Galatians
Part 8: Something to Boast About
Pastor Svea Merry April 12-13, 2025
If we were at a dinner party together, or maybe out for coffee, and I asked you what are some of your proudest moments, what would come to mind for you?
Maybe what you’re thinking of is an accomplishment that you worked years to achieve, or maybe it wasn’t even your own achievement but seeing your child succeed that made you burst with pride.
I also want to make space for anyone struggling to feel good about yourself and maybe your head went to a dark place and you’re not feeling proud about much. You’re just as included in this thought experiment.
I’d like all of you to consider why you went to the thought that you did. Don’t worry, I’m not about to judge you or even analyze your reaction. I’m simply going to invite all of us to think about what our default tendencies are towards pride, whether that be in the healthiest sense of being proud of things that are worthy of satisfaction, or pride that might be tinged with feelings of superiority or inferiority.
Perhaps my favorite ever expressions of pride is a video I caught of one of my sons when he was 3 years old. I’m going to share it with you in a moment but let me set it up for you. My sister, Sarah, and I had taken him to Legoland up at the Mall of America and at that time they had a place where you could build a little Lego car and race it down a ramp. Watch my little boy, the youngest in the video, as he puts his little creation at the starting line and then rejoices in victory because his car simply went down the ramp.
Isn’t that sweet? My favorite thing is how he didn’t even care about how his car did compared to anyone else, he was simply excited about his own car. It’s such moment of pure pride. And one of my tender moments of mama pride for sure.
Today in this final chapter of Galatians, we’re going to see examples of toxic pride as well as some pure pride like what we just saw. And we’ll finish up with a call to something that we can be prouder of than everything else.
But there’s also another aspect to pride. And it’s one that I wrestle with. It’s the desire that many of us must want others to be proud of us. Oh man, do I want this. I constantly fight the trap of bending myself pretzel shaped to win other people’s approval and to hear someone say, “Good job! I’m so proud of you!” Can any of you relate?
The people Paul wrote to in the churches of Galatia may have been vulnerable to this. They were finding their way in a new way of life living by the gospel of Jesus and maybe feeling the same kind of disorientation that we do anytime we make a big life change and aren’t entirely sure yet how life works.
To recap, a group known as the Judaizers, some religious power players, were after these new believers, laying all kinds of expectations on them, namely, a requirement for all men to be circumcised, and some other expectations as well. For the believers who came from a Jewish background, it would have been tough to stand up to them and resist the temptation to slip back into a way of life that had been familiar. For the Gentiles who were new Jesus-followers, they might have felt like they were grasping at straws for how life works. When people come to Christ from a non-churched background, there is often hunger to “get it right” and a temptation to seek out a rigid, black and white approach to life. There is comfort in clarity and certainty, especially when life is disorienting, so these new believers were all the more vulnerable to the expectations people were putting on them to keep in line with a religious rule-following approach to life.
For seven weeks we’ve been walking through Paul’s desperate and at times aggressive plea not to fall into this trap, but instead to cling to the freedom that all who are in Christ are already accepted by Him and there is no need to prove your worthiness to anyone else.
Now, you’d think that 2000 years later from when Galatians was written that we’d be way past the thinking and struggles they had. But it turns out we’re still grappling with the same big questions of life that humanity has had since day one in trying to figure out our identity, and how we know if we are good enough. We’re still plagued by this same haunting question: “Do I measure up?”
The good news is that for all of us who have chosen to be judged based on Jesus’ life rather than our own, we know that’s an irrelevant question now. When God looks at us as His children, He sees Jesus’ perfect righteousness surrounding us rather than all our shortcomings. He’s not holding us to the “do you measure up” anymore. Jesus wiped our slate clean, and we’re permanently accepted.
But that doesn’t mean that how we live doesn’t still matter. And after 5 chapters of Paul explaining to the Galatians that they don’t have to do anything to live up to anyone else’s expectations, he may have intuited that they were beginning to wonder about a better question: How should they be living now? How do we live as those who love and are loved by Jesus?
Turn with me to Galatians chapter 6. I’ll just tell you up front, we’re going to spend the bulk of our time today in verses 1-6, but we will finish out the whole chapter. This first paragraph might seem like a disjointed list of do’s and don’ts, at first glance, but we’ll make sense of it all.
Galatians 6:1-6 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.
As we dive into this first section, what emerges is a brilliant picture of what we’re aiming for as individuals and because of that, how we engage our community. Did you notice that both of those elements are present? Let me sort this for you to make it clearer.
Notice that verses 1, 2, and 6 bookend this paragraph with guidance on our responsibilities towards our Christian community and verses 3, 4, and 5 have guidance about our individual responsibilities.
What I’d like to do is for us to explore our individual responsibilities first. Now, let me give another little disclaimer here. I am approaching the text this way because, unlike Paul’s more community-based culture, we live in a very individualistic society, and we tend to view Scripture through a lens of “how does this impact me and what do I need to know.” Working with, rather than against, how we think, we can still be completely faithful to Paul’s intent in all these verses if we look at ourselves first and then consider our community rather than the other way around.
So, in verses 3–5, Paul gives us these directives: don’t deceive yourselves, test your own actions, don’t compare yourself to others, and carry your own load. Let’s start with the first one in verse 3:
Galatians 6:3 If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves.
Does that read harsh to you? Sometimes Scripture is misinterpreted to make it seem as if people are nothing. That’s not what this is saying. But it is pushing us to recognize that we don’t always think accurately about ourselves in both positive and negative directions, and self-focused aspect of pride is often the culprit.
Pride in the form of self-focus becomes toxic when it falls over into either direction of leading us to feel superior to other people, or in the opposite direction, when we alienate ourselves from others because we feel inferior. Those of us who have a natural tendency to evaluate our self-worth based on our performance are inevitably going to struggle with this.
I definitely have to fight against this. I naturally feel better about myself when I feel like I’m succeeding in life, whether at work or in school, as a parent or a wife, or simply in living up to the standards I hold myself to. And nothing will take me lower than feeling like I’m failing. But this isn’t the way of the gospel. God wants us to see ourselves the way He sees us. And He sees us the way we might see a beloved child. Sure we see their strengths and their weaknesses, but we love them all the same and want the best for them.
What this verse is trying to say to me and to all of you who share this vulnerability with me is that whenever we define ourselves based on our performance at anything, we deceive ourselves. We will always think we’re something that we’re not – either skewed towards feeling superior when we’re proud of ourselves, or inferior when we think we don’t measure up. And when we live with this self-focused lens, our life is like a game of pinball getting constantly thwacked by feeling either superior or inferior.
Instead, the gospel frees us with the truth that nothing we do will ever cause God to love us any more than He already does, and nothing will ever cause Him to love us any less. And in this, Jesus once again does what he does best and transforms our brokenness into something healthy and beautiful. He trades our superiority/inferiority complex for a better way of boldness and humility. Boldness because we know that in Christ, we are worthy, righteous, accepted, and loved. And nothing can change that, so we can boldly engage our world from a secure place. And also, humility, because we didn’t earn our place as a child of God, it was simply a gift. We understand that we, like all others, are sinners who can only be made righteous through Jesus, which balances our boldness with a beautiful humility.
Paul adds depth in Verse 4 that will help us think this through even more: Each one should test their own actions.
Galatians 6:4 Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else.
Now, maybe you’re thinking, “Hold up, Svea. You just spoke out against pride and this is telling us to take pride in ourselves.” If you had that thought, great! I love that you’re thinking about the nuance in these verses!
This is where we really get to see the difference between looking at yourself through the lens of superiority and inferiority or boldness and humility.
Can I share with you something that changed my life when I allowed myself to accept it? God does not grade on a curve. He does not judge us in comparison to anyone else and He doesn’t want us to either. Life in Christ is not a performance curve where your actions and mine reveal how much better you are than me or I am than you.
No, God has designed a very specific program of growth or sanctification for you and for me. He knows each of us by name and is working in each of our lives. He’s given us different experiences, different opportunities, different talents. He is cheering each of us on as we take our own next step in understanding how much He loves us and in learning to love Him and others more and more.
Let me illustrate with this. All three of these people are working on a math problem. And I’m sure that all three of them are convinced that what they’re working on is really hard. But they’re at very different places on their math journey. How absurd would it be for the adult mathematician to feel smug or superior by comparing himself to the child? And how tragic would it be for the child to see the teenager’s homework and feel like a failure while learning simple addition because he can’t yet do fractions? No, instead all three of these people should focus on their own work and when they solve their problem, take great pride, great satisfaction, in their own work, not comparing themselves to each other.
This is the essence of verse 4. We are all on our own journey of spiritual formation. Test your own actions and take pride in how you’ve responded to what God is developing in you, not in an arrogant way, but in a way that expresses the satisfaction of my 3-year old when he shouted “I did it!” And I bet God is one proud Dad when He sees us getting it.
But implicit in that is that our growth, our sanctification is a load that only we can carry. This is what verse 5 means when it says “Carry your own load.” Like I said a moment ago, God has given to each one of us our own set of talents, opportunities, and experiences. And He’s asking of us is to do only what He’s asked of us. To carry our own load. We get it wrong when we either shirk what He’s given to us, or to try to be like someone else instead. Carry your own load. Be responsible for what God has given to you. Now this is not a burdensome thing. The word for load here in Paul’s original language is the word for a light backpack. The metaphor he’s seeking to convey is that God has outfitted us to have what we need for what He’s calling us to in our lives, and in the end, we will each stand before Him to give an account for what we did with what He gave to us. And in that day, only I am responsible for me, and only you are responsible for you.
So, here’s a summary from Galatians 6 of what we’ll look like as individuals who are living in light of the gospel: we’ll think rightly about ourselves, seeing ourselves the way God sees us rather than through the lens of superiority or inferiority, we’ll test our own actions to see how we’re doing as we grow in Christ and not compare ourselves to anyone else, and we’ll take responsibility for what He’s seeking to develop in us, not shirking it or trying to be someone else.
Now, beautiful as it is that God is working in each of us to grow us, to sanctify us, the point of that isn’t just so that we can be proud of ourselves, it is for the sake of sharing what is being formed in us with others. Remember from the prior chapter when Paul pointed out that the whole law is fulfilled by loving our neighbor as ourself? Now that we’ve considered the “ourself” part, let’s go back to verse 1 and see how we love our neighbor.
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.
When we see someone caught in a sin, not simply someone who has mis-stepped like we all do, but someone trapped in habitually bad thinking or destructive behavior and they are too blind or in too deep to free themselves, our love for that person should compel us to help them out of it.
The word Paul uses here for “restore” is the same word he could have used to refer to setting a badly fractured bone. In this medical community, I bet several of you can instantly see some parallels. It’s a great metaphor because we quickly recognize that someone with a bad fracture needs intervention that they’re probably not capable of themselves. They need the compassionate care of someone else. We can also recognize that the process will involve pain upon pain, although my husband briefed me on things like hematoma blocks prior to setting a displaced fracture and you medical types can draw your own analogies if you wish from that.
Regardless of your medical background, we can all recognize that for this to go well, it’s going to take the right actions to restore the injured person to healthy function and that their pain in the process must be managed. Paul says someone attending to the broken person needs a disposition of gentleness, and to this I say, Amen. If I land in your Emergency Department with a broken bone, I want you to have a bedside manner of gentleness. How much more would I need gentleness from you if you come alongside me to help me with a fracture of sin in my life.
The analogy of the fractured bone also helps us think through who should do the job. Someone who was involved in the events that led to the fracture is probably not the best person to repair the fracture. It is hard to have the kind of gentleness and pure motives needed here if you are struggling through direct or indirect hurt because of that person. You are not called to “fix” the person who sinned against you, and you probably aren’t the right one to try.
And there’s one more qualifier that Paul gives to the person doing this. Watch yourself, be on guard yourself, for the temptations of sin. We’re going to get this wrong if we’re still playing the superior/inferior pinball game. If we believe we’re morally superior to the person we’re trying to help, that will come through and we’re likely to cause more destruction, not healing. And if we’re wrestling with feelings of inferiority, we’re extra vulnerable to getting caught in sin too. So, we must do this with the redeemed qualities of boldness and humility. It will take boldness to gently give our brother or sister the truth and grace they need, and it will take humility to recognize that all of us wrestle with the temptations of sin, and none of us are immune to it.
This picture of helping someone trapped in sin flows right into the next verse:
Galatians 6:2 Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you fulfill the law of Christ.
Remember, fulfilling the law of Christ is done through loving others. What do you long for when you feel overly burdened? Someone to share your burden, right? The picture of this kind of burden is not the light load that we each are responsible for ourselves; this is referring to those boulder-sized weights that none of us could move by ourselves. It’s specifically the kind of burden impossible for anyone to carry alone.
This could be the weight of sin from the previous verse, or it could be the depth of grief, or the pain of physical or mental health struggles, or maybe the immensity of parenting or career challenges or something else on the unlimited list of weighty things, good and bad, that we are simply unable to do alone. And we’re not meant to carry things alone. God designed us to be creatures who need others and who help others.
We saw a beautiful illustration of this in the Willards’ story. Did you see the joy on their faces as they talked about how people came alongside them to carry their suffering with them? And how they’ve been able to now do that for others?
Christian community is meant to function like the healthiest of teams. Yes, we are responsible for doing our part, carrying our own load, but also to be on the lookout for our teammate who might be struggling. When we bear a burden with our brother or sister, helping them to not crumble under an impossible weight, our whole team does better. In true community, if someone is hurting, we all hurt. When we help someone conquer a challenge, we all thrive together. This is loving our neighbor as ourselves. This makes God proud when He sees us caring for each other like this.
The other bookend of this paragraph comes in verse 6, saying:
Galatians 6:6 Nevertheless, the one receives instruction in the word should share all good things with their instructor.
Nothing erodes community faster than someone who is too long a taker. Babies and toddlers are absolutely justified in taking and taking from us to get what they need to grow. But how ugly is it when you see a teenager, or worse yet, an adult, expecting everyone else to give them what they want every time they squawk.
In this verse, Paul is reminding us that there is an appropriate time in our spiritual development to be fed and nurtured as we grow in the word, grow in our understanding of what it means to follow Jesus, but at some point, we must stop just being a consumer. As we mature, it becomes time to show gratitude and look for ways to encourage and give back, especially towards those who have nurtured you in your faith.
So, summarizing our responsibilities towards our community from Galatians 6, we’re called to restore those who are trapped in destructive sin patterns to health, to bear burdens too heavy for others to handle alone, and to show our appreciation to those who have nurtured us in our spiritual growth.
Moving ahead into the next paragraph. Verse 7 contains a phrase that even if you don’t know much of the Bible, you probably know this phrase: a man reaps what he sows. The agricultural metaphor is obvious. If you plant corn, you’ll get corn. If you plant peas, you’ll get peas. You get what you plant, and if you only plant a little, you’ll only get a little. And Christian or not, we can all appreciate this basic principle of order and consistency.
But the context of this phrase is far more profound than we usually realize. You reap what you sow isn’t just about getting a good return on the investment you make into life. It is about your very life now and for eternity. Paul begins this section with a mic drop statement: Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. God knows what your approach to life is. You can try to fool other people with your intent, but you can’t fool God.
Look at the next verse:
Galatians 6:8 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.
All along, Paul has been saying that if our approach to life is about trying to be a good person, believing that you’re acceptable because you’ve lived up to certain expectations whether your own or someone else’s, you’re headed for destruction. You are still in this mindset of self-reliance and reputation management that is living by the power of your own flesh. The is not the way of Jesus. And if we have not chosen the way of Jesus over our own, we are headed for destruction.
I recently got to hear someone lay out their case for deliberately sowing in their own way. I had an opportunity to watch a civil dialogue between a nationally known Christian apologist, and a nationally known atheist activist. They were discussing their approaches to life and though the atheist was very logical and well-spoken, my heart hurt for him and the emptiness in his view of life that essentially boiled down to “Do things that are helpful and don’t do things that are harmful.”
What I would love to discuss with him over coffee is that though I can understand the logic in his perspective, I don’t trust myself to be my own standard of reliably defining what is ultimately helpful or harmful. I can’t even be objective or consistent about what is helpful or harmful when I decide what to eat for supper. My own flesh is going to steer me wrong. I don’t want to reap all that my flesh would sow, and that’s why I choose the way of Jesus instead. His way is better than mine and even when I get it wrong, he still loves and accepts me and gives me a fresh start.
If we have chosen Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we have the Spirit of God sowed, planted within us, and we will reap eternal life with God forever.
Now, does being accepted by Jesus regardless of how we fall short mean that what we do in this life doesn’t matter? Not at all! It matters greatly. To think that would be like saying it doesn’t matter how I act as a wife now that I’m married. The way I act, love, and care for Steve reveals the sincerity I have in how I value our marriage.
And what we do as followers of Jesus reveals the sincerity our faith. If we are truly his followers, we will want to love God and love others with his love because that’s what it means to be like him.
This is why Paul goes right from this idea into the next:
Galatians 6:9 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.
As a child of God, act like it! Do good! Especially to your brothers and sisters in Christ because we’re a family. Be the kind of person who gently restores people to spiritual health and knows when it’s your responsibility and when it isn’t. Be the kind of person who comes alongside someone to bear their burden. Be the kind of person who shows appreciation to those who have helped you.
Admittedly, this all takes effort, and Paul gets that saying, “let us not become weary in doing good.” When we as those who live by the Spirit are sowing seeds of goodness all around us, our labor will result in a harvest of some of the most beautiful, satisfying fruit we’ll ever experience this side of eternity. And like a farmer admiring a bumper crop, we can take great pride in that!
At this point in the letter, Paul enters the chat in a more direct way, writing:
Galatians 6:11 11 See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand!
It was normal at this time to dictate a long letter such as this to a scribe, known as an amanuensis. But apparently at this point, Paul took the quill pen himself, and he wrote big. Maybe to emphasize that what comes next was in his own handwriting, maybe because, as some speculate, he had poor eyesight and had to write large to see, but without a doubt, it was to emphasize that how he ends the letter is of incredible importance.
12 Those who want to impress people by means of the flesh are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ.
In other words, their motive is to find an easy way to look good in front of the people they want to impress, and they don’t have the courage to live by faith in what Christ suffered to accomplish for them.
13 Not even those who are circumcised keep the law, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast about your circumcision in the flesh.
They’re using you to feel prideful by recruiting more people to their side.
14 May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
We’re going to come back to this because this is what Paul has been driving at all along.
15 Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation.
Who you are in Christ.
16 Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule—to the Israel of God.
17 From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.
18 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers and sisters. Amen.
Today is Palm Sunday and the first day of what we call Holy Week culminating in Easter next Sunday. This is the day in the church calendar when we remember Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem knowing that he was going there to die for us. The people cheered, waving palm branches as he went by, excited because they believed he was about to usher in a new era of prosperity for them as ruler of their nation. The week didn’t end as they expected. But on the cross, Jesus ushered in the far better victory of his kingdom.
In Jesus’ kingdom, he doesn’t make anyone prove they’re good enough to be there because, it’s so good that the entrance fee is more extravagant than anyone could ever afford. But he invites us to come anyway and on the cross, he paid the cost for us.
In Jesus’ kingdom, we’ll never struggle with sin or impossible burdens ever again. Jesus chose to experience suffering with us, seeing firsthand the pain of sin, and moved by deep love and compassion for us, took it all upon himself on the cross, with permanent scars that remained to mark him as our God who empathetically suffered with us.
In Jesus’ kingdom, everything comes back to love for God and for others. And he demonstrated this by giving his life on the cross for us, reconciling us to God.
When Paul says in verse 14 that he will never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world, he’s saying, the world and its empty ways are dead to me. They get me nowhere. I’m done living the performative life, always feeling superior or inferior to everyone else. I will boast, I will take the greatest pride in what Jesus has done for me, not what I do, to bring me into his kingdom.
Because of the cross of Jesus Christ, we are fully loved and accepted and never have to perform to anyone else’s expectations to establish our self-worth. The worthiest one who ever lived already accepts us. We can take pride in that.
Because of the cross of Jesus Christ, we are free to engage our world with boldness and humility to join him in his work of restoring people, caring for them, and sharing deep goodness with them. We can take pride in that.
What are you most proud of in your life?
All throughout this series, we’ve had a key verse from chapter 5 that has been our series thesis. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
What if among your proudest moments, your “I did it!” moments was the day you put your faith in Jesus and the many times after that that you expressed it through the way you love him and others?
Maybe today could be among your proudest moments.