean someone spooky or weird or strange. To be spiritual simply means you are practicing being on the outside who you already are on the inside. You see yourself as a bundle of love, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, and gentleness, and you are working, day after day, to bring those things out in your life. It means you are holding on to what the gospel says about you even when everything in the natural seems to say otherwise.

Now you can see why only such a person should ever attempt to restore someone. It is the man or woman who is fighting to live out who they truly are who knows, on an experiential level, exactly what it feels like to be overtaken by a fault, to do something on the outside completely contrary to who you are within. If you have no personal, honest experience of working out your own salvation, mistakes and all, then you are not the right person for this.

To be spiritual is to walk in love with the one who has been overtaken, because you have been where they are. You step in remembering that you were nothing whom God made into something, so that you are never tempted to think you are superior.

A man once saw a snake being burned alive and reached in to save it. The snake bit him, and the pain made him drop it right back into the fire. He found a metal pole, lifted the snake out again, and saved its life. Someone watching asked, “That snake bit you. Why do you keep trying to save it?” The man answered, “The nature of the snake is to bite. That is not going to change my nature, which is to help.” Do not let someone's harm change your nature. Keep your good heart. Just learn to take precautions.

The goal is restoration, not punishment

Now the purpose. Paul says the aim of the intervention is not to blame, to punish, or to discipline. The aim is restoration. When someone trips, especially with sin, our first instinct is often to protect the community. But that is not the first and most important reason a gospel community steps in. The first purpose is to restore the person, to help them get back to living on the outside what they are on the inside.

Our goal is to help them see who they are in Christ, the something God has made from their nothing, and, seeing it, to repent, to turn from the fault that overtook them and start practicing who they are.

Only if the person will not receive that loving intervention, only if they stay stubborn and refuse to change their mind, can the community consider protecting itself. But self-protection can never be where you started. Restoration is the point.

Gentle as a nursing mother

Finally, the process. It is done with gentleness, with patience, with an attitude of grace. Judgment is set aside. Support is built around the person to help them come all the way home to their Father's house. Paul described his own manner of ministry exactly this way.

But we were gentle among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children. So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us. … as you know how we exhorted, and comforted, and charged every one of you, as a father does his own children.

1 Thessalonians 2:7-8, 11 (NKJV)

We do this knowing we are nothing in ourselves and that God has made this person into something, in spite of whatever fault has overtaken them. And if we really believe the gospel, we will see this ministry of restoration as one of the main ways we bear one another's burdens and serve each other in love. Paul even calls it “our load,” our portion, our responsibility, something we are meant to do.

The enemy wants you alone

Understand the strategy against you. The goal of the enemy is to isolate you, to cut you off from one another. Think of David's letter about Uriah: set him in the front of the hottest battle, then pull back from him so he is struck down alone. That is the pattern. Isolate, then destroy. But God says something different about His people gathered together.

Thus says the LORD: “As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one says, ‘Do not destroy it, for a blessing is in it,’ so will I do for My servants’ sake, that I may not destroy them all.”

Isaiah 65:8 (NKJV)

There is a blessing in the cluster. Your brother is not your enemy. Your sister is not your enemy. Isolation from them is the enemy. The Bible even calls it hiding yourself from your own flesh. And God ties the whole flow of His blessing to whether we will refuse to hide.

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry … when you see the naked, that you cover him, and not hide yourself from your own flesh? Then your light shall break forth like the morning, your healing shall spring forth speedily … Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer.

Isaiah 58:7-9 (NKJV)

So do we want God to prosper this church? Do we want Him to add people, to help us grow? Then let us become a community that bears burdens. It comes down to four simple things you can begin to practice with the very next person God puts in front of you.

• The right perspective: see your brother or sister for who they really are, not for what they are going through.
• The right purpose: restoration, never punishment, blame, or judgment.
• The right person: be spiritual, someone honestly working to live out who they truly are.
• The right process: gentle and compassionate, like a mother or a father.

You do not have to fix anyone today. You only have to stop leaving them alone. Ask God to show you the one person He has already placed within your reach, and go bear a little of their weight in the spirit of gentleness. That is how the law of Christ gets fulfilled, one burden at a time.