Galatians 5:13

'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' — the verse marks the pivot between Galatians' justification argument (chapters 1–4) and its ethical paraenesis (5:13–6:10). The Greek 'aphormēn' (opportunity, base of operations, launching point) is a military term for a strategic base from which campaigns are conducted — Paul warns that freedom, rather than becoming a base for love-service, can become a base for the flesh's campaigns. The command to 'serve one another through love' (douleuete allēlois) uses the paradox of the free man becoming a slave — echoing 1 Corinthians 9:19 ('though I am free from all, I have made myself a slave to all') and implicitly Christ's own self-giving pattern. The verse establishes that freedom in the new covenant is not license but a new capacity for the kind of love-service that the flesh is incapable of sustaining.