Bible Synapse
Should we bear one another’s burdens, or each carry our own?
Hard question · Acts and the letters · raised by 2 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
Restore a brother overtaken in a fault: “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ”.
Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.
Let each test his own work, “For every man shall bear his own burden”.
For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For every man shall bear his own burden.
The objection
Galatians 6:2 says, “Bear ye one another’s burdens”. Three verses later Galatians 6:5 says, “every man shall bear his own burden”. Should Christians carry each other’s loads, or only their own?
The answer
Paul uses two different Greek words. In 6:2 the ‘burdens’ are barē, ‘weights’, troubles that press a person down, such as the fault that has overtaken a brother in 6:1; believers are to help one another under these, and so fulfil Christ’s law of love. In 6:5 the word is phortion, the pack a person carries as his own (the BSB has “his own load”), the word Jesus used of his own light burden in Matthew 11:30. The two words can overlap (Matthew 23:4 calls the Pharisees’ loads phortia that are ‘heavy’), so the setting matters as much as the words.
Here the context settles it. Verses 3–4 warn against the man who thinks himself something and judges himself by comparison with others; instead “let each man examine his own work” (6:4, WEB). Each will answer to God for himself, and the future tense, “shall bear”, points to that final account. No one can hand his own accountability to someone else, but everyone should help a brother who is crushed. A person who honestly weighs his own load will be gentler with his neighbour’s, which is how verse 5 supports verse 2.
From the classic commentators
This verse does not contradict Ga 6:2. There he tells them to bear with others' ‘burdens’ of infirmity in sympathy; here, that self-examination will make a man to feel he has enough to do with ‘his own load’ of sin, without comparing himself boastfully with his neighbor.Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary, on Galatians 6:5 (1871)
or he shall give an account of his own actions, and not another's, to God, in the other worldJohn Gill, Exposition of the Bible, on Galatians 6:5 (1746–1763)
Sources
- Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary: Galatians 6 (1871), at Bible Hub
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: Galatians 6 (1746–1763), at Bible Hub