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Paul's question in Galatians 1:10 is one of the bluntest in the New Testament: "Do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ." He wrote this to a church that was impressed by other people's credentials and approval. The logic is stark: you cannot serve God and arrange your life around earning human approval at the same time. The two orientations are mutually exclusive.
Get These Verses Daily — Free“For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”
Paul frames approval-seeking and serving God as incompatible orientations. This is not about being disagreeable — it is about whose opinion is structurally primary in how you live.
“He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”
Jesus sets the hierarchy directly: God first, not as an abstract principle but as the functional organizing center of all other loves. When another person's approval functions as that center, the structure collapses.
“Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.”
The word 'arm' here is a metaphor for strength and support — the thing you lean on. Building your emotional weight-bearing structure on another human being is precisely what this verse names as the problem.
“Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation.”
The Hebrew word translated 'waiteth' — damah — carries the sense of being still, being silent before something. David is describing the interior posture of a soul anchored somewhere other than other people's approval.
“For every man shall bear his own burden.”
The Greek word here is phortion — a personal load, a pack that belongs to the carrier. Every person has a load that is theirs to carry. Relieving someone of their phortion does not help them grow; it prevents it.
Codependency is a pattern where one person takes responsibility for another's emotional state, decisions, or outcomes — often at the cost of their own health and clarity. Scripture does not use this word, but it describes the underlying dynamic in several places. Jeremiah 17:5 calls it trusting in "flesh" rather than God — building your foundation on a human being rather than the one foundation that will not shift. Psalm 62:1 offers the alternative: "Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation." The soul that is anchored in God is the soul that can love others without being controlled by them.
Matthew 10:37 contains one of Jesus' most confronting statements about the hierarchy of relationships: loving family members more than God is not Christian devotion — it is misplaced ultimate loyalty. This is not a call to love family less. It is a call to love God first, which paradoxically creates the inner stability that makes healthy love of others possible.
Commentary is from a charismatic Protestant perspective, drawing on KJV text and public-domain sources including Spurgeon, Andrew Murray, and Matthew Henry.
Galatians 6:5 says "every man shall bear his own burden." This is read alongside Galatians 6:2 — "Bear ye one another's burdens" — which creates an apparent contradiction. The Greek resolves it: verse 2 uses baros (a crushing, extraordinary weight), while verse 5 uses phortion (a load each person was designed to carry). There is a weight that belongs to each person and that no one else can carry for them — their own choices, responsibility, and growth. Codependency often involves taking on someone else's phortion, which does not help them and destroys you.
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