Galatians 6:1 – Change
‘Change is a community project’. That phrase is used by Tim Chester in his book: You Can Change. But what does it mean? Well the word ‘change’ talks about God’s work in our lives to make us more like Jesus. It’s about the calling we have when we become Christians to put to death our old way of thinking and living and walk in step with the Spirit. Healthy things grow. And the Bible expects us as Christians to be growing in holiness and in likeness to Jesus.
But what does it mean to say that ‘change is a community project’? Well to put it simply, we’re not going to become more like Jesus by ourselves. This change isn’t going to happen if we just sit at home, read our Bibles by ourselves, read Christian books, and listen to sermons on the internet. Those are all good and helpful things. But we don’t read in the New Testament about individual Christians. We read about communities of believers. The letters in the New Testament are written either to churches, or to those who were ministers of churches. A few of them are written to scattered Christians, but the contents of the letters assume that those scattered Christians are meeting together with other Christians, and they tell them not to give up doing so.
And we’re not just commanded to meet together, we’re called to be involved in each other’s lives. We’re called to encourage one another, build one another up, teach and admonish one another, be at peace with one another, confess our sins to one another. And here, Paul says in v1: ‘If anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him’. As we spend time with one another as Christians, we’ll see each other’s sins and flaws. And that’s not something we should see as a risk or an unwelcome side effect. It’s part of God’s plan! As Sinclair Ferguson puts it: ‘The church is a community in which we receive spiritual help, but also one in which deep-seated problems will come to the surface and require treatment’. He says that as part of being together ‘We often discover things about our own hearts which we never anticipated’. And we also discover things about other people, which the easiest thing would be to ignore. But God is bringing those things to light precisely so that they can be dealt with.
Questions
- Should Christians be isolated from other Christians?
- What does this verse tell us to do?
Prayer Points
- Give thanks for your church family.
- Use prayer points from your congregation.
- Pray for family matters.