Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Galatians · About this commentary
Whatever a Man Sows
Galatians 6:6-8
6 But let him who is taught in the word share all good things with him who teaches. · WEB
A practical instruction about supporting teachers is followed by the widest principle in the letter, and the principle is stated as a law of nature.
Verse 6 is unexpectedly concrete after the burden-bearing: the one taught in the word should share all good things with the one who teaches. The verb is the root of fellowship, and what is shared is material.
Then verse 7 widens without warning, and the warning is sharp: do not be deceived. God is not mocked. The verb means to turn up the nose at someone — the sneer of a person who thinks the accounting will not happen.
The principle follows, and it is agricultural: whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. Not something like it; the same thing. The letter has been arguing about justification by faith for five chapters, and it now states a law of correspondence that governs the justified man's life without threatening it.
Verse 8 applies it to the two fields the letter has contrasted since chapter 3 Galatians 3:3. Sowing to his own flesh yields corruption — a decay word, the end of perishable material. Sowing to the Spirit yields eternal life.
The two harvests are not arbitrary rewards attached to two behaviors. Each is what the seed produces, and the transaction needs no external judge to come out that way.
Held together with the letter's argument, this is not a return to justification by works. Sowing to the Spirit is what walking by the Spirit looks like over time Galatians 5:16, and the fruit of that walk was described three verses before it as the Spirit's own Galatians 5:22.
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