Galatians 6:2–5 As a Christian, we should sincerely have concern for people. This concern should compel us to speak truth into their life, which can include everything from pointing out sin to giving wise counsel, and intercede for them before God.

Still, as a Christian we cannot take responsibility for everyone and everything for which we have concern. As finite beings, there is only so much we can do and we must discern whom God has called us to help. When we take responsibility for people and things we ought not, we are sinning by taking off someone’s shoulders a load God has called them to carry and sinning against our own health, family, and priorities by offering to carry it for them.

Driscoll says , "I envision that everyone has a backpack with responsibilities that God has given for them to carry. Some people’s backpacks are big, and others are small. Nonetheless, God has called us each to fill up our pack with specific responsibilities. Some people are lazy and try to take things out of their pack and get others to carry them instead. Examples include the able-bodied man who lives with his mom, making her responsible for his housing and food; the lazy employee who cannot keep a job and expects his or her friends and family to always give money; and the irresponsible young women who assumes the government, her family, or a wealthy boyfriend will pay the price for her foolish life choices. Tragically, for many, the whole definition of someone being loving, godly, and spiritual is that they are willing to carry the loads God has called others to carry. This is not ministry. This is co-dependency, co-idolatry, and sin.

At first glance, this Scripture passage seems contradictory. It says that everyone should carry whatever load God has placed in their backpack. It also says that Christians should take some burdens out of the backpacks of some people and carry them out of love. In Greek, the difference is between “load” and “burden.”
A “load” is a light enough pack that one should be expected to carry alone. Practically, this means that the typical person needs to find a job, pay their bills, read the Bible, attend church, pursue Christian friends, pray, repent of sin, share their faith, watch their diet, exercise, and look after themselves and their spouse and children if applicable.

A “burden” is a heavy load that is simply too much for one person to bear without the loving help of Christian friends. Practically, the person with cancer or another debilitating ailment, the mother of young children who is abandoned by her husband, the poor elderly widow who cannot pay her bills, and others like them should not feel guilty for seeking reasonable. Rather, the church exists in part to help lessen their burden by taking some of the financial, emotional, and practical weight out of their pack and carrying it for them.

Are you someone who is expecting too much time, energy, money, and/or investment from people? Which loads do you need to just buck up and carry without whining until someone else does your job? Have you manipulated others’ concern for your load to get them to take on your responsibilities as their burden in the name of loving Christian community?"

Are you weighed down by all the loads you are carrying for others who need to carry their own load? How have you sinned by allowing concerns to become your burden?

GAL 5:6 One way to bear the burdens of those who carry major responsibilities of teaching in the church is to support them financially so that they can be free for prayer and study. Evidently there was some problem with this in Galatia. We don’t know what they were saying, but we do know that of all the burdens Paul could have mentioned, he chose to mention the material burden of those who teach God’s Word.
He had learned the principle from Jesus. When Jesus sent out the 70 to preach, he told them not to take their own food because “the laborer deserves his wages.” Paul picks this up in 1 Timothy 5:17, 18, “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching; for the scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain,’ and, ‘The laborer deserves his wages.’ ” Probably the closest parallel to Galatians 6:6 is 1 Corinthians 9:11 where Paul says, “If we have sown spiritual good among you, is it too much if we reap your material benefits?”

The Ministry of the Word and Giving I see four implications of Galatians 6:6.
1. Teaching the Word of God is essential in the church. We will not know without.
2. Those who carry the main responsibility of teaching need freedom to study and meditate and pray. Teaching, it takes much time and effort.
3. It follows that pastor-teachers should be paid so that they don’t have to do other work to support themselves. Some, like Paul, may renounce this right, but those who are taught the Word ought to be eager to free up their teachers financially.
4. When you give your money to support the teaching ministry, you are fulfilling the law of Christ according to verse 2 (helping bear the teacher’s burden). So when Paul says in verses 9 and 10 that we should do good to all especially to those of the household of faith, he has in mind at least the use of our money to support those who teach us the Word of God.

God Is Not Mocked Verse 7 comes in now to reinforce the command of verse 6. God is mocked when his messengers are treated with scorn (2 Chronicles 36:15, 16).
We honor God and his Word when we take our money, which might have bought us some comfort or security or prestige, and give it to support the ministry of the Word (domestically and on the frontiers). But if we are deceived and think that more happiness comes from spending that money on our private pleasures, then we mock God, and our greed will come crashing back upon us. We will reap what we sow.
Sowing to the Flesh and to the Spirit verse 8 makes clear what is really at stake and gives us hope. What is at stake in your attitude to the teaching of God’s Word and the use of your goods is eternal life? I know that for some that sounds like a return to salvation by works which Paul has demolished in this letter. But it isn’t. Works are the attitudes and actions of a heart that looks to itself for the achievement of virtue, which expects to be credited for its achievement. Nobody can save himself by such works. But love is not a work of the flesh; it is a fruit of the Spirit. There are attitudes toward money and the teaching of God’s Word which cannot continue to coexist with true saving faith in the all-sufficiency of Christ.
The hope of verse 8 is that eternal life can be enjoyed simply by sowing to the Spirit. “He who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” What does this mean? If you look to “your flesh” to produce fulfillment, you will get corruption. But if you look to the Spirit, you will get life. **When you get your paycheck, do you look to the Spirit for how to turn this money to best advantage for God’s kingdom, or do you invest it in the field of the flesh for private use?

Exulting in Nothing but the Cross. That is very strange. Like: exultation in the electric chair. Exultation in the gas chamber. Exultation in the lethal injection. Exultation in the lynching rope. That is very strange: exultation in the cross. But that is exactly what is being said here.
If you exult in God, you are exulting in the cross of Christ. Why is this the case? Because for redeemed sinners, every good thing—indeed every bad thing that God turns for good—was obtained for us by the cross of Christ. Apart from the death of Christ, sinners get nothing but judgment. Apart from the cross of Christ, there is only condemnation. Therefore, everything that you enjoy in Christ—everything you boast in, everything you exult in—is owing to the death of Christ. And all your exultation in other things is to be an exultation in the cross where all your blessings were purchased for you at the cost of Christ’s life.

We are sinners and, by nature, children of wrath apart from Christ. So, how did we come to have such a gift for our good? Answer: Christ died for our sins on the cross and took away the wrath of God from us and secured for us, even though we don’t deserve it, God’s omnipotent grace that works everything together for our good. So when I exult, I am exulting in the cross of Christ.

Crucified with Christ Look at the rest of verse 14: Boasting in the cross happens when you are on the cross. Is that not what verse 14 says? The world has been crucified to me, and I have been crucified to the world. The world is dead to me, and I am dead to the world. What? We learn to boast in the cross and exult in the cross when we are on the cross.

Now what does that mean? When were you crucified? The answer is in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” When Christ died, we died. That death, that he died for us all, takes effect as our death when we are united to Christ by faith.

Dead to the World And how can you become that radically cross-centered—so that all your exultation is traced back to the cross? Answer: realize that when Christ died on the cross, you died; and when you trusted him, that death took effect in your life.

Meaning: when you put your trust in Christ your bondage to the world is broken, and the overpowering lure of the world is broken. You are a corpse to the world, and the world is a corpse to you. Or to put it positively, according to verse 15, you are a “new creation.” The old you is dead. A new you is alive. And your faith exults in is not the world, but Christ, and especially, Christ crucified.

The world is no longer my treasure. It’s not the source of my satisfaction and my joy. Christ is.

So are you dead to the world? I could be. I hope I am. Because being dead to the world doesn’t mean going out of the world. And it doesn’t mean not feeling things about the world—some negative and some positive (1 John 2:15; 1 Timothy 4:3). It means that every legitimate pleasure in the world becomes a blood-bought evidence of Christ’s Calvary love and an occasion of boasting in the cross.