Word studies · Greek · Strong's G1657
ἐλευθερία · eleuthería · appears 11 times in the New Testament
In one line: Freedom from sin's mastery, for love.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not be encumbered once more by a yoke of slavery.
Galatians 5:1
Eleutheria is freedom — the liberty Christ secures, which frees from sin's mastery rather than from all obligation.
Paul uses eleutheria for the freedom believers have in Christ over against the law's yoke, and warns in the same breath against turning it into “an opportunity for the flesh.” James can call God's law itself “the law of liberty,” which shows the freedom in view is not the absence of shape but the presence of life.
Eleutheria comes from eleutheros, “free,” the ordinary Greek word for a citizen who was not a slave. It was a civic status word before it was a spiritual one, which is why Paul's slave-and-free contrasts land with such force in a world where the distinction ran through every household.
Modern freedom means the absence of constraint; the New Testament's means a change of master. Paul can call the same person free and a slave of Christ in consecutive sentences without contradiction, because what has ended is the old ownership, not all belonging.
Eleutheria (G1657) appears 11 times in the New Testament, and 4 of those are in Galatians — the letter written to keep a free church from going back under the yoke.
Christian liberty is grounded in accomplished redemption: “for freedom Christ has set us free.” That makes it something to stand firm in rather than to earn, and something to spend in love of neighbor rather than in self-assertion.
Ask what you are free from, and then what that freedom is for. Spend one piece of it this week serving someone who cannot repay you.
freedom (legitimate or licentious, chiefly moral or ceremonial)
that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
Romans 8:21the other one’s conscience, I mean, not your own. For why should my freedom be determined by someone else’s conscience?
1 Corinthians 10:29Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
2 Corinthians 3:17This issue arose because some false brothers had come in under false pretenses to spy on our freedom in Christ Jesus, in order to enslave us.
Galatians 2:4But the one who looks intently into the perfect law of freedom, and continues to do so—not being a forgetful hearer, but an effective doer—he will be blessed in what he does.
James 1:25Live in freedom, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.
1 Peter 2:16Press and hold freedom in any chapter and this study opens on the verse you are reading, with the lexicons, every occurrence and the commentaries beside it. The Bible is free to read.
Scripture quoted from the Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Strong's definitions are public domain. Counts come from The Pillar's own tagged text.