As soon as he issues his call to freedom, Paul adds a crucial dialectic. “You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another” (Gal. 5:13). Paul knows he is using paradox: employ your freedom for slavery! But this is not a rhetorical trick; these are two sides of the same coin. As he remarks in Romans, “While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code, but in the new life of the Spirit” (Rom. 7:5–6). Released from captivity in order to be slaves, but slaves of one kind, and not of another. In Romans as in Galatians, “slavery” in the new life of the Spirit takes the form of love: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another. For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Rom. 13:8). The freedom Paul proclaims is not individual autonomy or independence, but the freedom that takes place within the mutual commitments of love. What does he mean?

Paul’s letters probe the paradox of freedom through love.