Bear one another’s burdens

Galatians 6:2 says to Bear one another’s burdens, that you may fulfil the law of Christ. What is the law of Christ that Paul is talking about? It is the call to love one another! And he calls us to love one another by bearing one another's burdens. Jonathan Edwards says:

In many cases, we may, by the rules of the gospel, be obliged to give to others, when we cannot do it without suffering ourselves; as if our neighbour’s difficulties and necessities be much greater than our own, and we see that they are not like to be otherwise relieved, we should be willing to suffer with him, and to take part of his burden on ourselves; else how is that rule of bearing one another’s burdens fulfilled? If we be never obliged to relieve others’ burdens, but when we can do it without burdening ourselves, then how do we bear our neighbour’s burdens, when we bear no burdens at all?

What Edwards is saying is that it is called bearing one another's burdens because it is going to be a burden on you! That is the cost of mercy in the diaconate. It is not that bearing one another's burdens is My life is so perfect and easy that I will take care of part of your life too, and we will just call it even. It is that you see a brother or sister struggling and stumbling, and the burden is taken upon yourself, and you feel the weight of that burden. Otherwise it is not bearing a burden.

This is what the church of Jesus Christ is called to do. And that, by God's goodness, is facilitated through an office. Mercy has an office! As a congregation we should feel the burden of the providential trials that have come to us in this week. We shouldn't just say, Well, God is sovereign, and that is the way it is. Maybe I will think about it again next Sunday when I come and see faces that remind me that there is a burden. It is a burden that we are called to carry. And as we carry that burden which is called mercy ministry, that burden is not carried where each one of us says, Here is what we need to do, and we just start throwing out ideas. We carry a burden, and God has set apart people by ordination for the specific task of saying, Here is the plan ahead. Here is how we will carry that burden together. That is the cost of mercy ministry. The cost is great, because we are called to bear the burdens of those around us. And if it is not a burden for you to carry other people's burdens, then you can't say that you are bearing one another's burdens.¹

Nathan Eshelman