The Servant's Manual

In 1998, a young seminary student sat in John MacArthur's expository preaching class at The Master's Seminary, struggling with a passage. He had been assigned Galatians 5:13, and he kept circling one Greek word: douleuete. Paul could have chosen any number of terms for service, but he deliberately selected the verb form of doulos — a bondservant, one who has surrendered all rights to a master. This was not volunteerism. This was not community activism dressed in religious language. Paul issued a command, an imperative, rooted in the unchanging, inerrant Word of God.

The text is breathtakingly precise. Paul first establishes the theological indicative — "you were called to freedom" — then immediately guards against antinomian distortion: "do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh." Only then does he deliver the imperative: "through love serve one another." The order is not incidental. Scripture never commands duty apart from doctrine, and it never grants liberty apart from love.

That seminary student later became a pastor in rural Oklahoma. He told his congregation, "The Bible doesn't ask if you feel like serving. It commands you to serve, and it tells you exactly why — because Christ served you first." He pointed them not to emotional experience but to the authoritative text.

When we submit to the plain teaching of Scripture, service is never optional sentiment. It is obedient, love-driven sacrifice — commanded by God, empowered by the Spirit, and grounded in a Bible that means precisely what it says.