Bearing Each Others Burdens
Jesus and Jiu-Jitsu // Devotional #73
There aren’t many days when I’m not envious of my two boys. They’re both in the prime of their childhood, completely oblivious to a world beyond their own. For the most part, they explore, play, and enjoy without a second thought about whether life will ever look different. To them, tomorrow might as well be forever.
Compared with the responsibility I carry as a husband, dad, and provider, their lives are pretty unburdened. I’ve yet to witness them pause building their pillow fort to check their bank balance. I’ve never seen them stress about whether their drawing is good enough for the fridge. And I haven’t noticed them continue to wonder if a decision they made a decade ago was the right call in the middle of family game night.
As much as I want to exempt them from it, I know these days will end one day. As they grow, we’ll continue to hand over more ownership, equipping them with the tools they’ll need to bear the burden of living in a difficult, relentless world far different from the one they now know. They’ll learn to handle a growing level of responsibility for their own affairs, and eventually, we’ll release them to live mostly independent lives. Some say this happens at some point, but I’m still in deep denial.
I know it will happen to them because it happened to me, just like it happened to you. Eventually, we are all forced to reckon with life's realities and responsibilities, carrying the weight reserved for us.
As the years pass and titles are added to our resume as disciple, husband, father, provider, and leader, so too are the burdens that accompany each. But the burdens we bear aren’t only the responsibilities themselves, but also the failures, sin, and suffering that come as we try to shoulder our responsibilities in a broken world.
It’s bearing the burden of a lost job. It’s bearing the burden of an unwanted diagnosis. It’s bearing the burden of our own faults and insufficiencies. It’s bearing the burden of life marred by sin’s destructive fruit.
It’s these burdens, the ones we weren’t meant to shoulder solo, that we are most tempted to try to carry alone. We act like Frodo with the ring, believing that no one else can carry our burdens for us. And when the burdens become too much to bear, we allow them to topple on top of us, unintentionally secluding ourselves from those who might otherwise gladly share the load.
It’s here, in our isolation and suffering, that loneliness frequently creeps in. Though we are desperate for friendship, the dual burdens of our responsibilities and shame are often enough to keep us separated from the relationships we were made for.
It’s to our shared weakness and inability to carry our burdens that Paul writes in Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” (ESV)
No matter our individual responsibilities, the greatest burden we bear is the burden of our sin. If sin is what separates us from God and others, loneliness is the experience of that separation, which began at the Fall. When we are lonely, our souls long for the companionship we were created to know. Yet if we are without those willing to shoulder our weaknesses with and for us, we will remain separated.
Notice the reason why Paul tells us to bear each other’s burdens: “…and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Christ came to bear the burden we could never bear on our own. It is the very burden of sin that Christ lifts from us, reconciling us to God and making it possible for our sin to no longer keep us separated from one another.
In John 15:12-13, Jesus makes plain what His law is: 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (ESV)
The love of Jesus is a love that lays down His life so that we might be reconciled to God as His friends, making it possible for friendship, true friendship, to take the place of loneliness. As we bear one another’s burdens, we do so sacrificially, just as Christ did for us, His friends, removing the burden of separation and drawing near to one another in love. We bear with one another’s weaknesses and failures because Christ has borne them for us.
Sin separates, yet love reconciles. For those of us who’ve isolated ourselves by letting our burdens become a wall, could it be that we won’t let anyone carry our burdens because we don’t feel worthy of that kind of burden-bearing love? And yet, here is the invitation from Christ in Matthew 11:28-30 to lay down the heavy yoke of bearing what you were never meant to bear:
28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Jesus wants to take the burden of your sin from you and invite you out of isolation into a community where others can help you bear the load of life in a broken world. Lay down your burden on the One who can bear what you can’t.
Take time to consider these questions:
What responsibilities or failures do you feel burdened by? How have those burdens kept you from pursuing a relationship with God and others?
In John 15:12-13, what command does Jesus give us? How does that command complement what Paul says in Galatians 6:2?
How has Jesus borne our ultimate burden on the cross? How has He reconciled us to God and others?
As you end your time, ask the Lord to reveal the burdens you are trying to carry alone. As they come to mind, release them to Him and ask to receive the rest that comes in Christ. Pray that God might show you how you’ve allowed your burdens to separate you from others, and ask to receive His reconciling love in Christ. Praise Him that in Christ He has brought you near, redeeming you from your sin and tearing down the wall of separation that once existed (Eph. 2:13-16).
