For the one who has been reading a sentence backwards for four years.
Paul puts two matters in one verse and the order of them is deliberate, and almost nobody notices which one he puts first.
He does not open with the serving. He opens with liberty, states it as an accomplished fact about the people he is writing to, and only then arrives at what love does with it.
There's a paddle across two brackets in a garage, and under it on the shelf there's a scrap of paper with a name and a phone number on it.
The name belongs to a man of about twenty five who bought a secondhand canoe in the spring and has been going out alone on water he does not understand. You watched him launch in April at the wrong end of the reach on a falling tide, and you found him afterwards and gave him your number.
He has not called you. You have not called him either. The paper has been sitting under the paddle since April, and every single time you take the paddle down you see it, and every time you put it back.
The freedom comes first in that sentence and the serving comes second, and you've been reading it backwards for four years. The written word puts liberty ahead of the serving, and the Spirit works through both in that order.
How You Have Been Reading It
Say out loud what the verse has meant to you for four years, because it is not what it says.
You have read it as a command to serve, with liberty attached to the front as a sort of qualifying remark. Serve one another, and by the way you are free. In practice that has meant the serving is the substance and the freedom is decoration.
Read that way it produces exactly what you have. A man who knows he ought to help, has no structure telling him when, and therefore experiences the whole subject as an unmet obligation sitting under a paddle.
The order matters because it determines where the pressure comes from. Duty first produces a man who serves under weight. Liberty first produces a man who serves because he wants to and can.
Duty first produces service under weight, and that is not the order Paul wrote. The written word starts with liberty, and the Spirit does not reverse it.
Ye Have Been Called Unto Liberty
Here's the verse, and reading it in the order it was written changes what it asks of you.
For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.Galatians 5:13 (KJV)
First clause: you have been called unto liberty. Stated as accomplished, about them, before anything is asked. Paul establishes what they are before he says anything about what they should do.
Then the warning, and then the instruction. By love serve one another. It arrives third, resting on a freedom that has already been established, and it is directed by love rather than by requirement.
Paul wrote that to believers who had been handed a great many requirements over a number of years, and it carries across to a man standing in a garage looking at a scrap of paper.
Liberty is established first, and the serving rests on it rather than the other way round. The written word sets that order, and the Spirit keeps it.
What Changes on the Water
Be concrete, because order of operations sounds abstract until it is on a river.
Under duty, teaching that young man is a task you have failed to begin for five months. It carries a small weight every time you see the paper, and beginning it would be a relief rather than a pleasure to you.
That is not a good state to teach anybody from. A man who is discharging an obligation communicates it, however carefully he behaves, and a twenty five year old would read it inside about ten minutes on the water.
Under liberty, it is this: you know a stretch of water intimately, you have forty years of it, and there is a man out there who will eventually get into trouble on a falling tide. You are free to go with him on a Saturday, and you would rather like to.
Same action. Entirely different man doing it. The second one is also far better company in a boat, which matters considerably when you are teaching somebody something that could genuinely hurt them.
Under liberty it becomes a Saturday you would like, rather than a task you have failed to start. The written word puts the freedom first, and the Spirit is in the wanting as much as the doing.
I Am Not Telling You Duty Is Worthless
Be fair, because duty has kept a great many people doing right when they did not feel like it.
Duty is useful and it holds a person steady through years when nothing is enjoyable. Some of the best work anybody does is done on duty alone, and I would not argue a man out of it.
Nor am I telling you that wanting to is a requirement. If you go out with him on Saturday resenting every minute, he will still come home safe, and that is worth something on its own.
What I want off you is the order. Not the sense of responsibility. Not the four years.
You Gave Him Your Number
Here's the turn, and it happened in April at the top of a slipway.
You watched a stranger launch badly, you went and found him afterwards, and you gave him your telephone number. That is not a small act and it was not a duty. Nobody made you walk down a slipway to a man you had never met.
You did it because forty years on that water made you unable to watch it and do nothing. That is love operating, exactly as the verse describes, out of a freedom you were exercising without noticing.
The paper under the paddle isn't evidence of five months of failure. It's a record of the day you already acted, from liberty, before anybody told you to, and the only part still outstanding is a phone call you are entirely free to make.
You already acted from liberty in April, and the paper is the record of it. The written word puts the freedom first, and the Spirit had you down that slipway before any duty arrived.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
You are not asking to be let in. Christ has already joined you to Himself, the Spirit carries agreement back to God, and the sequel is His to write.
Say it once, with nothing added on the end.
The freedom comes first in the sentence and the serving comes second, and I have been reading it backwards for four years. The Word says that I have been called to liberty, and only then that by love I am to serve one another, which rests the serving on a freedom already established. The Spirit keeps that order and does not reverse it. I am not serving under weight. I walked down a slipway in April to a paddler I had never met, on water I have known for forty years, and gave him my number from liberty before any duty arrived. I text him about Saturday.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
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Galatians 5:13
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