1 Peter 2:16

as free, and not using your liberty for a cloke The English text gives the impression that the word "free" is closely connected with the preceding verse. In the Greek, however, the adjective is in the nominative and cannot be in apposition with the preceding participle for "well-doing" which is in the accusative case. We are led therefore to connect it with what follows. "As being free … honour all men …" The fact that men had been made free with the freedom which Christ had given (comp. John 8:32; John 8:36; Galatians 5:1) brought with it an obligation to use the freedom rightly. If under the pretence that they were asserting their Christian freedom, they were rude, over-bearing, insolent, regardless of the conventional courtesies of life, what was this but to make their liberty a cloke (the word is the same as that used in the LXX. of Exodus 26:14 for the "covering" of the Tabernacle) for baseness? The word just given answers better to the comprehensive meaning of the Greek word than the more specific "maliciousness." In Galatians 5:13; 2 Peter 2:19 we find indications that the warning was but too much needed.

"License they mean when they cry liberty"

was as true in the Apostolic age as it has been in later times.

as the servants of God St Peter, like St Paul, brings together the two contrasts as expressing one of the paradoxes of the spiritual life. There is a service even in slavery, which is not only compatible with freedom, but is absolutely its condition. Comp. Romans 6:16-18; 1 Corinthians 7:22-23.