Trickery (2940) (kubeia from kubos ~ gives us our English "cube", dice) literally refers to wicked dice playing or throwing dice and figuratively refers to intentional fraud or sleight of hand in the spiritual sense. Kubeia, the term for dice became synonymous with trickery of any sort. The dice were often “loaded” or otherwise manipulated by professional gamblers to their own advantage which is a perfect picture of men coming into a congregation and manipulating the Word of God to make it say what they want it to say! Warren Wiersbe has an insightful comment warning that... The cultists do not try to win lost souls to Christ. They do not establish rescue missions in the slum areas of our cities, because they have no good news for the man on skid row. Instead, these false teachers try to capture immature Christians, and for this reason, most of the membership of the false cults comes from local churches, particularly churches that do not feed their people the Word of God. (Wiersbe, W: Bible Exposition Commentary. 1989. Victor) Spurgeon once warned... Beware! Error often rides to its deadly work on the back of truth! In a parallel passage on immature believers the writer of Hebrews tells his readers... For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles (1st principles of Christian doctrine = the "ABC's") of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food (they are like adults who are still nursing on a bottle spiritually speaking!). 13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness (they don't know how to practice the Biblical truths calling for and enabling righteous living), for he is a babe (nepios). 14 But solid food (strong, sure, firm, immovable "food" - Sermons are good, but they are not to be compared with personal Spirit illuminated Bible study as soul food) is for the mature, who because of practice (habit) have their senses ( implies a sort of spiritual intuition by which the sensitive Christian can, more or less, automatically discern whether something is right or wrong) trained (gymnazo - exercised) to discern good and evil. (See notes Hebrews 5:12; 5:13; 5:14) (Comment: A maturing Christian must be a Biblically saturated Christian. and so the author assaults the readers with a vivid image of adult infants who are still nursing. Think of the tragic absurdity of full-grown believers in diapers, still not capable of ingesting, nor even desiring solid food and who sit around sucking their thumbs. Such full grown infants amount to a huge disgrace and drain on the Church. The truth is, there is simply no such thing as a static Christian. We either move forward or fall back. We are either climbing or falling. We are either winning or losing. Static, status quo Christianity is a delusion! This training in discernment is vital) BY CRAFTINESS IN DECEITFUL SCHEMING: en panourgia pros ten methodeian tes planes: (Psalms 10:9; 59:3; Micah 7:2; Acts 23:21) By craftiness in deceitful scheming - This Greek phrase is somewhat difficult to translate clearly into English but in simple terms I have paraphrased it as... "cunning methods which deceive, delude and lead astray (from the truth)" The New English Bible has a vivid paraphrase... “dupes of crafty rogues and their deceitful schemes” This is an apt description of the many cultists, religious racketeers, charlatans, false prophets and teachers, and manipulative religious leaders who abound in our day. They trap many immature Christians (including many spiritually immature Christians who are chronologically "mature") with their teachings that sound so right and enticing. The UBS Handbook adds that... It should be noted that the writer does not specify what are the wrong teachings which he condemns. Beare conjectures: “It is an eccentric individualism, rather than sectarianism, which is attacked” (Bratcher, R. G., & Nida, E. A. UBS Handbook Series; New York: United Bible Societies) "Copy and paste the address below into your web browser in order to go to the original page which will allow you to access live links related to the material on this page - these links include Scriptures (which can be read in context), Scripture pop-ups on mouse over, and a variety of related resources such as Bible dictionary articles, commentaries, sermon notes and theological journal articles related to the topic under discussion." http://www.preceptaustin.org/ephesians_414.htm#trickery