Commentary - Galatians 6:6-10

Bird's-eye view

In this concluding section of his practical exhortations, the Apostle Paul lays down a foundational principle of the Christian life, which is the immutable law of the harvest. He connects this grand, agricultural metaphor directly to the very practical and earthy business of paying your pastor. But as is always the case with Paul, the immediate issue opens up into a panoramic view of two ways to live: one can either sow to the flesh, or one can sow to the Spirit. The entire Christian life is a matter of husbandry. We are all farmers, and we are all planting seeds every day with our time, our money, our attention, and our affections. The ground we sow into will determine the crop we reap. Sowing to the flesh, which is the life of self-gratification and living for the here-and-now, yields a harvest of corruption and decay. Sowing to the Spirit, which is the life of faith, generosity, and gospel-centrality, yields a harvest of everlasting life. Paul concludes by encouraging the Galatians not to grow discouraged in this spiritual farming, promising a guaranteed harvest at the proper time, and directing their good works, first and foremost, toward their brothers and sisters in Christ.

This passage is a bracing corrective to any notion of a disembodied, ethereal spirituality. The life of the Spirit has direct, tangible, and financial implications. How a congregation treats its minister, how Christians use their resources, and how they persevere in ordinary good deeds are not secondary issues; they are the very soil in which a harvest of eternal life grows. God is not mocked; He has established the world in such a way that actions have consequences, and the Christian life is a long obedience of sowing good seed in good soil, trusting God for the glorious harvest to come.

Outline

Context In Galatians

Galatians is a book about the radical freedom of the gospel. Paul has spent five chapters dismantling the arguments of the Judaizers, who insisted that Gentile believers must add works of the law, particularly circumcision, to their faith in Christ. He has argued passionately that justification is by faith alone, apart from works of the law. Now, in chapter 6, he is concluding his practical instructions for what this life of freedom looks like. It is not a freedom for licentiousness, but a freedom to serve one another in love (Gal 5:13). He has just instructed them to bear one another's burdens and to examine their own work (Gal 6:1-5). The passage on sowing and reaping flows directly from this. It is the practical, economic outworking of a community that is truly living by the Spirit. If the Galatians have truly been set free from the law, they are now free to be generous. If they are truly walking by the Spirit, that walk will include how they manage their pocketbooks, especially in relation to the ministry that feeds them the word of truth. This section provides a crucial balance to the book's emphasis on grace; true grace is never cheap, and it always produces a harvest of good works.

Key Issues

The Inescapable Harvest

One of the central delusions of sin is the idea that we can somehow get away with it. We think we can cheat the system, that we can sow wild oats all week and then pray for a crop failure on Sunday. We think we can mock God. To mock God is to turn up your nose at Him, to treat Him with contempt, as though His laws are mere suggestions that can be safely disregarded. Paul’s point here is that the law of the harvest is as fixed and unalterable as the law of gravity. God has woven it into the very fabric of the moral universe.

You cannot plant thistle seeds and expect to get a harvest of watermelons. It doesn't matter how sincerely you hoped for watermelons, or how many other farmers were also planting thistles. The seed determines the crop. This is not a threat as much as it is a simple statement of fact, a diagnosis of reality. God is not mocked because reality cannot be mocked. If you sow to the flesh, you are planting seeds of death, and it is sheer lunacy to expect them to produce a harvest of life. Conversely, and this is the glorious part of the promise, if you sow to the Spirit, you cannot fail to reap eternal life. God's promise is as certain as His warning. He will not be mocked by letting our spiritual sowing come to nothing. The harvest is coming, and it will be exactly what was planted.

Verse by Verse Commentary

6 And the one who is instructed in the word is to share in all good things with the one who instructs him.

Paul begins with a very direct and practical application of Christian love. The word for "share" is koinoneo, from which we get our word koinonia, or fellowship. This is not a cold, contractual transaction; it is a warm fellowship. The one who receives spiritual blessings (instruction in the word) is to have fellowship with his teacher in all material blessings ("all good things"). Put simply, Christians are to pay their pastors. The ministry of the Word is a real vocation, and those who dedicate their lives to it are to be supported by those who benefit from it. This is not an optional extra for especially keen church members; it is a fundamental aspect of life in the Spirit. To receive the spiritual seed of the Word and refuse to sow back the material seed of financial support is to begin to mock God.

7 Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.

This is the central hinge of the passage. The phrase "Do not be deceived" indicates that we are all highly susceptible to this particular deception. We are experts at self-deceit, especially when it comes to the connection between our actions and their consequences. To be "mocked" means to be treated with contempt or sneered at. The idea is that God has established a moral order in the universe, and to think we can violate it without consequence is to sneer at the Creator Himself. The agricultural principle is universal: you reap what you sow. This is not karma; it is the created order of a personal God. Every action, every word, every dollar spent is a seed planted in one of two fields.

8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.

Here Paul identifies the two fields. The "flesh" (sarx) is not the physical body, but fallen human nature, oriented toward self and opposed to God. To sow to the flesh is to invest your time, energy, and resources into gratifying your sinful desires. It is a life lived for the moment, for personal comfort, for worldly gain. The harvest of such a life is "corruption", decay, ruin, and ultimately, damnation. It all rots. The alternative is to sow to the "Spirit." This is to invest in the things of God, to live a life oriented toward His glory, fueled by His Spirit, and in line with His Word. It is a life of faith, hope, and love. The harvest of this life is "eternal life." This is not just a long time in heaven after you die; it is a quality of life, the very life of God Himself, that begins now and comes to full fruition in the age to come.

9 And let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.

Paul knows that sowing to the Spirit is hard work. It is farming, after all. It involves plowing hard ground, and the harvest is often not immediate. There is a delay between the sowing and the reaping, and in that delay, we are tempted to "lose heart" or "grow weary." We do good, we are generous, we forgive, we serve, and we don't see an immediate return. The temptation is to give up and say, "What's the use?" Paul encourages us to persevere. The harvest is guaranteed, "in due time we will reap." God has His appointed season for the harvest, and it will come. The only way to forfeit the harvest is to quit before it arrives. Faithfulness is simply a matter of not quitting.

10 So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith.

This is the grand conclusion. Given this unalterable law of the harvest, what should we do? We should seize every opportunity to "do good." The Christian life is to be marked by proactive, positive benevolence. This goodwill is to be extended to "all people" without exception. Christian love is not sectarian. However, Paul immediately establishes a necessary priority. Our good works are to be directed "especially to those who are of the household of the faith." This is the ordo amoris, the right ordering of our loves. Our first responsibility is to our own family, and our next is to our spiritual family, the church. This is not an excuse to neglect our unbelieving neighbors, but a command to prioritize our brothers and sisters in Christ. A man who says he loves all mankind but neglects his own wife and children is a liar. In the same way, a church that is passionate about "social justice" for the world but neglects the widow in its own membership is a hypocrite. Love must begin at home, and for the Christian, home is the household of faith.

Application

This passage forces us to take a hard look at our lives as if they were a farm. What kind of seed are you planting? Look at your bank statement, your browser history, your calendar. These are the records of your sowing. Are you investing in the temporary, the self-serving, the things that will ultimately rot? That is sowing to the flesh. Or are you investing in the kingdom of God? This means financially supporting the preaching of the gospel. It means giving your time to serve the saints. It means using your resources to help a brother or sister in need. That is sowing to the Spirit.

The warning here is stark: do not be deceived. It is easy to live a life of fleshly sowing while maintaining a veneer of spirituality. It is easy to think that because we are saved by grace, our daily choices don't matter. But they do. They are seeds. God's grace in salvation does not abolish the law of the harvest; it empowers us to sow good seed for the first time in our lives. And the promise is glorious. Don't give up. The work is often thankless, and the results are often unseen. But the harvest is coming. God is not mocked. Your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Keep plowing. Keep sowing. In due season, you will reap a harvest of glory that will make all the toil of this life seem like a light and momentary affliction.