Month: July 2018

Galatians 6:9-10

9 And let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

Paul’s next comments provide an exceptional piece of encouragement. The word for “give up”, “ekluoh” is best translated as “weaken” or “fail” or “loosen”. In other words, the idea that is carried here in this part of the text is that our faith in Christ’s faithfulness does not give way to unbelief.

This is a major temptation for all believers, no matter the maturity level or the “time in service”. The major temptation is the one that proves to become a killer of faith. And if our faith is something that we allow to die without nourishing it, then there is a very good chance we will give up in precisely the times when we should not give up. God did not design us with the built-in capacity to fail. Rather, He made us with the built-in capacity to succeed and persevere. The capacity to fail is something that came through the Fall of Man. Because we have to daily be crucified with Christ and bring our bodies into subjection to the leading of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 2:20, 1 Corinthians 15:31, 1 Corinthians 9:27), a benefit of this process is that we can grow in perseverance, which is critical if we are to continue in Christ and not become weary in doing good.

Paul’s promise to those who do not give up is that we will reap the harvest that is our unique harvest. The Greek word that is translated “due season” is better translated as “in each person’s unique season”. That is, each person’s season for reaping a harvest is unique and custom-fitted to that person’s unique design. God has customized a time for each of us to reap as we each sow. My harvest may not look like your harvest, and my timing for reaping may not look like your timing. But I am still responsible, when you reap your harvest, is not to become jealous of the harvest, but to celebrate your harvest with you. That harvest could be the return of a prodigal child, or a financial harvest, or a relational harvest, or the harvest of someone’s salvation for whom we have labored and in whom we have sowed much truth in the context of a relationship.

Your job is to keep sowing. It is not to determine the timing of the harvest. That is God’s job.

10 So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are the household of faith.

There are a few things that I would like to highlight here for our application.

First, the concept of “doing good”: “Verse 10 has much in common with verse 9: in both verses the central call is to ‘do good’ and this doing good is related to an ‘appropriate time’ (Greek kairos).” [1] Paul uses the phrase “do good” to tie together 9 and 10.

There is a good that we are to do that should be consistently expressed both inside the church and outside the church. No matter what, our calling as a body is to “do good”.

God, both created us, with original intent as good, and called us good (Genesis 1:31). As a result of the fall, much that was good in our intention was lost. But the marring through the fall does not excuse us from doing good in accordance with our design.

Now, let me step on a few toes here. We as Christians love to focus on how bad our capacity to do bad and to constantly sin is. Thank you, Jean Calvin and Martin Luther. And while we have to struggle and fight against sin, as Christians we struggle against sin from a place of victory; we are seated with Christ in heavenly places, EVEN WHEN WE DO NOT FEEL LIKE WE ARE SEATED. And given that in Christ, we are new creations, the capacity for the original design has been restored. It has been restored in us to do good.

Good is our responsibility, and given that we follow and hopefully know the Author of all good, doing good should become our practice.

Second, there is a question that we should rightly ask “to whom should we do good?”

Let the light shine that others may see your good works and praise your Father in heaven (Mattew 5:14-16). This is the answer to the lawyer’s question of “who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). We are to do good to those who are not believers.

Also, love your brothers and sisters as evidence of your love of God (1 John 2 :9-11; Luke 10:29, John 13:35). The letter of 1 John covers this set of principles and evidence of love extensively.

Let me throw out a scholars’ note for those who are not scholars of Greek. Ever second-year student of New Testament Greek is required to translate the entirety of 1 John. It is the easiest book in the New Testament to translate. It is also one of the most uncompromising books in all the New Testament. For verse after verse, John gives us really high standards and shoots incredibly straight on what it looks like to actually have evidence of God’s love in us. It is quite possible that God set this up intentionally so that scholars would not get so puffed up in their knowledge that they forget the priority of love.

Hello? The message here is simple; the root of doing good is our love of God and our love of people. We keep the First Commandment First, the Second Commandment Second, and the New Commandment New.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

-John 13:34-

Paul’s next phrase in verse 10 is curious:

“…and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

Why would Paul exhort the Galatians to do good to other believers?

There are two reasons that I can think of.

1) Because the Galatians were likely wrestling with the sins of enmity, strive, jealousy, division, and envy (as 5:20-21 warn against, the “works of the flesh”), Paul was bringing the expression of doing good to bear as a counter-measure to the works of the flesh. Christian, let’s apply that same counsel to ourselves, because jealousy and fear flourish at times in the church, which is precisely where they should not. Jealousy and those other sins, the sins where we want what God has given someone else, are rooted in a spirit of poverty. We don’t believe that God has a set of really good gifts set aside for us, and so we want what He has set aside for someone else.

a. Let’s back up for a minute and frame the reality first of all.

b. Paraphrasing Romans 8:32, God gave us the thing that is most precious to Him: His only begotten son. What is a little bit of stuff?

c. When we do not believe that we are wealthy in spiritual things, when God has given us His son, our mentality is that of a pauper or a slave.

d. God designed you for sonship.

e. This means there is a whole boatload of wealth AND responsibility that He has set aside and purposed to give to you, only you. There is a problem that has your name on it.

f. You were designed for a specific problem. And if you do not solve that problem that God has designed you to solve, He will have to give it to someone else to solve.

g. I don’t know about you, but I want to leave this life having lived in a place of fulfillment, and having solved the one thing that is in the center of my design.

h. Back to the main point. God has a problem for you to solve, and if you walk in the sweet spot you were made to walk in, and tackle the major problem that God made you to tackle, then He will also provide the resources to meet that need.

2) Paul also wanted the Galatians to model what God’s family looks like. When you have a fully functional family that is full of purity, truth, affection, loyalty, tender affection, self-control, wisdom, and joy, who does not want to be part of that?

Let me tap one other theme here. Against the backdrop of what I just stated in Point #2, there is the opposite of that picture that is rooted in flesh: betrayal. Read the following from Psalm 55:10-12

“For it is not an enemy who taunts me— then I could bear it; it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me— then I could hide from him. But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. We used to take sweet counsel together; within God’s house we walked in the throng.”

We are designed in the household of God to be a family that is a place of safety and trust, not a place of betrayal and envy. Yet that does sometimes happen in the church. And when it happens among those we ought to count as siblings and close friends, the sting of the pain is real and deep.

Creating a place where people know their identity and their talents and are free to develop those talents, and are celebrated for who they are in Christ and what they bring to the table in Christ, helps to guard against the unreasonable fleshly behavior that results in betrayal.

And we must be ever-vigilant, and ever-ready to do good. Especially to those who are of the household of faith.