Galatians 6:9

The metaphor which runs through these verses suggests a caution. The husbandman after committing the seed to the ground, -waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it … Be ye also patient," James 5:7-8. The mention of -life everlasting" might seem to make the time of reaping so distant as to grow dim to the eye of hope. It isdifficult to go on sowing in faith and hope, but we must not lose heart, in doing that which is right in the sight of God (comp. 2 Thessalonians 3:13).

It is not easy to express in English the verbal antithesis of the original: -in fair doing let us not shew faint heart."

for in due season This promise is an encouragement to persevere. The phrase itself occurs 1 Timothy 2:6; 1 Timothy 6:15; Titus 1:3. Though here its chief reference is to the final award, yet God may see fit to grant to His servants in this life a kind of firstfruits or earnest of the great harvest in store for them hereafter. Even now they see in the good which they effect in the mitigation of evil, moral and physical, the reclamation and conversion of souls to Christ a proof that their labour is not in vain in the Lord. -In due season" is -in God's own appointed season," whether sooner or later.

if we faint not The same word is used, Matthew 15:32, of the physical exhaustion produced by long abstinence from food. It differs from being -weary," which here denotes loss of spirit, relaxation of the will, and so discouragement.