To expand the expression, Paul is saying: “Now, being free from all the pride and anxiety of having to perform for your acceptance with God, which false gospels demand, let us turn away from exalting ourselves and freely bind ourselves like slaves to one another, proving our freedom in Christ”

The Christian, having his whole being grasped by the gospel of God’s Son, no longer lives like a master with many servants, demanding they each please and satisfy him. No. The Christian is now a freeborn slave, a servant who lends himself out freely to many masters.

Galatians 5:13 encapsulates this radical teaching of Jesus Christ in these words: “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.”

Walk with me now as we survey Paul’s construction of this summons to the radically outward life of self-forgetfulness expected of all who are in Christ Jesus. It is a summons flawlessly built on the firm foundation of God’s gospel of redeeming grace.

Verse 13 opens with a soaring indicative. It declares before it demands: “For you were called to freedom, brothers.”

The word “called” in Paul is a reference to the will and activity of God. Thus, Paul is saying this freedom is not something the Christian is striving to bring to completion. It is something finished. God has created it and God has brought it to us and us to it. God has placed it in our hands, like a mortgage fully paid. It is, as we shall see, this foundational finished freedom which allows the Christian to serve one another through love.

Now, what about this freedom, what is it? In Galatia, false teachers were trying to put the conscience of Christian believers back in debt before God. They were calling the believers to perform Jewish rites and customs saying, “If you don’t perform these, you will remain guilty and unclean before God. You must keep proving yourself worthy to God. You owe God circumcision. You owe God this ceremony and that dietary regulation and this feast day observance.” This false gospel shriveled up an outward life of service; it did so by either inflating pride in the strong or driving the weak into a labyrinth of performative introspection.

None of this bothered the false teachers. They wanted to extinguish the liberty the gospel gives a man before God. The gospel proclaims that rites and customs can never remove guilt. Only Christ crucified and risen removes the sinner’s guilt and makes him clean. The gospel proclaims by faith alone in Christ alone all man’s guilt before God is vanquished.

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