2 Peter 2:19

2 Peter 2:19 ‘promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what. man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.'

‘promising them freedom' -‘fancied liberty, i.e. license, the liberty to do as one pleases' (Thayer p. 204). The content of their great swelling words was “freedom”. But it is. false freedom. ‘Freedom! That was the great catchword.' (Lucas/Green p. 117) Again, nothing has changed! The apostles had to fight the idea that Christian liberty allows you to sin with impunity (Romans 3:8; Romans 6:1 ff; Galatians 5:13; 1 Peter 2:16; Judges 1:4). ‘Unpleasant though it may be, we ought at this stage to pause and review the poisonous strategy that will be eating away at churches even now…The offer will be of true freedom, perhaps carrying the implication that the New Testament message that converted them did not truly liberate them. That freedom will operate in two areas: freedom to think their own thoughts, so they need not submit to the authority of the apostles…An non-judgmental ethic and an open-ended theology will be an offer to immature Christians, who do not know enough to refuse it and cannot see the selfishness masquerading as spirituality. It is sharply contemporary.' (Lucas/Green p. 119)

‘while they themselves are slaves of corruption' -‘slaves to corrupt habits' (TCNT). ‘While'-while they are pretending to have an insight to true freedom, they are in fact slaves. ‘Corruption'-moral decay. ‘They keep on chattering about liberty when all the time they themselves have been (and still are) in the prison-house of lust (Romans 6:16; Romans 8:34)…..Barclay quotes Seneca's apophthegm, “to be enslaved to oneself is the heaviest of all servitudes.” (Green p. 118)

‘for by what. man is overcome, by this he is enslaved' -What an insight! Every man has. master, and it doesn't do any good to argue otherwise. Everyone serves someone or something. No man or woman is truly their own person (Matthew 6:24; Romans 6:13; Romans 6:16). False teachers are always trying to set God's grace and God's law against each other. In contrast, ‘So here he (Peter) shows that precept and love, charity and chastity, law and gospel are not combatants but correlatives. It is ever the way of licence to champion gospel over law…Healthy Christian living comes when God's commands are seen as the kerbstones on His highway of love, the hedge encompassing His garden of grace.' (Green p. 118)