Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

2 Peter 2:19

2 Peter 2:19. promising them liberty, they themselves being (all the while) bond-servants of corruption. The loud-sounding engagement to give ‘liberty,' a new liberty worthy of man, would be one of the ‘great swelling things of vanity,' one of the ‘baits' with which they would ply the unwary. The kind of liberty to be given might be judged of, however, from the character of the pretended givers. From those who were themselves slaves of corruption what kind of liberty could come, but a liberty defiant of law, a liberty used ‘for an occasion to the flesh' (Galatians 5:13)? It is doubtful whether even here the term rendered ‘corruption' has the purely ethical sense of moral evil. Retaining the usual sense of' destruction,' we should have the idea that only a liberty which tended to destruction could come from those who were themselves bound to the service of destruction.

for of whom one has been overcome, to him has he been brought unto bondage (or, made a bond-servant). A justification of the statement that these men are themselves bond-servants of corruption, or destruction. As the phrase states a general principle, some prefer to give it the form ‘for of what one has been overcome, to that has he been made a bond-servant.' The same principle is affirmed by Christ Himself (John 8:34), and by Paul (Romans 6:16). It is easy to see how the gospel doctrine of a new liberty through the truth (John 8:32), and especially the Pauline teaching on the ‘liberty of the children of God' (Romans 8:21), the liberty which exists wherever the Spirit of the Lord is (2 Corinthians 3:17), the liberty ‘wherewith Christ hath made us free' (Galatians 5:1), might be misinterpreted and turned to licence. But it may be, as Dean Plumptre suggests, that the dangerous cry for liberty, and the pretentious teaching on the subject, which are referred to in the Epistles, found their peculiar occasion in the restrictions imposed by the Convention at Jerusalem (Acts 15:29), and aimed at securing freedom not only from the things from which that Convention relieved the Gentile Christians, but also from the abstinence which was enjoined from ‘meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication,'

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

2 Peter 2:19

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