2 Peter 2:17-19

The spiritual slavery of the false teachers and its consequences: V.17. These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever. V.18. For when they speak great, swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error. V.19. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption; for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.

The apostle opens this paragraph by picturing the deceitful manner of alluring men which the false teachers use: These are springs without water and fogs driven by a storm-wind, for whom the gloom of darkness is reserved.

In the teaching and preaching of the false prophets there is much sound, sputtering and bubbling, but there is no substance which will quench the thirst of the soul, a characteristic which is demanded of the true teachers, Is. 58; 11; John 7, 38. The false teachers are like banks and billows of fog as it rolls in from the ocean, driven by a strong gale, but all their promises do not result in such a rain as is needed to cause spiritual fruits to grow, Is. 55, 10. 11. Their end, therefore, will be everlasting destruction in the darkness of hell.

The manner of teaching affected by the false teachers is now described: For, uttering ponderous things of vain speaking, they deceive by the lascivious lusts of the flesh those that had but recently escaped (from) those that live in error.

Here the heartless heinousness of the offense is brought out with great force. The false teachers use great, swelling, but empty words and phrases; their sophistry is clothed in language whose grandeur is designed to impress the unlearned. But the bait which they use is, after all, filthy lust, the sensuous desires of the flesh. Thus they caught people, managed to win them for their views, who had but recently been impressed with the truth of the Christian religion, but who had not yet found strength to separate themselves from their old surroundings and customs. The glittering compromises offered by the false teachers were just the thing to impress such as had but recently escaped their old heathen companionships and were loath to give up all their former delights.

For the insidiousness of the danger lay in this: While they promise to them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for to that by which a man is vanquished, to this he is a slave.

The false teachers themselves confused liberty and license, and in this sense made alluring promises to those whom they could persuade to listen to them. They held out to possible converts freedom from all legal restraint, intimating that the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free consists in this, that everybody acts as he likes. But herein lies the service of sin; in this respect these men were themselves slaves of corruption, of destruction. For since they willingly performed the lusts of the flesh, deeming this the proper expression of their Christian liberty, therefore they were in subjection to the flesh, they were slaves of sin and on the way to damnation,