Scripture Daily

Context No. 1596 of 4322 · 2 Peter

Context · Reflection

2 Peter 2:17-22: in context

17These are wells without water, clouds driven by a storm, for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved forever. 18For, uttering great swelling words of emptiness, they entice in the lusts of the flesh, by licentiousness, those who are indeed escaping from those who live in error; 19promising them liberty, while they themselves are bondservants of corruption; for a man is brought into bondage by whoever overcomes him. 20For if, after they have escaped the defilement of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in it and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them. 22But it has happened to them according to the true proverb, “The dog turns to his own vomit again,” and “the sow that has washed to wallowing in the mire.”

Peter continues his warning against false teachers. They are, he says, wells without water and clouds driven by a storm, promising much and giving nothing. With great swelling words of emptiness they entice people back into the very corruptions they had escaped. And Peter names the deep irony of what they offer: they promise freedom, while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for a person is enslaved by whatever masters them. Those who escape the world's defilement and then are entangled again end worse than they began.

The piercing line is Peter's exposure of the false teachers' offer: they promise freedom, while they themselves are slaves of corruption. What they held out as liberty, the throwing off of restraint, the indulgence of every desire, was in fact bondage; and they were living proof of it, enslaved themselves to the very corruptions they marketed as freedom. Peter names the principle underneath: a person is enslaved by whatever masters them. This exposes a lie at the heart of much that calls itself freedom. We are told that freedom means the absence of all restraint, the license to indulge every appetite, to throw off every limit; and it sounds like liberty. But indulgence does not free us; it masters us. The appetite we serve without restraint becomes our master, and we its slave; what promised freedom delivers bondage. This is the deep irony Peter names: the false freedom that enslaves, offered by people themselves in chains to the very things they call liberty. True freedom is not the absence of all restraint but freedom from the mastery of sin, freedom to become what we were made to be, which is found not in throwing off God's ways but in Christ. The counterfeit freedom that says indulge everything, submit to nothing, is a road into slavery, however it advertises itself. We are enslaved by whatever masters us; and the appetites the world calls us to indulge in the name of freedom are hard masters indeed. Real liberty is found the other way, in being freed by Christ from the mastery of the very things that promised freedom and gave bondage.

Have I believed the lie that freedom means throwing off all restraint and indulging every appetite, when Peter warns that a person is enslaved by whatever masters them, and that such promised freedom is really bondage, and do I seek the true freedom found not in indulgence but in Christ?

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