Bearing With One Another

by adamsteins

Has anyone ever told you, “Walk a mile in my shoes?” Well I say let’s not just walk a mile in their shoes, let us walk a mile while helping them carry their cross, as well. Just like Simon from Cyrene, who helped carry Jesus’ cross, let us, too, help carry the crosses of others (Luke 23:26). Let us bear the weight of others’ burdens, not just sympathizing with their pain, but also empathizing with their pain. Jesus has told us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him (Matthew 16:24). It’s no wonder that so many of us have to stop when our cross becomes too heavy. We never put it down! We never trudge it to the top of Calvary and allow ourselves to be nailed to it as Jesus was. Without placing ourselves upon that erected cross, we never complete what Jesus completed: bearing the burdens of the world.

We are made in the likeness of our Creator. Believers have been chosen by God to be in the likeness of His son, Jesus. This means that our character is to be in likeness with the Son of God, not our appearance. If Jesus was sent here on this earth to serve others and not to be served, then shall we not also serve one another in love? If Jesus gave up his divine nature and humbled himself to the position of a slave, shall we not also give up our rights to our possessions, pride, and promises in order to humble ourselves before others? Nothing was written in the Bible that couldn’t be done (without God’s help, of course). When Jesus says, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” he is not setting a certain standard, he is giving a bold command. So if Jesus sacrificed everything in heaven to come to a decaying world to bear our burdens, let us then model him and give our decaying possessions to bear the burdens of one another.

It starts with Romans 15:1, “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.” This verse is the essence of burden bearing. Forget about yourself and take on the weight of those who are struggling. If your loved one has a broken heart, then pray until your heart becomes broken from even the thought of them shedding a single tear. If a friend is struggling from alcoholism, don’t just pat him on the back and wish him luck, find him help. “ Read James 2:16-17 and you’ll understand why faith without action is dead. That action may look different in each situation, but do something. “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2)

It is not enough to just bear the burden, however. As we do it, we are to put on “compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Colossians 3:12-13). Those characteristics are required, but still not enough. God, in His unfathomable grace, has given everyone on earth some benefits of His goodness. He has given everyone common grace in order to receive temporal blessings; warning to repent, showing that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked; and compassion, fitting us all with a sense of His great compassion for others. Even sinners can be kind to one another (Matthew 5:47).  But we, as believers in Jesus Christ, own a piece of God that no one else on this earth does: love. It is God’s love that “binds [compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience] together in perfect unity” (Col. 3:14). It is the same love that Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians 13. It is a selfless love that aims to edify one another, never ourselves. It is this love that allows us to possess the great compassion that our Lord Jesus had for the world on the night of his betrayal.

As we dispose of our old selves and put on the new, we are continually renewed in the knowledge of our Creator’s image (Col. 3:10). So let us truly follow the likeness of Jesus and do what he did at Gethsemane and Calvary. At Gethsemane, Jesus’ soul was “crushed with grief to the point of death…” He prayed so hard from such agony in his spirit that his sweat “fell to the ground like great drops of blood.” When was the last time that God had laid a burden on you? It will never compare to the burden that Jesus was faced with, so we must faithfully go ahead with our Father’s will saying, “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” At Calvary he was brutally nailed to the cross and raised up to hang for hours in agony that no man can conceive. All the while, he bore our burdens and sin, crying out to God. This was a man of sacrifice. This was a man of love. He is our God. He is our model. Let us model him.

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