“For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.”
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. — Paul's positive reframing: freedom ('eleutheria') is the believers' eschatological calling ('klēsis'), but freedom is not license ('aphormē tē sarki' — opportunity for the flesh); rather, it issues in mutual servitude ('douleuō' — serve, enslave oneself) through love, a paradoxical freedom that serves.
Church Fathers on Galatians 5:13
“For you, brethren, were called for freedom; only use not your freedom for an occasion to the flesh.” Henceforward he appears to digress into a moral discourse, but in a new manner, which does not occur in any other of his Epistles. For all of them are divided into two parts, and in the first he discusses doctrine, in the last the rule of life, but here, after having entered upon the moral discourse, he again unites with it the doctrinal part. For this passage has reference…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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