Galatians 6.1-10: Our Life Together

This sermon was preached on April 21st, 2024.

A few months ago a friend of mine surprised me. He told me that at 35 years of age, after years of being a UNC fan that he was jumping ship to become an NC State fan. I remember, he posted about it on social media so I reached out to him to make sure everything was okay. 

It was. He was making a conscious and well-informed decision. I asked him how? How could this happen? And he told me the story of his change. It wasn’t that he sat down and looked at the relative success of the fanbases over time. It wasn’t that he made a list of pros and cons or anything like that. It wasn’t anything like that. 

It was the story of hospitality and welcome. He had been invited to games, and experienced the fanbase cheering their teams on. He looked around and saw that most of his close friends were actually State fans. And he realized that the fanbase had won him over. They had proven to him that pulling for State was something he wanted to do. And he made the decision that he would have never dreamed of making—because he felt home among their fans. 

Now despite the fact that he was won over to the wrong fanbase, this struck me as a profound example of what the church is designed to be. The place where the gospel is experienced and where the good news that through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus God has brought forgiveness, transformation and hope into our world—the place where this message isn’t just words but is seen to be plausible and true. Or as the apostle Paul writes in 1 Timothy 3, the church of the living God that is the pillar and foundation of the truth. The new community of the church—which is pictured for us here in Galatians 6.

1 Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. 2 Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3 If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. 4 Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, 5 for each one should carry their own load. 6 Nevertheless, the one who receives instruction in the word should share all good things with their instructor.

7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

A New Community

In these verses, Paul describes something remarkable: a new community founded on something different in our world: founded on the gospel. This is something completely foreign in a world like ours: people that are turned toward one another. Not in competition, not to try and dominate—but a group of people mobilized for each other’s good. We spoke about that some last week, about how the truth of the gospel turns us toward one another not in competition, not in suspicion, but turns us toward each other in love. 

But that’s easy to say, but much more difficult to actually live out. Because community quickly gets messy.  V1. “If someone is caught in sin.” Everybody loves a scandal, right? It’s why reality TV shows are so popular. We love the drama. But in this new community—when someone is caught in sin and found themselves ruined? “You should…restore that person gently.” When we may fail, it is a unique occasion for us to prove the Gospel is true by responding in compassion and grace. 

This doesn’t mean that the church becomes a haven for people to run from consequences. To restore someone gently who has abused a person—the church doesn’t treat that lightly. If someone abuses someone else, we report it to the authorities. We insist on justice. We surround those who have been caught up in the sin of others and are about their healing. And we also tell those abusers that they can find grace. That a new life and a new way is possible. 

Or if there’s someone in the church that is caught embezzling money or stealing. We restore them gently. That doesn’t mean we make them the church treasurer. But we don’t hang their failure over their head in judgment. We become the people in their corner. Not enabling them to continue in sin, or to run away from what is right. But the people that are committed to their good.

Restoring other gently—it’s responding to failure by mobilizing to help. Of course there’s a danger in this that Paul talks about in v1—‘watch yourselves, or you may be tempted.’ I’ve heard people talk about this like Paul is saying “if someone is caught in a sin, be careful because they may pull you down with them.” I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about at all. 

What I think he’s warning us against is offering help in way that looks down on others. That’s what he’s addressing in verses 3-5. Carrying each other’s burdens is not a place of performance. It’s not a place of making yourself feel better or above others. We have to get the idea of charity, at least charity the way it often gets talked about, out of our thinking about the church. People are not problems to be solved. They may have problems, burdens, that we can help carry. But to live out the gospel is to see, value, and love the person, even in their failure. 

And this is only right. As the 16th century pastor John Calvin wrote: “We would of course never mock an injured limb which the rest of the body labors to revive, nor would we consider that limb particularly indebted to the body’s other members because it has received more help than it has given. The help that different members of the body mutually offer one another should not—according to the law of nature—be considered a favor, but rather as an obligation that would be unnatural to refuse. ” This is the radical vision of a new community. A place where all are valued and home. 

In v6 Paul adds an aside that might feel like it’s out of no where. About pastors and church staff being paid. And even here is an utterly counter-cultural thing—because he speak in terms of an employee getting paid by an employer. He describes the relationship of a pastor or church staff member in the new community where we all bring the gifts God has given to us to the table. The instructor here brings the word of God, not as an employee. It’s a sharing of all good things. 

Pastors and church staff are not employees like in any other business. They’re not lords either. They are people in the church, part of this new community, whose calling it is to proclaim and lead in this radical idea of the gospel, who ‘share all good things’ with the others in the community. 

That means that pastors should be well compensated, but not paid extravagant amounts. I cringe when I see pastors who live far beyond the means of the people in their congregations. The church is not a platform for teachers to amass fortunes, but a community where we live together with one another. 

All of this is the new community that makes the gospel plausible: a place of gentleness and restoration. A place of mutual encouragement, where burdens are carried together, where humility its the rule of the day. No hierarchies. Not Varsity/JV. A place where we carry hope together. When in seasons when my hope or my faith run low, I lean on yours and vice versa. A communion together where we bring of the good God has given to us and prove the gospel by our refusal to hoard and be defined by our amassing of stuff. 

Church is not a place to perform for each other. It’s not a place to hide. And it’s absolutely not a place where we should suffer alone, or a place where we should celebrate alone. This is the new community that Jesus is forming, where we are brought home together.

So are you imperfect? Flawed? I am too. So is everyone else in this room. Let’s be flawed and imperfect together and watch the grace of Jesus baffle us…and allow that grace to turn us toward one another.

Good News for our City
If Christ Church Dunn disappeared tomorrow, would anyone in Dunn notice? If you moved from your neighborhood, would your neighbors have a second thought about it? I don’t want you to feel guilt with that. But it’s a question worth asking—and a goal for us as a church community. To be mobilized, as a group and as individuals, to dive all the way in in the place(s) God has put us. So that if you moved from your neighborhood, there would be a hole that people would notice. That if our church disappeared, that it would be a loss to this city.

This doesn’t mean that our city is always going to agree with everything we’re about, or that the goal is to always be celebrated. But it does mean that we go out of our way, we purposefully, from a place of worthiness in the gospel of Jesus, to sow into our community like farmers. 

We see that imagery in the final verses, speaking about how we will get what we sow. That we who ‘sow to please the flesh’ will reap destruction. “The flesh” in Scripture is a term for our human nature marred by sin. It isn’t saying that our physical bodies are bad, but when it says “the flesh” it is speaking about how rebellion against God has negatively impacted our world and our lives. 

To sow to please the flesh, as a community, is to spend our time, treasure, and effort on things that do not reflect the gospel. It’s when we try to pridefully try to make a name for ourselves, or do things to try and win applause. It’s when we introduce standards of worth and value that have nothing to do Jesus. 

If we live our lives with each other and with the community around us in these kinds of things, then we will only reap destruction. If we spend all of our time and energy and resources investing in ways of thinking and living that don’t matter—chasing pleasure or wealth or popularity—then we will see that bear all kinds of terrible fruit. 

No, we must sow to please the Spirit. To sow to please the Spirit is to live from the gospel. Not moving on from the radical good news that we are righteous only because we have been gifted the righteousness of Jesus. That any thought of us earning anything before God is out the window, and that it is all grace. To bear the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. 

It may make us weary to pursue this. I actually think that this is why churches often become social clubs or especially political groups who want to grab for power or be in charge. Because they want to see good things happen—they want the fruit of sowing to please the Spirit, but they want to take a short-cut. But just like in gardening—the only thing that tends to grow quickly is weeds. 

The promise of God is that sowing to please the Spirit will reap a harvest. That pursuing being a gospel-centered church will show itself in the things that God brings to life. We’ve seen that happen in our church in just this past year! We don’t have a lot of programs, we don’t fill the calendar up with a bunch of stuff. We keep the focus on God, keep the gospel at the center, and keep things pretty simple. 

But think about it what we’ve seen before our very eyes this year. We’ve seen people come to faith in this church. We’ve seen people who had been incredibly hurt find healing. We’ve seen our kids call upon Jesus for salvation and find his love. We’ve seen our church grow in membership, and people attending worship. And we’ve seen God open doors of relationship in our city where we can serve others well. We’ve seen him deepen our relationships with one another. 

This hasn't happened because we are super good or righteous or knowledgeable. It hasn’t happened I’m a really great visionary leader, or because we have all these initiatives we’re starting. It’s all been the fruit of God at work. It’s all sprung from the gospel of Jesus capturing our hearts and all the rest of us. 

This is what excites me—all of this is only the beginning. And as these doors open for us to do good, let us do good to all people knowing that as we entrust the results of all of it to God, we will reap a harvest in our hearts, in our homes, in our neighborhoods and in our city. 

As these opportunities present themselves for us to restore others and help carry loads—or to be restored or to have help carrying our own loads—let’s not shrink away from sharing the good God has put in our hand with one another. And we will watch God prove the gospel true over and over again in our life together.

One of my favorite poems, probably my favorite poem, is by a man named Wendell Berry. I won’t read the whole thing, but there is a line that has stuck in my head
“Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop
is the forest that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.”

If I went out and planted a sequoia today, a giant redwood tree, it would not reach its full height for 500 years. I could plant a sequoia today and the full growth of it would not be seen until the year 2524 at the earliest. 

That’s what I long to see happen in this church. Not just to create something where we’ll have some good relationships for a few years, where we go on some trajectory from meeting in this place to raising a bunch of money to get a building, then watch it dwindle into an empty building. But to plant a sequoia. To be a part of the beginning of something that not even two generations from now will know the fullness of.

I believe that God is planting a sequoia here in Dunn. I look forward to seeing it continue to grow.