s of him--according to our version--as
'overtaken in a fault.' Now, that is scarcely his idea, I think. The
phrase, as it stands in our Bibles, suggests that Paul is trying to
minimise the gravity of the man's offence; but just in proportion as he
minimised its gravity would he weaken his exhortation to restore him.
But what he is really doing is not to make as little as possible of the
sin, but to make as much of it as is consistent with the truth. The word
'overtaken' suggests that some sin, like a tiger in a jungle, springs
upon a man and overpowers him by the suddenness of the assault. The word
so rendered may perhaps be represented by some such phrase as
'discovered'; or, if I may use a 'colloquialism,' if a man be caught
'red-handed.' That is the idea. And Paul does not use the weak word
'fault,' but a very much stronger one, which means stark staring sin. He
is supposing a bad case of inconsistency, and is not palliating it at
all. Here is a brother who has had an unblemished reputation; and all
at once the curtain is thrown aside behind which he is working some
wicked thing; and there the culprit stands, with the bull's-eye light
flashed upon him, ashamed and trembling. Paul says, 'If you are a
spiritual man'--there is irony there of the graver sort--'show your
spirituality by going and lifting him up, and trying to help him.' When
he says, 'Restore such an one,' he uses an expression which is employed
in other connections in the New Testament, such as for mending the
broken meshes of a net, for repairing any kind of damage, for setting
the fractured bones of a limb. And that is what the 'spiritual' man has
to do. He is to show the validity of his claim to live on high by
stooping down to the man bemired and broken-legged in the dirt. We have
come across people who chiefly show their own purity by their harsh
condemnation of others' sins. One has heard of women so very virtuous
that they would rather hound a fallen sister to death than try to
restore her; and there are saints so extremely saintly that they will
not touch the leper to heal him, for fear of their own hands being
ceremonially defiled. Paul says, 'Bear ye one another's burdens'; and
especially take a lift of each other's sin.

I need not remind you how the same command applies in relation to
pecuniary distress, narrow circumstances, heavy duties, sorrows, and all
the 'ills that flesh is heir to.' These can be borne by sympathy, by
true loving outgoi