"Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" (Gal. 6:2).

There are difficulties, trials, sorrows, infirmities, and circumstances of the most variedly painful nature that press upon the children of God. If we wish to show our value for the saints, let us stoop down and take up that which our brother groans under. The Ten Commandments may not demand it, but in so doing we will fulfill the law of Christ. This is the law for us Christians. It is not a question of the law of Moses for that is the measure with which God deals with the natural man. Here He is dealing with those who are living in the Spirit.

What, then, is this "law of Christ"? Perhaps it could be defined as that inner motivation that led the Lord Jesus always to do His Father’s will. Christ was always occupied about others. He never did, in one act of His life, His own will. His existence here below was characterized by being always obedient and truthful in love.

The law of Christ directs those who live in the Spirit and walk in the Spirit. It motivates us to interest our souls about saints in need and distress. Even if there is that in our brother which is positively evil, it will cast us upon God to bring out something from Christ suited to lift up the soul that has slipped into the mire. If we want to know the law of Christ and the will of God, we need only study how Christ lived and behaved and interacted with men and women when He was here on earth. He came into a world full of evil and opposition to God, full of pride and vanity, and what did He do? He "went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil" (Acts 10:38). Though we may not be able to work miracles, yet in all that is in spirit like Christ, the moral principle of the life of Christ here below is precisely that which every believer has. If you have Christ at all, you have Christ not only for atonement, but as your life. He that believes on the Son has everlasting life, and the everlasting life is Christ. By being born into the world from Adam 1 have got an old natural life that loves evil, and which, as it grows in strength, grows in capacity for self-will. Even so, if I believe in Christ, there is this new life produced which is developed in proportion as Christ is fed upon and looked to, and as Christ’s words and ways are pondered over by the soul.

"Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." This is what Christ did when He was here below. He did not please Himself. He never chose the path of ease, but, on the contrary, every case of wretchedness and sin and sorrow was what occupied the Lord Jesus according to the will of God. When He took His place as man on earth, there was the continual exercise of communion between the Lord Jesus and His Father, the spirit of dependence upon the living God that never acted without His Father’s direction. And so it should be with our souls. If we are thus laying ourselves out to bear one another’s burdens, we need to wait upon God about it to know what the will of the Lord is. And in doing so we fulfill "the law of Christ."

(From Notes on the Epistle to the Galatians.)