God’s Word for You
Galatians 6:3-5 Each must carry his own load
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Wednesday, August 14, 2024
3 If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.
“He is nothing.” This is the opposite of what the world wants to think. Public leaders of a certain stripe, and even leaders of religious groups, once they get hold of some heresy like a dog biting a rag, won’t let go, and they snarl and growl at anyone who tries to take it away from them. “They despise the weak,” Luther told his students, “nothing suits them except what they do. Unless you praise whatever they say or do, unless you adapt yourself to their lightest whim, they become angry with you. They are that way because, as St. Paul says, ‘they think they are something.’ They think they know all about the Scriptures.”
Confidence isn’t a bad thing, but what we are, we are by the grace of God. In fact, we contribute nothing to who we are. All of what we are, we owe to God. “Though an army camps all around me, my heart will not fear. Though war breaks out against me, even then I will be confident… for in the day of trouble God will keep me safe” (Psalm 27:3,5).
I am nothing at all: Christ is all. If I think I am anything apart from a sinner who deserves death, grief, punishment and hell, I am deceiving myself. This is a very sobering statement. It’s hard to convince someone that he is deceiving himself. It would seem to them to be the worst possible deception. The worse news is that while we can’t take credit for what we are, we all have to take the blame for our sins. We are thieves who broke into a life and did nothing but mangle, smash and destroy everything. We are responsible for nothing good, only evil. Only sin. So when Jesus died on the cross and washed all of that sin away, it wasn’t to wipe away a blemish on an otherwise good record. It was to undo all of the destruction and mayhem that we did. God is truly amazing, because he also enables us to do little acts out of faith, like a child’s crayon scribbles, which he displays and commends us for, like a parent taking scribbles and sticking them on the refrigerator. We will be startled at the things for which God commends us on Judgment Day.
4 Each person should test his own work. Then his work (rather than his neighbor’s) will become a cause for pride. 5 For each must carry his own load.
We could include our thoughts and our words as well as our actions among the things we should test. Can we take pride in what we do, in what we say, or in what we think? We can’t have any pride in what we’ve done. Verse 3 reminded us that after testing, we end up as a big zero. But God has filled up that zero with Christ. We have nothing within us about which we can be proud. That’s why we can’t compare ourselves with anybody else, because a world filled with zeros is an empty hole. But believers are no longer zeros, they are each filled with Christ. The Christian Church is actually a huge congregation of people filled with Jesus Christ. We don’t need to compare ourselves with anybody else. Christ is the standard by which we are tested.
The Greek word used here for “load” is the kit a soldier carries, his baggage (phortion, ϕορτίον). Or it can mean the total cargo or load that a ship is carrying. Since we’re talking about the future in this verse, we are really talking about Judgment Day. We each carry our total cargo, all our baggage. But since Christ has paid for every single one of our sins (and all of those sins are gone forever, never to return) what is our load? What are we filled with? Christ alone. His work, his thoughts, his actions, are what we carry with us before the throne of God on Judgment Day. What a safe and easy cargo! What a happy soldier’s kit that is! Jesus told us, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). The burden we carry with us to Judgment Day is nothing at all. It’s a garment as light and clean as a new pair of pajamas. It’s a record book that’s still in the shrink wrap. That’s why we can take pride, because what’s inside is clean, perfect, whole, healthy, and paid in full. And that’s something to feel great about. It’s not pride, but gratitude.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.