<p>2:19 <em>Promising them liberty, while they are in fact slaves to corruption. For of whom a person is overcome, of the same is he also brought into bondage</em>- As noted on :18, the &quot;liberty&quot; was the libertine sexual freedom to use prostitutes at church meetings. This was their interpretation of Christian freedom. It may be that they misquoted Paul's writings to this effect. He states in Rom. 3:8 that his message of grace and freedom from law was indeed wilfully misquoted in this way. The tension between freedom and slavery is at the heart of Paul's teaching about baptism in Romans 6. We are made ultimately free through slavery to the Lord Jesus. These false teachers were offering apparent moral freedom only because they had been overcome by sin, personified here as &quot;a person&quot;. The same word is used in :20 for how they had previously been &quot;overcome&quot; by the immorality of the world. It is this which had overcome the false teachers, and they were trying to bring others into the same bondage which they were in. This is the same mentality behind why addicts may seek to get others hooked; there is a downward tendency in human nature, we wish to bring others down to our level. The path of the Spirit is what reverses all this.</p>