Grace points to God’s work of salvation through Jesus Christ (Romans 3:23; Romans 5:15; Ephesians 2:8; 2 Thessalonians 2:16) and also includes his continuous activity that enables his people to do his will (Acts 15:40; 2 Corinthians 8:1, 2 Corinthians 8:7; Galatians 2:9). The heretics (people who have crept in unnoticed) understood the doctrine of grace as giving license for sexual excess, God’s grace allowing them to indulge their lusts.1 Similar to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 6:12; 1 Corinthians 10:23), these people take Christian freedom to mean that the really spiritual man is free from the restraints of conventional morality which presumably allowed them to conform with pagan sexual practices.2
4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.