16. Relationship Words in the Word: Yokefellow

16. Relationship Words in the Word: Yokefellow.

“I also request you, true yokefellow, to help these women; for they have worked hard proclaiming the Good News with me, along with Clement and the rest of my fellow-workers whose names are in the Book of Life.” (Philippians 4:3).

Yokefellow (Greek, “Suzugos”): A yoke is a heavy wooden beam placed on the shoulders of two beasts of burden, a beam shared by the pair of working animals who are joined together in order to allow them to pull a load they couldn’t pull alone. Christian yokefellows are close companions with a common vision who work efficiently together as they minister in the name of Jesus. Yokefellows are cooperative partners in community who labor at each other’s side in order to achieve a common task. Bearing the yoke together requires fitting into the same shape (the form of a servant); moving together at the same pace (steady as you go); going in the same direction (further up and further in).

The word “relationship” is a relatively new word, first used in 1744, that tries to sum up many old ideas. Relationship is very modern word, not even mentioned in the Bible, but the concept is as old as the hills, as ancient as creation, as eternal as the Trinity. So there are a truckload of terms and ideas in Scripture that describe different aspects of relationship, words like fellowship, community, active participation, partnership, indwell, kin, with, union, presence, friend, yokefellow. We have biblical titles like Emmanuel and Paraclete. And we can find biblical pictures of relationship in marriage, friendship, companionship, and family. Even the word “knowledge” is a relationship word. There is one Greek term, though, that we’ll discuss later in this series, and it seems to come closest to “relationship,” and that New Testament word is “koinonia.” But maybe we should start at the beginning. Actually, the reality of relationship began before the beginning, within the intimate community of the Holy Trinity.

1. Jesus Asks Each of Us to Be His Yokefellow. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  (Matthew 11:28-30).

A Divine Invitation. Jesus stands there in a crowd and opens His arms wide. “Come to Me,” He says. Come to Me if you are finding life burdensome. Maybe your heavy burdens are all these extra regulations from the Pharisees that are laying heavily on your shoulders, all their laws that seem meaningless and too demanding. Maybe your heavy burdens are due to all the responsibilities you carry that are difficult to manage. Maybe the heavy burdens you carry are simply the guilt you have from your sinfulness. Maybe you feel heavy burdened because life just isn’t turning out to be the way you wanted and you don’t know what to do about that. Whatever your burdens, come to Me for a real rest and refreshment. If you share My yoke, you can watch Me work, watch how I do things. You can learn My way while at My side. And we can be partners in carrying your load of burdens. Share your burdens with Me, and they will seem lighter to bear. For I am not a hard-driving taskmaster full of pride and ambition. I am easy to please, for I am meek, with My strength under God’s control. I am lowly and have learned to depend on God. With Me, your burdens will be more meaningful, satisfying and lighter on your spirit. Come to Me, and you will learn “the unforced rhythms of grace.” (Peterson). To help ease your burdens with the Temple leaders, I will soon be very clear in My complaints against them: “Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in a bundle of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help.” (Matt. 23:4, MSG). Another meaning of yoke is a rabbi’s understanding of Torah, his system of teaching, his group of instruction to which his followers needed to submit. Jesus no doubt suggested in His yoke invitation, something like this… ‘Well, My yoke, My teaching, will not give you more burdens to bear. My instruction will be delightful, wholesome, comfortable to wear. If you come to Me and submit to my Torah teaching, it will not be burdensome or heavy on your spirit, for I will help you live in the way I’m speaking about. It will be light and easier to bear.’ In speaking of His restful understanding of Torah, Jesus could easily have been referring to two wonderful quotes from Hebrew scripture… First, when Yahweh said to Moses, “My presence shall go with you, and I will give you rest.” (Ex. 33:14); and from Jeremiah: “And thus says the Lord, ‘Stand at the crossroads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it; then you will find rest for your souls.” (6:16). Come to Me, Jesus says, learn from Me, from My understanding of God’s word, and I will fulfill those Scriptures before your very eyes.

2. Jesus Practicing the Yokefellow Principle with the Twelve. “And Jesus called His twelve disciples together and began sending them out two by two, giving them authority to cast out evil spirits… So the disciples went out, telling everyone they met to repent of their sins and turn to God. And they cast out many demons and healed many sick people, anointing them with olive oil.” (Mark 6:7, 12, 13).( Please read the story of Jesus sending out His disciples, in Matthew 10:1-15, Mark 6:7-13, and Luke 9:1-6).

Sent Out. About midway through His earthly ministry, Jesus decided to build on the experience the twelve disciples have had with Him, by sending them on their first missionary journey. This will be an extended training session to help them prepare for their many journeys after the Ascension and Pentecost, when they fan out to spread the Good News. So Jesus empowered them to represent Him, to display the spiritual power displayed by Jesus. He gave them power to preach the Kingdom, to encourage repentance of sins, to cast out demons, and to heal diseases. They will effectively do what Jesus had done to this point. They will graduate from disciples  (“learners”) to apostles (“sent out on a mission”). They will be His messengers, His ambassadors, His representatives. They will physically expand Jesus’ ministry, since Jesus can only be in one place at a time. So Jesus sent them out in pairs to preach and to heal. Jesus and the disciples had earlier prayed for more workers for the Harvest. And now they are the answers to their own prayers. By giving His disciples His spiritual power and giftedness, He is establishing a pattern with all His future disciples through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. As the Orthodox Church puts it, “He shares with us by grace what is His by nature.”

Disciples as Yokefellows. In His wisdom, Jesus sends the disciples out two by two. The pair of disciples will be present for mutual support. They can be present to encourage and strengthen each other, to comfort each other during difficult days, to offer discernment when decisions are called for, and to stir each other up when weary or tempted to be idle. Dividing into pairs will be an excellent team-building experience as they learn to rely on each other. Having a partner will also provide something important in Mosaic Law, a corroborating witness if one is needed (eg, Deut. 17:6).

3. Jesus Practicing the Yokefellow Principle with the Seventy. “The Lord now chose seventy (or seventy-two)other disciples and sent them ahead in pairs to all the towns and places He planned to visit… When the seventy disciples returned, they joyfully reported to Him, ‘Lord, even the demons obey us when we use your name!” (Luke 10:1,17). (Please read the story of Jesus sending out the seventy disciples, in Luke 10:1-21).

What. Jesus commissioned seventy disciples to go to far-flung towns that are in Jesus’ travel plans. He wants them to prepare these towns for His coming. Jesus is planning on visiting these towns and villages soon, and He wants them prepared for His arrival and His ministry.

When. Roughly midway through the three-year public ministry of Jesus.

Where. Distant and neighboring towns and villages throughout Israel.

Who. Jesus personally selected seventy followers of His who were not a part of His original twelve. These believers have been with Him long enough to be familiar with His teachings, His mission, His ways of doing things. They have heard His parables, witnessed His miracles, and observed Him as He ministered for a year and a half to everyone from the religious elite to the religious outcasts. These seventy were sent in pairs to cities around Judea, no doubt, and they were in many ways like babes in the woods. He even said He was sending them out like lambs in the midst of wolves. These seventy disciples were somewhat prepared, but they were not mature old saints by any means. Evidently, Jesus had confidence in them to be useful to the Kingdom. One doesn’t have to be perfectly wise and experienced to be used by the Lord. Jesus wanted these disciples to learn by experience. All seventy names in the traditional list of names have been declared saints by the Orthodox Church.

4. Bearing Burdens as Yokefellows. “Continue bearing each other’s heavy burdens. In this way you will be fulfilling the Torah’s true meaning, which is upheld by the Messiah Christ. Keep carrying one another’s overwhelming loads, and you will be truly obeying Christ’s Royal Law of Love. By your ongoing offer to stoop down and help shoulder one another’s crushing burdens, you will be completely submitting to the way Christ expects us to live.” (Galatians 6:2).

Bear – to carry, to carry off; to take away, to take up with your hands; to shoulder or share a weight. This word is in the continuous present tense, which means to continue doing so, an ongoing effort and not a one-time activity.

Burden – a crushing load; an extremely heavy weight; an overwhelming burden; an oppressive weight too heavy for one person to carry alone.

Fulfill  – to accomplish in its entirety; to complete; to perform fully; to observe perfectly.

Law of Christ – the teachings of the Messiah that highlight the intended meaning of the Law of Moses; Christ‘s words in the Gospels that clarifies the heart of Torah; the set of biblical expectations established by Jesus that reveals what the Lord had in mind in the Hebrew Scriptures; the spirit of the Law of Moses behind the letter of the Law, as expressed by Jesus Christ.

On the Cross as a Yoke. When Jesus instructed His followers to pick up their cross daily and follow Him (Matthew 10:38 and 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23), it seems He was asking them to pick up their heavy load that cannot be carried alone. The cross is a yoke that needs to be shared with Jesus and with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. I am convinced we cannot carry our cross alone, but like any yoke must be shared with a loved one. Why was burden-bearing so near and dear to Paul’s heart, so much so as to believe that when one bears the burdens of others, one in fact is completing the expectations of Christ? Perhaps Paul focused on burden-bearing because this human act of love perfectly described what Christ did on the Cross for our salvation. The whole point of Christ’s burden-bearing was to heal and ransom us because of His profound love for us. Burden-bearing represents and demonstrates God’s love for us, and summarizes all that he did on Calvary. So when we share the yoke with others, when we bear the burdens of another, we are participating in the love Christ has for others. When we pick up our cross daily, we can’t help up but bear the burdens of others. “Surely it was our weaknesses He carried; it was our sorrows and our pain of punishment that weighed Him down. God has placed on Him the guilt and sin of us all… Through what He experienced, my Righteous Servant will make many righteous, in right standing before God, for my Servant bears the burdens of their sins.”  (Isaiah 53:4, 5, 11).

The Yoke of Spiritual Burdens – Burden-bearing can be applied to any excessive weight on a believer’s shoulders, whether physical or spiritual. In this passage though, Paul seems to be directly applying this word to spiritual burdens… guilt from a particular sin; a difficult time of temptation; sorrow over spiritual failure; being overtaken by the weight of an unexpected sin or wrongdoing; the expressed need for forgiveness; a time of doubt; an obvious need for sound Christian teaching; the need for a fellow believer be warned about the path one is traveling. Whatever this spiritual burden might be, fellow believers are expected to be aware of the spiritual well-being of fellow believers, and then to helpfully carry that believer by bearing his burden, by helping to shoulder the weight of it. Paul is referring in this passage to matters that are spiritual in nature, something that is weighing excessively on a brother/sister’s spirit. Bearing someone’s burden is the act of becoming a yokefellow, of putting God’s agape love into action.

“One” by U2:

“… One love, one blood,
One life, you got to do what you should
One life, with each other
Sisters, brothers

One life but we’re not the same
We get to carry each other, carry each other
One
One.”

Mary J. Blige & U2 – One (lyrics) [HD]

Sharing the Yoke with Jesus. Perhaps the healthiest burden-bearing is when we come alongside someone who is burdened, and we offer to join them in the spirit of yokefellows, as we together bring that parcel of pain to Christ, the only One who is equipped to bear such a mystery. Only Jesus is able to literally carry the full yoke of our troubles. Perhaps instead of literally bearing someone else’s pain or burden, we should instead encourage the burdened to offer the pain to Christ and to what He accomplished on the Cross. In that way the burdened person is able to participate in the life of Christ and join in His “fellowship of suffering” (Philippians 3:10). Perhaps by literally bearing someone’s burden and relieving that person of it without sharing that burden with Jesus, we deprive that burdened person of truly joining that holy fellowship of suffering.

The Ultimate Burden-Bearer. Our God is the world’s eternal Watchman, the ultimate Yokefellow. Like a compassionate shepherd, God tends His flock, the human race, and somehow gives all of us His personal, undivided attention. He not only sees but He responds. As David says in Psalm 68:19, “Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burdens.”