2 Peter 2:19

promising them liberty, while they themselves are bondservants of corruption; for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he also brought into bondage.

Jesus the Lord himself said, "Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin" (John 8:34); and Paul declared that, "To whom ye present yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness" (Romans 6:16). Thus, what Peter said here is exactly an echo of the teachings both of the Saviour and of Paul.

A glimpse of the allurement in the teaching of the apostates appears in this; because they were promising the people the free and easy indulgence of all their sinful passions, "liberty" they called it; but the falsity of their claims was manifest in the fact of those false teachers being themselves veritable slaves of the darkest passions and debaucheries. Such "liberty" has indeed been heralded in the present age; Paine quoted a professor by the name of Rauschenbusch who declared that, "The worst thing that could happen to God would be to remain an autocrat, while the world is moving toward democracy." Also, he mentioned another, a Professor Hartshorne, who said, "We no longer derive our ethical standards from established authority, whether state, church, family, convention, or philosophical system." Such people suppose that they are "free"; but they are slaves.[56]