The Greek That Changes Everything

In Galatians 5:13, Paul writes with surgical precision: "For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another." The word Paul chooses for "serve" is douleuete — from doulos, meaning bondservant or slave. This is no casual volunteerism. The inspired text demands we feel the full weight of that word.

Consider what Paul is doing. He has just spent four chapters demolishing the Judaizers' false gospel of works-righteousness. He has defended justification by faith alone with airtight theological argument. And now, at the very moment his readers might lean back and say, "We are free — we owe nothing to anyone," the Holy Spirit through Paul's pen redirects that freedom toward radical servanthood.

John MacArthur once observed that Christian liberty is not liberty from obligation but liberty for a new kind of obligation — one driven by love rather than law. The inerrant Word never contradicts itself. The same epistle that declares we are free from the curse of the law binds us willingly to one another as slaves of love.

This is the doctrine rightly handled. Freedom without service is antinomianism. Service without freedom is legalism. But the sufficient, inerrant Scripture holds both truths together without tension. When you serve your neighbor this week — not to earn God's favor but because Christ has already secured it — you demonstrate that you have understood what Paul actually wrote.