Listen for God’s word to you from Galatians 6:6-10…
Nevertheless, the one who receives instruction in the word should share all good things with their instructor.
Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
Three Principles of Sowing and Reaping
This section of Galatians is all about sowing and reaping. The principle is a basic one that most people can understand, at least at some level. Even people like me who are not farmers, can understand the principle of sowing and reaping.
As many of you know, I have been doing this thing called “The Mystery Box” with children in church for a long time. The idea of the Mystery Box is simple. I give the box to a different child in the church each week, and that child gets to put something in the box. The only rules are that the thing they put in the box can’t be alive or dead, and it must fit in the box with the top closed. Then my job is to talk about the thing in the box and relate it to God, or the Bible, or the Church. The lesson I have learned after doing this for years is that we really can see God everywhere and in just about anything.
Well, for eight years I served two churches in the mountains of West Virginia. We did not have many children in either church, so after a while, I allowed the children to give the Mystery Box to some adult in the church to put something in the box. Well, those adults in West Virginia would try to stump me. They knew I was a city boy and not a farmer, so they would put little pieces of farm equipment in the box, things I knew nothing about. They did catch me out a few times when I could not figure out what the object was. But we had some interesting discussions, nonetheless.
My point is this… I may not know much about farming, but I do understand the basic principle of sowing and reaping. Part of the reason why I understand about sowing and reaping is because we lived in Ireland with the stepson of C. S. Lewis for several months and we helped them with tending their very large vegetable garden. I can confirm for you that whenever we sowed pumpkin seeds, we did not reap potatoes. No, sure as anything, when we sowed pumpkin seeds, we reaped pumpkins.
So, even I, a city boy, can understand the principle of sowing and reaping at that basic level. But some of us have trouble understanding, or really believing in this principle when it comes to other human actions. So, let’s look at what Paul tells us about how this principle of sowing and reaping works in all of life. Paul gives us three principles of sowing and reaping in this passage. Then he gives us two encouragements. Let’s look at the three principles first.
The first principle is: whoever receives instruction in the word should share all good things with their instructor.
Paul never asked any of the churches that he established to support him financially. He tells us in Philippians 4 that the Church at Philippi was the only church that shared with him in the matter of giving and receiving. But they did it on their own, without being asked by Paul to contribute to his work.
Now Paul is establishing a principle for the future that those who receive instruction in the word should share all good things with their instructor. In other words, they should support their instructor financially. Paul affirms the same principle in 1 Timothy 5:17, “The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching.” The double honor that Paul speaks of is honor not just in word but in deed—by financial support. This is made clear by the next verse where Paul quotes Deuteronomy 25:4 and Luke 10:7, “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “the worker deserves his wages.” (See also 1 Corinthians 9:11.)
It may not be evident at first, but this is a principle of sowing and reaping. If a teacher sows the word of God in people’s lives, that teacher deserves to reap some benefit. And if people are blessed by the sowing of the word, those same people should support the one who teaches.
The only other thing I would like to say in this regard is thank you for taking care of me, your own local ox!
The second principle of sowing and reaping that Paul mentions is this: Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction.
As we have seen throughout this letter, Paul uses the word “flesh”, or “sarx” in Greek, to refer to our human sin nature. If we sow words, thoughts, and deeds to please our sin nature, we will from that sin nature reap destruction.
Paul does not mince words. The Scripture is clear from cover to cover. In God there is life, and if we turn away from God, we will only find death.
In 2013 my son Josh and I attended the service at Westminster Abbey when a memorial stone in honor of C. S. Lewis was installed in Poets’ Corner. During that service, they played the only surviving recording of C. S. Lewis giving one of his original broadcast talks on the radio during World War II. The portion they played ended with this bit which also forms the end of Lewis’s book, Mere Christianity…
The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.[1]
Now I know that many of us, at least in the quietness of our own hearts, are looking for a way around this law of sowing and reaping when it comes to morality. But there is no way around this law…
Dorothy Sayers, the mystery writer, was also a devoted Christian. On one occasion, she explained why there is no way around the law of sowing and reaping. She pointed out that in our society there are two kinds of laws. There is the law of the stop sign, and there’s the law of the fire. The law of the stop sign is a law that says the traffic is heavy on a certain street, and as a result the police department or the city council decides to erect a stop sign. They also decide that if you run that stop sign, it will cost you $25 or $30 or $35. If the traffic changes, they can up the ante. That is if too many people are running the stop sign, they can make the fine $50 or $75, or if they build a highway around the city, they can take the stop sign down, or reduce the penalty, making it only $10 if you go through. The police department or city council controls the law of the stop sign. Some of us tend to think that the laws of morality are like that, sort of arbitrary.
But then Sayers says there is also the law of the fire. And the law of the fire says if you put your hand in the fire, you will get burned. Now imagine that all the legislatures of all the nations of the entire world gathered in one great assembly, and they voted unanimously that here on out that fire would no longer burn. The first man or woman who left that assembly and put his or her hand in the fire would discover that the law of the fire is different than the law of the stop sign. Bound up in the nature of fire itself is the penalty for abusing it.
So, Dorothy Sayers suggests, the law of sowing and reaping is like the law of the fire. You can’t get around it. As Paul says, “God cannot be mocked.” The law of sowing and reaping is inexorable.[2]
But the law of sowing and reaping does not simply work in a negative fashion. It works in a positive way too. The positive way it works is revealed in Paul’s third principle: Whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.
Jesus tells us in Luke 11:13, “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Jesus makes clear that we can ask our heavenly Father to give us the Holy Spirit and when we ask for the Spirit, he comes to live inside of us. And when the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us, he gives us the desire to please him, just like a little child wants to please his or her parent.
Paul is saying that if we sow thoughts, words, and deeds to please the Holy Spirit, then from the Holy Spirit we will reap eternal life.
Notice: this is not works-righteousness. All of this comes from grace. The process starts when the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us. The Holy Spirit gives us a desire to please him. And the Holy Spirit empowers us to live a life of righteous thoughts, words, and deeds. And when we are living such a life, we will, from the Holy Spirit, not from our own works, but from the Holy Spirit, reap eternal life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”
That is true. But what Emerson leaves out of the equation is something vital, something essential, that we really need to understand. According to the Bible, without the help of the Holy Spirit, we cannot sow righteous thoughts, acts, habits, character, or destiny.
Isaiah 64:6 says…
All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
And Jesus says, in John 15:5, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
So, it is true, if we sow to please the Spirit, from the Spirit we will reap eternal life. But we cannot sow to please the Spirit without Christ living in us by the Holy Spirit who, in turn, gives us the power to please our heavenly Father.
Two Encouragements Regarding Sowing and Reaping
Now let us examine the two encouragements Paul gives us regarding sowing and reaping. The first one is: Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
The challenge of the Christian life is that it requires, as Eugene Peterson once said in a book title: a long obedience in the same direction. To follow Jesus for a day may not be hard. But to follow him for a lifetime—that is a challenge like no other. Because our Christian journey is a long one, it is easy to get weary along the way.
I have told you before what my father used to say to me when I was young and came to him with a problem. When I was weary in well doing, it was always my parents to whom I would go for encouragement. And my father would always quote to me from one of his favorite Bible verses, Jeremiah 12:5…
If you have raced with men on foot
and they have worn you out,
how can you compete with horses?
If you stumble in safe country,
how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?
That was my father’s way of saying: “It is always too soon to quit! Don’t give up! Don’t become weary in well doing. Keep going. And if you do, then in due time you will reap a harvest.” Oftentimes, even now, twenty-seven years after my father’s passing, when I am weary, I hear his words of encouragement in my mind.
So, what is the harvest that Paul is talking about?
- Jesus speaks of a harvest of people in John 4 and elsewhere. When the seed of the word of God is sown in people’s lives a harvest of souls can be reaped and brought into God’s kingdom.
- Paul also speaks elsewhere of the harvest of righteousness. (2 Corinthians 9:10; see also Hebrews 12:11 and James 3:18)
- Paul may have either one or both these metaphorical meanings of harvest in mind. Both convey truth. If we keep sowing the word in other people’s lives, people will be reaped, and a harvest of people brought into the kingdom. And if we keep sowing to please the Spirit we will reap a harvest of righteous character as well.
Paul’s second exhortation goes along with the first: Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.
Our calling as Christians is to do good in all the world, not just for our fellow Christians, but for all people.
I like to think of it this way… As Christians we have a responsibility to do good in ever-widening circles: first to our families, then to our church family, and finally to everyone else.
The following quote has been attributed to John Wesley, but after some investigation, I have concluded that Wesley didn’t say it. But it is still a good saying. And so, I shall attribute this quote to the most prolific author of all time… Anonymous…
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
Now, here’s the thing… if you try to do all the good you can, even for one day, I think you will find that you cannot do it on your own power. As I said earlier, we need the power of the Holy Spirit to enable us to do the good in the world that God wants done.
So let us ask God once again for his indescribable gift, the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us pray…
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