For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;
Whoremongers ... - against the Seventh Commandment.
Men-stealers - i:e., slave-dealers. The worst offence against the eighth commandment. Stealing a man's goods is light compared with stealing a man's liberty. Slavery is not directly assailed by Christianity: its aim was not to revolutionize violently the existing order; but it teaches principles sure to undermine and overthrow slavery wherever Christianity has its natural development (Matthew 7:12).
Liars ... perjured - against the Ninth Commandment.
If there be any other thing ... - the Tenth Commandment in its widest aspect. He does not particularly specify it, his object being to bring out grosser forms of transgression; whereas the Tenth Commandment is so deeply spiritual that by it the sense of sin, in its subtlest form, "lust" (Romans 7:7), was brought home to Paul's own conscience. Paul argues, these would-be teachers of the law while boasting of a higher perfection through it, really fall down from Gospel elevation to the level of the grossly "lawless," for whom, not for believers, the law was designed. In practice, sticklers for the law, as the means of moral perfection, are most liable to fall from the morality of the law. Gospel grace is the only true means of sanctification as well as justification.
Sound, х hugiainouse (G5198)] - healthy, spiritually wholesome (1 Timothy 6:3; 2 Timothy 1:13; 2 Timothy 4:3; Titus 1:13; Titus 2:2), as opposed to diseased, morbid х noson (G3554), "doting," 1 Timothy 6:4], and "canker" (2 Timothy 2:17); which unhealthy symptoms appearing at the period of the pastoral letters, cause the use of the terms "sound," 'wholesome' for the first time.