The Restoration of the Lapsed
Galatians 6:1
Brothers, if a man be overtaken in a fault, you which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness…


In the Pauline hypothesis of a perfect society, the rectification of a wrong is not due to the clamour or plaint of that which is immediately distressed, but to the sympathy felt by the whole of the society towards the suffering or injured part. From St. Paul's point of view, a social evil sends a pang through the whole body, urging it to take note of the disease, and to discover the remedy. That the remedy can be found and the disease subdued he did not for a moment doubt. Conceive, if you can, a public conscience so keen and tender as to be instantly alive to the moral evils which corrupt, enfeeble, and blemish it, and so wise as to be constantly busying itself with their cure. Imagine men comprehending that the corrective forces of public morality are concerned principally with the purification of mankind from evils which it has contracted. Picture a society employed in finding out the means by which poverty, ignorance, vice, selfishness, can be chastened or healed because itself is degraded and dishonored, and is restless till it has found a cure. Well would it have been if the reformation of man had been continued on these lines laid down by St. Paul; but the utmost that men have done as yet, is to concede a right, perhaps no more than a right, of complaint to the sufferer. ("Paul of Tarsus.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.

WEB: Brothers, even if a man is caught in some fault, you who are spiritual must restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; looking to yourself so that you also aren't tempted.




The Restoration of the Erring
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