Monday, February 17, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Galatians 6
Key Verse
Galatians 6:10 — “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.”
Devotional Thought
Paul takes the pen from his scribe and writes in large, plain letters so the Galatians cannot miss his heart. The churches of Galatia had been unsettled by teachers insisting that Gentile believers must be circumcised to be truly saved. Against that pressure, Paul ends his letter not with argument but with a portrait of ordinary Christian life: restoring the fallen, carrying burdens, sowing to the Spirit, doing good while there is still time. He is old enough in the faith to know that even the most spiritual man can stumble, so he tells the strong to restore the weak “in the spirit of meekness,” remembering that they too could be tempted. He is realistic about human pride, warning the man who thinks himself something when he is nothing. Yet he refuses to let realism curdle into cynicism: every man must prove his own work, bear his own load, and keep sowing, because harvest comes in due season.
This is February, when winter has worn long and spring still feels like a promise rather than a fact. The farmer scattering seed in such a season works by faith, not by sight. Paul uses that same image here. Sowing to the flesh—indulging the old nature, living for appearance, glorying in outward marks—reaps corruption. Sowing to the Spirit reaps life everlasting. The harvest is certain, but it is not immediate, and that delay is exactly where weariness creeps in. “Let us not be weary in well doing,” he writes, because the man who faints before the harvest forfeits what he labored for.
Notice where Paul finally plants his flag: “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Not in circumcision, not in reputation, not in the approval of the Jerusalem crowd. The cross had crucified the world to him and him to the world. What matters is not the mark on the body but the new creature made by grace. And Paul can say that with scarred hands—he bears in his own body the marks of the Lord Jesus, the wounds of a man who practiced what he preached.
So the chapter holds together: burden-bearing, sowing, and glorying in the cross are one life. The same grace that saves us makes us patient with the fallen and faithful in the long winter of well-doing. And the peace Paul pronounces on all who walk by this rule is not a vague wish. It is the settled mercy of God upon His Israel, and it is ours this Monday morning.
Reflection
- Where in your life are you tempted to grow weary in well doing, and what would it look like to keep sowing to the Spirit there this week?
- When you see a brother or sister overtaken in a fault, do you come in the spirit of meekness—or with a quiet sense of superiority?
Prayer
Lord Jesus, we glory in nothing but Your cross, by which the world is crucified to us and we to the world. Make us new creatures, not merely outwardly religious. Give us meekness to restore the fallen and strength to bear one another’s burdens. Keep us sowing to the Spirit even when the harvest seems far off, and guard us from the weariness that quits before due season. Let us do good to all men while we have opportunity, especially to the household of faith. Let Your grace be with our spirit, and let peace rest upon all who walk by this rule. Amen.