Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Galatians 6:5 - 6:5
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Gal_6:5. Reason assigned, not for the summons to such a self-examination, but for the negative result of it, that no one will have to glory εἰς τὸν ἕτερον : for every one will have to bear his own burden. No one will be, in his own consciousness, free from the moral burden of his own sinful nature, which he has to bear. The future does not apply to the last judgment, in which every one will render account for his own sins (Augustine, c. lit. Petil. iii. 5; Luther), and receive retribution (Jerome, Theodoret, Erasmus, Calvin, Grotius, Calovius, Estius, Bengel, Michaelis, Borger, Rückert, and others; comp. also Hofmann),—a view which, without any ground in the context, departs from the sense of the same figure in Gal_6:2, and also from the relation of time conveyed in ἕξει in Gal_6:4; but it denotes that which will take place in every man after the self-examination referred to in Gal_6:4 : he will, in the moral consciousness, namely, produced by this examination, bear his own burden; and that will preclude in him the desire of glorying εἰς τὸν ἕτερον .
The distinction between βάρος and φορτίον (which is not diminutive) consists in this, that the latter denotes the burden in so far as it is carried (by men, beasts, ships, waggons; hence freight, baggage, and the like), while the former denotes the burden as heavy and oppressive; in itself the φορτίον may be light or heavy; hence: φορτία βαρέα (Mat_23:4; Sir_21:16), and ἔλαφρα (Mat_11:30); whereas the βάρος is always burdensome. The expression is purposely chosen here from its relative character.