Another citation of the material to help gain (perhaps) an underlying different context for the saying. From Clement's Stromata:
Similar doctrines are expressed by Prodicus’ school, who falsely claim the name of Gnostics for themselves, calling themselves natural sons of the primal god. They make wrong use of their high birth and freedom to live as they will. What they will is a life of pleasure-loving, having come to the conclusion that they are inferior to none, being lords of the sabbath, and born princes superior to all humankind. For a king, they say, there is no written law. In the first place, they do not do all they want; many things will stand in the way of their desires and efforts. Further, what they do do, they do not as kings but as slaves liable to flogging; they are in fear of discovery in their secret adulteries; they are evading condemnation; they are afraid of punishment. How can a combination of immoderation and dirty language be freedom? "Everyone who sins is a slave," says the Apostle. How can the man who has given himself over to every lust be a citizen according to the Law of God when the Lord has declared, "I say, you shall not lust"? Is a person to take a decision to sin deliberately, and to lay it down as a principle to commit adultery, to waste his substance in high living, and to break up other people’s marriages, when we actually pity the rest who fall involuntarily into sin? Even if they have arrived in an alien world, if they prove unfaithful in what belongs to another, they will have no hold on the truth. Does a foreigner insult the citizens? Do them wrong? Does he not rather behave as a visitor and live out his life in conformity with the regulations without offending the citizens? How can they say that they are the only people with a knowledge of God when they behave in the same way as those the gentiles hate for their failure to obey the laws’ injunctions – criminals, immoralists, the avaricious, and adulterers? They ought to be living virtuous lives in a foreign land too, so as to show that they really are of royal blood.
As it is, they have taken the decision to live lawlessly, and won the hatred alike of human legislators and of the Law of God. At any rate, the man who speared through the fornicator in Numbers is shown to be blessed by God. "If we say," says John in his letter, "that we have communion with him" – that is, God – "and walk in darkness, we are lying and not acting out the truth. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we enjoy communion with him, and the blood of his son Jesus cleanses us from sin." How then are those who behave in this manner superior to the worldly? They are like the dregs of the worldly. Like acts reveal like natures, I suppose. Those who claim superiority of birth ought to show superiority of character, if they want to escape incarceration in prison. It really is as the Lord said: "If your righteousness does not exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of God." Scripture shows in Daniel the principle of abstinence in food. To sum up, David in the Psalms speaks about obedience: "How shall a young man keep his path straight?" The answer comes immediately: "By keeping your Word with his whole heart." Jeremiah says, "These are the Lord’s words: do not follow the paths of the gentiles." (Strom 3.30 - 33)
We have no intention of making a closer examination of this topic or mentioning more implausible heresies. We have no intention of being forced to an individual discussion of each of them in all their scandalous nature or prolonging these notes to a vast length. Let us answer them by dividing all the heresies into two groups. Either they teach a way of life which makes no distinction between right and wrong or their hymn is too highly strung and they acclaim asceticism out of a spirit of irreligious quarrelsomeness. I must first expound the former division. If it is legitimate to choose any way of life, then clearly it is legitimate to choose the way that involves asceticism. If there is no way of life which carries danger for the elect, then clearly this is particularly true of the life of virtuous self-discipline. If the Lord of the sabbath has been granted freedom from accountability for a life of licentiousness, the man whose social life is orderly will be far freer from accountability. The Apostle says, "Everything is legitimate for me; not everything is expedient." If everything is legitimate, that obviously includes self-discipline.
So just as the person who uses his legitimate choice to live a virtuous life is worthy of praise, so the one who gives us this free and sovereign right of legitimate choice, allowing us to live as we wish, is far more to be reverenced and honored in not allowing our positive or negative choices to fall into inescapable slavery. Neither has occasion for fear from the choice of license or discipline; but they are not held in the same respect. The person who drifts into pleasures is gratifying his body; the ascetic is freeing his soul from passions, and the soul has authority over the body. If they tell us that we are called to freedom, we are not, as the Apostle puts it, to present that "freedom as an opening for our lower selves." If we are to gratify lust, if we are to think a reprehensible way of living a matter of moral indifference, as they assert, either we ought to obey our lusts at all points and, if so, to engage in the most immoral and irreligious practices in conformity with our teachers, or we shall turn away from some of our desires, no longer compelled to live by amoral standards, no longer in unbridled servitude to our least honorable parts – stomach and sex-organs – pampering our carcass to serve our desire. Lust is nurtured and vitalized if we minister to its enjoyment; on the other hand, it fades away if it is kept in check. (Strom 3.40 - 41)
In that case there is not left ground for even examining what one prefers— the menaces of man or the love of God. And abstinence from vicious acts is found, somehow, [to result in] the diminution and extinction of vicious propensities, their energy being destroyed by inaction. And this is the import of Sell what you have, and give to the poor, and come, follow Me Matthew 19:21 — that is, follow what is said by the Lord. Some say that by what you have He designated the things in the soul, of a nature not akin to it, though how these are bestowed on the poor they are not able to say. For God dispenses to all according to desert, His distribution being righteous. Despising, therefore, the possessions which God apportions to you in your magnificence, comply with what is spoken by me; haste to the ascent of the Spirit, being not only justified by abstinence from what is evil, but in addition also perfected, by Christlike beneficence. In this instance He convicted the man, who boasted that he had fulfilled the injunctions of the law, of not loving his neighbour; and it is by beneficence that the love which, according to the gnostic ascending scale, is Lord of the Sabbath, proclaims itself. We must then, according to my view, have recourse to the word of salvation neither from fear of punishment nor promise of a gift, but on account of the good itself. (Strom 4.29)
The saying seems to be consistently used by heretics in the Marcionite sense - i.e. as a way of saying the Christian was free from the obligations of following the Law.
