+I. The exciting cause of many quarrels.+
+II. A source of envy and disappointment.+
+III. Unbecoming the dignity and aims of the Christian life.+
_The Vice of Vainglory and its Cure._
+I. Vainglory is a branch of pride,+ wherein men principally refer
all their studies, counsels, endeavours, and gifts to the honouring
and advancing of themselves. They who have received good gifts of God
are often most vainglorious. Whereas all other vices feed upon that
which is evil, this vice of vainglory feeds upon good things. A man
will sometimes be proud even because he is not proud.
+II. The cure of vainglory.+--1. _Meditation._ (1) God resisteth all
proud persons and gives grace to the humble, because the vainglorious
man, seeking himself and not God, robs God of His honour. (2) It is
the work of the devil to puff up the mind with self-liking and
conceit, that thereby he may work man's perdition. (3) There is no
religion in that heart that is wholly bent to seek the praise of men.
The man who desires to be talked of and admired by others gives
notice to the world that his heart is not sound in the sight of God.
2. _Practice._ (1) Endeavour to acknowledge the great majesty of God,
and our own baseness before Him. (2) We ought to ascribe all good
things we have or can do to God alone, and nothing to ourselves.
(3) In all actions and duties of religion we must first endeavour to
approve ourselves to God, and the next place is to be given to man.
(4) When we are reviled we must rest content; when we are praised
take heed. Temptations on the right hand are far more dangerous than
those on the left. (5) Men who are ambitious, if they be crossed,
grow contentious; if they prosper, they are envied by others. Abhor
and detest vainglory; seek to preserve and maintain love.--_Perkins._
* * * * * * * *
+CHAPTER VI.+
_CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES._
Ver. 1. +Overtaken in a fault.+--Be caught red-handed in any
transgression, the result of some sudden and overpowering gust of
evil impulse. +Restore such an one.+--The same word used of a
dislocated limb reduced to its place. Such is the tenderness with
which we should treat a fallen member in restoring him to a better
state. +In the spirit of meekness.+--Meekness is that temper of
spirit towards God whereby we accept His dealings without disputing;
then towards men whereby we endure meekly their provocations, and do
not withdraw ourselves from the burdens which their sins impose upon
us (_Trench_).
Ver. 2. +Bear ye one another's burdens.+--The word is "weights,"
something exceeding the strength of those under them. "One another's"
is strongly emphatic. It is a powerful stroke, as with an axe in the
hand of a giant, at censoriousness or vainglorious egotism. We are
not to think of _self,_ but of one another. To bear the burden of an
erring brother is truly Christ-like. +And so fulfil the law of
Christ.+--If you must needs observe a law, let it be the law of
Christ.
Ver. 3. +He deceiveth himself.+--He is misled by the vapours of his
own vanity, he is self-deceived.
Ver. 4. +Rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.+--In that
his own work stands the test after severe examination, and not that
he is superior to another.
Ver. 6. +Communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.+--Go
shares with him in the good things of this life. While each bears his
own burden he must think of others, especially in ministering out of
his earthly goods to the wants of his spiritual teacher (see 2 Cor.
xi. 7, 11; Phil. iv. 10; 1 Thess. ii. 6, 9; 1 Tim. v. 17, 18).
Ver. 7. +God is not mocked.+--The verb means to sneer with the
nostrils drawn up in contempt. Excuses for illiberality may seem
valid before men but are not so before God.
Ver. 8. +He that soweth to his flesh.+--Unto his own flesh, which is
devoted to selfishness. +Shall reap corruption.+--Destruction, which
is not an arbitrary punishment of fleshly-mindedness, but is its
natural fruit; the corrupt flesh producing corruption, which is
another word for destruction. Corruption is the fault, and corruption
the punishment.
Ver. 9. +Let us not be weary: we shall reap, if we faint
not.+--"Weary" refers to the will; "faint" to relaxation of the
powers. No one should faint, as in an earthly harvest sometimes
happens.
Ver. 11. +Ye see how large a letter I have written with mine own
hand.+--At this point the apostle takes the pen from his amanuensis,
and writes the concluding paragraph with his own hand. Owing to the
weakness of his eyesight he wrote in large letters. He thus gives
emphasis to the importance of the subjects discussed in the epistle.
Ver. 12. +Lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of
Christ.+--They would escape the bitterness of the Jews against
Christianity and the offence of the cross, by making the Mosaic law a
necessary preliminary.
Ver. 13. +For neither they themselves keep the law.+--So far are they
from being sincere that they arbitrarily select circumcision out of
the whole law, as though observing it would stand instead of their
non-observance of the rest of the law. +That they may glory in your
flesh.+--That they may vaunt your submission to the carnal rite, and
so gain credit with the Jews for proselytising.
Ver. 14. +God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross.+--The
great object of shame to them, and to all carnal men, is the great
object of glorying to me. +By whom the world is crucified unto
me.+--By His cross, the worst of deaths, Christ has destroyed all
kinds of death. Legal and fleshly ordinances are merely outward and
elements of the world. To be crucified to the world is to be free
from worldliness, and all that makes men slaves to creature
fascinations.
Ver. 15. +But a new creature.+--All external distinctions are
nothing. The cross is the only theme worthy of glorying in, as it
brings about a new spiritual creation.
Ver. 16. +As many as walk according to this rule.+--Of life: a
straight rule to detect crookedness. +Upon the Israel of God.+--Not
the Israel after the flesh, but the spiritual seed of Israel by faith.
Ver. 17. +I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.+--The
Judaising teachers gloried in the circumcision marks in the flesh of
their followers; St. Paul in the scars or brands of suffering for
Christ in his own body--the badge of an honourable servitude.
Ver. 18. +Brethren.+--After much rebuke and monition, he bids them
farewell with the loving expression of brotherhood as his last
parting word, as if Greatheart had meant to say, "After all, my last
word is, I love you, I love you."
_MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.--Verses_ 1-5.
_Mutual Sympathy in Burden-bearing._
+I. That sympathy towards the erring is a test of
spiritual-mindedness.+--1. _Shown in the tenderness with which the
erring should be treated._ "If a man be overtaken in a fault, ye
which are spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness"
(ver. 1). Worldly and self-seeking men are often severe on a
neighbour's fault. They are more likely to aggravate than heal the
wound, to push the weak man down when he tries to rise than to help
him to his feet. The spiritual, moved by genuine compassion, should
regard it as their duty to set right a lapsed brother, to bring him
back as soon and safely as may be to the fold of Christ. To reprove
without pride or acrimony, to stoop to the fallen without the air of
condescension, requires the spirit of meekness in a singular degree.
2. _Reflecting that the most virtuous may some day be in need of
similar consideration._--"Considering thyself, lest thou also be
tempted" (ver. 1). The disaster befalling one reveals the common
peril; it is a signal for every member of the Church to take heed to
himself. The scrutiny which it calls for belongs to each man's
private conscience. The faithfulness and integrity required in those
who approach the wrong-doer with a view to his recovery must be
chastened by personal solicitude. The fall of a Christian brother
should be in any case the occasion of heart-searching and profound
humiliation. Feelings of indifference towards him, much more of
contempt, will prove the prelude of a worse overthrow for ourselves.
+II. That sympathy in burden-bearing is in harmony with the highest
law.+--"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of
Christ" (ver. 2). As much as to say, "If ye will bear burdens, bear
one another's burden; if ye will observe law, observe the highest
law--the law of love." There is nothing more Christ-like than to bear
the burden of a brother's trespass. Christ bore burdens which to us
would have been intolerable and overwhelming. The heaviest burden
becomes supportable when shared with loving sympathy. Kindness
towards the needy and helpless is work done to Christ. There is a
poetic legend among the Anglian kings that Count Fulc the Good,
journeying along Loire-side towards Tours, saw, just as the towers of
St. Martin's rose before him in the distance, a leper full of sores
who put by his offer of alms and desired to be borne to the sacred
city. Amidst the jibes of his courtiers, the good count lifted him in
his arms and carried him along bank and bridge. As they entered the
town the leper vanished from their sight, and men told how Fulc had
borne an angel unawares! Mutual burden-bearing is the practical proof
of the unity and solidarity of the Christian brotherhood.
+III. That no man can afford to be independent of human
sympathy.+--1. _Fancied superiority to sympathy is self-deception._
"If a man think himself to be something when he is nothing, he
deceiveth himself" (ver. 3). Others will see how little his affected
eminence is worth. Some will humour his vanity, many will ridicule or
pity it, few will be deceived by it. Real knowledge is humble; it
knows its nothingness. Socrates, when the oracle pronounced him the
wisest man in Greece, at last discovered that the response was right,
inasmuch as he alone was aware that he knew nothing, while other men
were confident of their knowledge. It is in humility and dependence,
in self-forgetting, that true wisdom begins. Who are we, although the
most refined or highest in place, that we should despise plain,
uncultured members of the Church, those who bear life's heavier
burdens and amongst whom our Saviour spent His days on earth, and
treat them as unfit for our company, unworthy of fellowship with us
in Christ? (_Findlay_). The most exalted and gifted is never lifted
above the need of fellow-sympathy.
2. _A searching examination into our conduct will reveal how little
cause there is for boasting a fancied superiority._--"But let every
man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself
alone, and not in another" (ver. 4). As if the apostle said: "Let
each man try his own work. Judge yourselves instead of judging one
another. Mind your own duty rather than your neighbours' faults. Do
not think of your worth or talents in comparison with theirs but see
to it that your work is right." The question for each of us is not,
"What do others fail to do?" but, "What am I myself really doing?
What will my life's work amount to when measured by that which God
expects from me?" The petty comparisons which feed our vanity and our
class-prejudices are of no avail at the bar of God. If we study our
brother's work, it should be with a view of enabling him to do it
better, or to learn to improve our own by his example; not in order
to find excuses for ourselves in his shortcomings. If our work abide
the test, we shall have glorying in ourselves alone, not in regard to
our neighbour. Not his flaws and failures, but my own honest work,
will be the ground of my satisfaction (_Ibid._).
+IV. That individual responsibility is universal.+--"For every man
shall bear his own burden [load]" (ver. 5). No man can rid himself of
his life-load; he must carry it up to the judgment-seat of Christ,
where he will get his final discharge. Daniel Webster was present one
day at a dinner-party given at Astor House by some New York friends,
and in order to draw him out one of the company put to him the
following question, "Will you please tell us, Mr. Webster, what was
the most important thought that ever occupied your mind?" Mr. Webster
merely raised his head, and passing his hand slowly over his
forehead, said, "Is there any one here who doesn't know me?" "No,
sir," was the reply; "we all know you and are your friends." "Then,"
said he, looking over the table, "the most important thought that
ever occupied my mind was that of my individual responsibility to
God"; and he spoke on the subject for twenty minutes. The higher
sense we have of our own responsibility the more considerate we are
in judging others and the more we sympathise with them in their
struggles and trials. Æsop says a man carries two bags over his
shoulder, the one with his own sins hanging behind, that with his
neighbour's sins in front.
+Lessons.+--1. _Sympathy is a Christ-like grace._ 2. _Sympathy for
the erring does not tolerate wrong._ 3. _Practical help is the test
of genuine sympathy._
_GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._