To Encourage You

Jude 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.”

One of the things the Bible does for us is unmask the reality behind things that may seem other than they really are. In the verse above, Jude does this for us as he points out people who have stealthily “crept in unnoticed.” “Crept in where, from where?”, we might ask. Well, Jude is writing to those “who have been called, who are loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ.” It’s just another way of designating those who are in the true church, the genuine born-again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet, Jude is warning us that right alongside the true believers are imposters. He describes them as ungodly, and much of his letter is devoted to warning us about them. He has absolutely nothing good to say about them. For example, he says that they are “designated for condemnation.” Yet they sit shoulder to shoulder with believers. How in the world could this be? How could we be so deceived and unaware of such things? But that’s just why Jude writes to us. Just as his namesake Judas Iscariot had crept in unnoticed to Jesus’ apostles, there are other Judases that have crept in among the Lord’s disciples ever since. So how do we differentiate? What are their identifying marks?

Jude mentions two in the verse above. The first is that they “pervert the grace of our God into sensuality.” In other words, they presume on the grace of God. They see God as so kind and loving that it doesn’t matter how they live. They think they can sin with impunity, live in immorality, but because they call themselves Christians, everything will work out fine for them in the end.

The apostle Paul addresses this attitude in the following words from Romans 6:1-4: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

And so Jude would have us to be careful of those who confess Christ as Lord but live as if He were not. But also, we are to be careful of our own selves, for we can all fall subject to seeing Jesus as a friend Who would never rebuke our sin, rather than the pure, holy, and sin-hating Lord that He is.

Which brings us to Jude’s second warning about the false professors of the faith. While they may claim to follow Christ, yet by their lifestyle they “deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” In other words, actions will ALWAYS speak louder than words. If we say “Lord, Lord” with our mouth yet deny Him with every other part of our body by which we “speak,” we are fooling ourselves, and those who live such a life are trying to fool us as well. And so Jesus would warn us, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness’” (Matthew 7:21-23).

May God help us to heed His Word, both in terms of those who might be at work in an attempt to deceive us, and in terms of each one of us, personally, that we might not deceive ourselves.