When I moved to Texas in 2007 to attend Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, I had no idea I was following a trail my family had already walked. My great-grandfather had come to that same campus in the 1930s to attend seminary. He and his wife lived on campus while he studied, and during those years they had a little girl who would grow up to become my grandmother. She spent her earliest years on that same ground where I would one day walk to class.
By the time I arrived, the campus was lined with big, mature pecan trees. One morning after our first daughter was born — eighty years after my great-grandmother had been born on that same campus — I was walking to class and noticed a group of seminary students gathered under those trees, picking up pecans to take home and feed their families. And it hit me: someone had planted those trees in the early 1900s. They never knew my name. They never knew I’d be there. They planted for a generation they would never meet.
I walked away grateful. And then I had to ask myself a hard question: what am I planting?
Because it is a whole lot easier to be grateful for somebody else’s harvest than it is to put a seed in the ground you’ll never eat from yourself. That tension is exactly what Paul is writing into in Galatians 6:6-10.
Giving Is Gospel Partnership
Paul opens this section with a verse I’ll be honest — I didn’t want to preach. He tells the churches of Galatia that the one who is taught the Word should share all good things with the one who teaches. It’s a verse about taking care of those who teach you, and it’s awkward to stand behind a pulpit and preach it. But we don’t skip verses at Harvey just because they make the preacher uncomfortable.
What Paul is describing isn’t a transaction — it’s a partnership. The word he uses for “share” makes that clear. It’s not paying a salary; it’s joining someone in the work of the gospel. Martin Luther said it’s impossible for a man to labor day and night just to survive and at the same time give himself to the study of Scripture the way the preaching office requires. Someone has to keep the minister free to study and preach. That’s what this verse is asking for.
But it goes wider than one pastor. When you give to the ministries of a local church, you’re not just paying utilities. You’re keeping a Bible open. You’re funding a church plant in a town that doesn’t have one. You’re sending missionaries to places where the gospel has never been heard. You’re training the next generation of ministers at seminaries they’ll attend decades from now. You may never see a single soul who comes to faith because of your giving — but just like those pecan trees, God takes ordinary seeds and multiplies them for generations you’ll never meet.
You Reap What You Sow
Paul then moves from the specific to the sweeping. Don’t be deceived, he says — God is not mocked. Whatever one sows, that will he also reap. We understand this instinctively when it comes to farming. Plant corn, get corn. What Paul is telling us is that God built that same law into our lives.
He identifies two fields we can plant in every single day. The field of the flesh produces a harvest of corruption. The field of the Spirit produces eternal life. And the choice of which field to plant in rarely feels dramatic. It’s not one big decision — it’s a thousand small ones. Lingering on something you know you shouldn’t see. Holding onto a grudge another week. Opening your Bible or opening your phone. Calling the person God put on your mind or scrolling past the thought entirely.
John Stott put it plainly: some Christians sow to the flesh every day and wonder why they don’t reap holiness. Holiness is a harvest. What we reap depends almost entirely on what and where we sow.
And before someone hears “sow to the Spirit and reap eternal life” as an invitation to earn their salvation — Paul has been clear throughout this entire letter that we are not justified by works of the law. Our good works are not the root of our salvation; they’re the fruit of it. Obedience is the evidence that we belong to Christ, never the basis for it. We sow to the Spirit not to get saved — but because we already are.
Don’t Quit Rowing
Paul closes with a word for the tired: don’t grow weary of doing good, because in due season you will reap — if you do not give up. The assumption is that all of us will feel it at some point. The fatigue of always being the one who shows up, cooks the meal, sits in the hospital room, teaches the class no one else will teach. Paul doesn’t dismiss that weariness. He speaks directly into it.
Spurgeon said the idleness of others ought to be an argument for our own diligence. If the work is suffering because someone else isn’t pulling their weight, that’s your reason to row harder, not your excuse to stop. Because here’s what quitting actually looks like — it rarely feels like quitting at first. It feels like a break. Like pulling your oars out of the water for a moment while the boat keeps gliding. Everything feels fine. But the current is already working against you, and if you don’t start rowing again, you’ll slow, then stop, then drift backwards.
Harvest day is coming. Paul is not vague about that. There is a season appointed for the reaping, and it will arrive in God’s time — not ours. Our job until then is simply to keep planting. Do good to everyone. Especially to those in the household of faith. While we have opportunity, which is exactly right now, this is the season for sowing.
And here is the best news in this entire passage: there was one person who sowed perfectly and never grew weary — Jesus Christ. He reaped our corruption on the cross so that we could reap His eternal life. He did the good we could never do, consistently, completely, all the way to the end.
Keep sowing good, because the harvest is coming.
Someone planted those pecan trees for a generation they’d never meet. You are planting seeds right now for a harvest you may never see. Don’t stop. The One who tends this field does not waste a single seed.
This post is part of an ongoing sermon series through the book of Galatians at Harvey Baptist Church in Stephenville, TX.
