NOTES for Gal 6:1-10

Paul returns again and again to the theme of human nothingness. The Apostle often said of himself that he was nothing, while advising others, as in the Epistle to the Galatians, not to imagine themselves to be something great or exceptional when they were nothing. Such a self-assessment and such an appeal are entirely appropriate in the context of the understanding of poverty as a spiritual state that in Paul's time was commonplace in Jewish and early Christian spiritual tradition alike. Indeed, poverty as a spiritual state is defined by the fact that, by virtue of having been created, a person is in a certain sense not his own. What makes him human is the “breath of life” that God, at creation, “breathes” into his “nostrils.” It is this that makes the human being the image of God. Yet this breath does not belong to the person; it remains God's, and the person remains human only so long as he preserves it and insofar as he is conscious of it. Once he realizes fully that his own existence as the image of God does not depend on him at all, that it is wholly God's work and that he himself can only participate in it, he understands himself as nothing, as having no existence apart from God's action.

Human nature, then, not to mention everything that belongs to a person, begins to be understood merely as an outward shell, as a set of tools given by God, as something received from Him on loan for accomplishing the tasks that God sets before a person during his life. Understanding himself in this way, a person becomes a perfect instrument of God. He can now help his neighbor if the latter has sinned, for God Himself will act through him, and God knows what to do. If, however, a person does not accept his own nonexistence, he will not thereby acquire another quality of being or become something he was not before; but he may well convince himself and even others that he is something when in fact he is nothing.

Such an illusion may prove costly in spiritual life generally, and especially in Christian life, for here the issue is the Kingdom, which can be found or lost in a single instant: one need only empty one's heart for it or, conversely, fill the heart with something of this world. It is these things, fundamental to Christian life, that Paul recalls to the recipients of his epistle, who had evidently forgotten them quite thoroughly.

Continuing the conversation about the Kingdom and about the relationships that take shape among the inhabitants of the Kingdom, Paul formulates a fundamental rule of spiritual life, one close to the well-known saying, "You reap what you sow" (vv. 7-9). The apostle understands perfectly well that spiritual life is a process just as ordinary life is, but unlike ordinary life, it unfolds not according to the laws of our world, not yet transformed, but according to the laws of the Kingdom. And if, in the untransformed world, a person who violates the Torah and every moral norm may still succeed in certain respects, in the Kingdom this is impossible in principle. It is not because someone will specially prevent a violator of the Torah from succeeding, but because the very nature of the Kingdom does not allow it. That is why Paul reminds them of the senselessness, from the point of view of the laws of the Kingdom, of boasting and self-exaltation (vv. 3-5): the point is not only that it is deception, but also that it is useless deception. In the Kingdom, deception is not only impossible but also pointless. The very nature of the Kingdom allows a person to be only what he really is.

One could say that the Kingdom is a world where all illusions are scattered and all mirages disappear, both frightening and comforting. It is no surprise that, speaking about correction, the apostle advises those who correct others to show gentleness and to watch themselves (v. 1). Of course, it is important to watch oneself also because anyone can sin, and, once carried away by correcting a neighbor's sin, one can do so very easily: during correction, the attention of the one correcting is inevitably transferred from himself to his neighbor, so that there is usually little or no time left to watch himself. But that is not the only point. It is easy to become carried away by correction in another sense too, forgetting that in the Kingdom, where everyone is in one spiritual space, the spiritual condition of each person concerns not only himself but also all who share the life of the Kingdom with him. Another's sin in the Kingdom ceases to be merely another's; it becomes a common problem, a problem for the whole fullness of the Kingdom, which it destroys and with which one therefore cannot make peace. But the struggle against sin can also become destructive for the Kingdom, especially if it becomes a struggle not only against sin but also against the sinner himself.

Of course, if the sinner identifies himself with his sin and refuses to repent, the situation truly becomes critical: sometimes it turns out that an unrepentant sinner may lose the Kingdom altogether. But in all other cases, a person must be helped to free himself from the sin that hinders him, not pushed out merely because his presence causes everyone else too much trouble. This is evidently what Paul has in mind when he speaks of the need to bear one another's burdens (v. 2). As we can see, everything the apostle says about Christians' relationships to themselves and to one another has only one purpose: to reorient the members of the Galatian church from the laws of our world, not yet transformed, to the laws of the Kingdom.

In today’s apostolic reading, the apostle Paul reveals to us a striking interpretation of sacred history. He says that the promise to Abraham had in view the coming of Christ, while the law, which appeared four hundred and thirty years later, was a special form of help for unruly humanity so that we would not perish without support before meeting Christ. The law in itself, an impersonal norm, does not enable us to meet Christ; it is needed so that “on the way” to this meeting we do not turn aside. In the same way, a photograph of the woman one loves is useful during separation, helping one not to forget the features of her face, but it is not the photograph that brings about the meeting with her.

Here there are very difficult words that require a very careful approach: they crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. These words are generally seen as a basis for every kind of asceticism. This theme itself appears very often in the Apostle Paul. There are many other words related to these: "But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (Gal 6:14). I have heard it said that these words mean: I have died to the world and the world to me. But if the apostle had wanted to say that, he would have said exactly that, whereas he said something different.

Here is what Fr. Georgy Chistyakov says: "The point is that the Bible has no orientation toward fighting the passions. The New Testament, through the mouths of the holy apostles, calls us not to fight anger, rage, malice, and so on, but to 'put off,' that is, to take off like old clothing, or to 'strip off' all these vices from ourselves. These two words are used many times in Scripture when it speaks of passions and vices, but nowhere here is there talk of fighting the passions. One must think that everything concerning the struggle with the passions that rule over us and nest inside us entered Christian literature from Stoic and, more generally, ancient philosophy at a later time.

The holy apostles see the Christian's path not as a road of fighting the passions, but precisely as the throwing off of old clothing, as growing out of that clothing... But if we begin to take sin apart bone by bone and subject it to analysis, then we are inevitably seized or sucked in by the very process of struggle, we turn into fighters, and at that point our Christianity simply comes to an end. From the depths of our consciousness we transfer the struggle into the outside world and begin to fight everyone who, as it appears to us, thinks the wrong way, does the wrong thing, and so on."

Let us feel the important circumstance that our Lord Jesus did not derive pleasure from His suffering, the pleasure that we at times derive from our own asceticism. After all, there is such a mental disorder as masochism - that is where Freud had grounds to accuse us. And this is, in fact, essential.