Verse explainer
A farming image with teeth: the harvest always matches the seed, and God is not fooled by substitutes.
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
BSBDo not be deceived: God is not to be mocked. Whatever a man sows, he will reap in return.
The plain meaning
Paul is writing to churches tempted to shortchange their teachers and coast on outward religious performance (v. 6 immediately precedes this: share with your instructor). The sowing metaphor is agricultural and precise — you don't plant barley and harvest wheat. Whatever you invest in — flesh or Spirit — that is exactly what comes back. The verse isn't a general proverb about karma; it's a specific warning against self-deception in the Christian life. The Greek behind 'mocked' (mukterizetai) pictures turning up one's nose in contempt, and Paul's point is that no one gets away with it. God sees through the performance. Verses 8–9 complete the thought: sowing to the flesh yields corruption; sowing to the Spirit yields eternal life; and the harvest, though it may feel slow, will come — so don't quit doing good.
The common misreading
What the commentators say
Clarke presses hard on the self-deception angle: Paul's readers were tempted to offer God something other than genuine obedience — a kind of religious pretense — and Clarke links this directly to the Judaizing teachers who were distorting the Galatians' practice. The sowing image makes the logic plain: you cannot harvest a different crop than you planted, and you cannot offer God a counterfeit and expect a genuine return.
JFB draws attention to the Greek word for 'mocked' — literally to sneer with the nostrils turned up in contempt — and notes that God is never imposed on by empty words or hollow excuses. What looks like a valid reason before other people (stinginess toward a teacher, for instance) is fully transparent to God. They tie the harvest image explicitly to the end of the age, with the fields of this life becoming the crop of eternity.
Gill distinguishes careful provision for one's household (legitimate) from pampering the flesh and neglecting one's soul, the church's poor, and the gospel ministry (sowing to the flesh). The corruption reaped is both the perishing nature of worldly wealth and the ultimate second death. By contrast, sowing to the Spirit — through the Spirit's enabling, not one's own merit — yields life everlasting as God's gift, not a wage earned.
The word behind it
"Is mocked." From mukter, the nose — the gesture of curling the lip and snorting in contempt at someone. JFB note it means to sneer with the nostrils drawn up. Paul's choice of this vivid word is deliberate: anyone who thinks they can offer God a substitute for genuine obedience is not being clever — they are attempting to sneer at the Almighty. The verb's passive form ('is not mocked') makes it absolute: this is simply not something that happens.
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