“The Ministry of Bearing” (Part One)

In his book, Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that within the context of Christian community, we have a responsibility to carry one another’s burdens. He described this as “The Ministry of Bearing”…

We speak…of the service that consists in bearing others. “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6.2). Thus the law of Christ is the law of bearing. Bearing means forbearing and sustaining. The brother is a burden to the Christian, precisely because he is a Christian. For the pagan the other person never becomes a burden at all. He simply sidesteps every burden that others may impose upon him

The Christian, however, must bear the burden of a brother (100).

There are no “ifs, ands or buts” here. We are to bear one another’s burdens in the church.