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Gal_6:2. ἀλλήλων ] emphatically prefixed (comp. Gal_5:26), opposed to the habit of selfishness: “mutually, one of the other bear ye the burdens.” τὰ βάρη , however, figuratively denotes the moral faults (comp. Gal_6:5) pressing on men with the sense of guilt, not everything that is oppressive and burdensome generally, whether in the domain of mind or of body (Matthies, Windischmann, Wieseler, Hofmann),—a view which, according to the context, is much too vague and general (Gal_6:1; Gal_6:3; Gal_6:5). The mutual bearing of moral burdens is the mutual, loving participation in another’s feeling of guilt, a weeping with those that weep in a moral point of view, by means of which moral sympathy the pressure of the feeling of guilt is reciprocally lightened.[250] As to this fellowship in suffering, comp. the example of the apostle himself, 2Co_11:29. It is usually taken merely to mean, Have patience with one another’s faults (Rom_15:1); along with which several, such as Rosenmüller, Flatt, Winer, quite improperly (in opposition to ἀλλήλων , according to which the burdened ones are the very persons affected by sin) look upon βάρη as applying to faults by which a person becomes burdensome to others. But the command, thus understood, would not even come up to what was required in Gal_6:1, and would not seem important and high enough to enable it to be justly said: καὶ οὕτως ἀναπληρώσετε τὸν νόμον τ . Χρ .—and in this way (if ye do this) ye will entirely fulfil the law of Christ, the law which Christ has given, that is, the sum of all that He desires and has commanded by His word and Spirit, and which is, in fact, comprehended in the love (Gal_5:13 f.) which leads us to serve one another. What Paul here requires, is conceived by him as the culminating point of such a service. He speaks of the νόμος of Christ in relation to the Mosaic law (comp. Gal_5:14), which had in the case of the Galatians—and how much to the detriment of the sympathy of love—attained an estimation which, on the part of Christians, was not at all due to it; they desired to be ὑπὸ νόμον , and thereby lost the ἔννομον Χριστοῦ εἶναι (1Co_9:21). A reference at the same time to the example of Christ, who through love gave Himself up to death (Rom_15:3; Eph_5:2) (as contended for by Oecumenius and Usteri), is gratuitously introduced into the idea of νόμος . The compound ἀναπληρ . is, as already pointed out by Chrysostom (who, however, wrongly explains it of a common fulfilment jointly and severally), not equivalent to the simple verb (Rückert, Schott, and many others), but more forcible: to fill up, to make entirely full (the law looked upon as a measure which, by compliance, is made full; comp. Gal_5:14), so that nothing more is wanting. Comp. Dem. 1466. 20: ὧν ἂν ἐκλείπητε ὑμεῖς , οὐχ εὑρήσετε τοὺς ἀναπηρώσοντας . 1Th_2:16; Mat_13:14. See Tittmann, Synon. p. 228 f.; Winer, de verbor. cum praepos. compos. in N.T. usu, III. p. 11 f. The thought therefore is, that without this moral bearing of one another’s burdens, the fulfilment of the law of Christ is not complete; through that bearing is introduced what otherwise would be wanting in the ἀναπλήρωσις of this law. And how true this is! Such self-denial and self-devotion to the brethren in the ethical sphere renders, in fact, the very measure of love full (1Co_13:4 ff.), so far as it may be filled up at all (Rom_13:8).
[250] Theodore of Mopsuestia, in Cramer’s Cat. (and in Fritzsche, p. 129), well remarks that the hearing of one another’s burdens takes place, ὅταν διὰ παραινέσεως καὶ χρηστότητος ἐπικουφίζῃς αὐτῷ τὴν ψυχὴν , ὑπὸ τῆς τοῦ ἁμαρτήματος συνειδήσεως βεβαρημένην .