For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)

Eleutheria Christos Eleutheroo is the Greek. For liberty Christ liberated us.

Paul joins Aristotle in advocating eleutheria rather than exousia. Liberty does not mean to have no impediments. Both the natural and social worlds tell us that impediments to self-discovery and behavior will always exist.

But we can be - are meant to be - free in the sense of speaking our mind, seeking our best, and becoming that which is our distinctive function.

About a century before Paul's epistles Diodorus Siculus defined liberty as a kind of to autezousion or self-control, and this notion of eleutheria is in Paul's meaning.

For Paul liberty in Christ is to be freed from the external slavery of the law in order to discover our best self: the self God intended. Once this true self is experienced we will be increasingly drawn to live consistently and coherently with that identity.