You, my brothers, were called to be free. 

Galatians 5:13

Feeling cooped up has been a universal experience this year. Sometime around the end of April I distinctly remember sitting on the back porch, listening to the sweet melody of the myriad of little birds feasting on my loquat tree—oh, to be a bird and fly free! It is at times like this that freedoms tug. 

No other letter captures the essence of freedom better than Paul’s epistle to Galatia. No one had been trapped by the law like Paul, Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee (Acts 23:6). In his introduction to Galatians (MSG) Eugene Peterson sets the stage: “Through Jesus, Paul learned that God was not an impersonal force to be used to make people behave in certain prescribed ways, but a personal Savior who set us free to live a free life.”

Paul was determined the Galatians would understand they were called to be free, and that it was God who called (them) by the grace of Christ (Galatians 1:6). It is generally agreed: to be called is an expression of salvation in the epistles. The Greek kaleo, to call, “is an act of God the Father…in which he summons people to himself in such a way that they respond in saving faith.” (Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem, p.692). 

Think back with me to your calling, ladies. I fell in love with Jesus in my tweens, His call irresistible. This sweet, haunting melody from childhood sticks to me still:

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
calling for you and for me;
see, on the portals he’s waiting and watching,
watching for you and for me.

—Will Thompson, 1880

And so Paul, and his Galatian brothers who had heard the gospel message and believed, and you, and I (all who were called) are free—free from the ravages of hell, the clutches of the devil, the wiles of the world. We are free to approach the Father (2 Corinthians 3:16), to be “conformed to the likeness of (the) Son” (Romans 8:29), to display the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22).

Ah yes, but still there’s this wrinkle: Paul said you were called to be free. How quickly we choose to not live as free, at least as God defines freedom. Pity.

Nancy P