God's Judgment on False Teachers. Jude 4-5
Jude
focuses on these false teachers who have crept into the congregation. They have
come in in a way that is unnoticed and have infiltrated the ranks of the church
so that their false ideas have begun to have an impact. They sound good and yet
they are erroneous and are beginning to distract people in terms of their
spiritual life. He writes this
letter to challenge them to contend for the faith.
Every
culture has thinking that is reflective of the thinking of Satan as a
rebellious creature to God. That has been boiled down to two basic characteristics which have to do first of all with autonomy.
The individual asserts his autonomy, his independence from God, exerting a
self-law—that we know what is best, not God; the individual sets himself
up as the ultimate authority. That can manifest itself in different ways.
In
each generation and each age what Satan does is take the core idea, whatever
that may be—rationalism, empiricism or mysticism—and he camouflages
it in new culturally adapted, culturally acceptable vocabulary, forms, ideas,
things of that nature. So it is
always important to understand how Satans original thinking of autonomy and
antagonism to God and how they are mingled in these different human viewpoint
philosophies. They all reflect satanic thought. We have to analyse the thinking
of our day because that is the manifestation that we see today and that is how
it is expressed today. It is the same old lie but it is given new clothes.
Granted, they are the emperors new clothes and they dont cover anything, but
there is this faade that is there and we need to penetrate it and expose it in
our own thinking.
That
is where contending begins—in our own thinking. We are to do it with
earnestness, with willingness, with diligence; it is to be a conscientious
objective to content for the faith.
It is the
faith, clearly showing that this is a set body of doctrine. We start with
our own thinking and we work out to the thinking of those in our immediate
vicinity—family, where fathers are given the responsibility of bringing
up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. It is within the
realm of the family that we contend for the truth, and then as we move out into
the context of the church or the congregation. One of the things that is distinctive of West Houston Bible church is that we have
a detailed doctrinal statement. One of the reasons for doing that is not
because everyone who is a member of the congregation understands all of the theological
nuances and details that are there but so that when they read the entire
doctrinal statement—not just a short summary—they then understand
why we hold to the distinctives that we do. And it also helps us to have a
standard that everyone has agreed to. That then becomes the basis in case there
is someone who does slip in and begins to teach something that is not
acceptable. We have a standard by which to judge, evaluate, and to take
action.
All
satanic thought is equivalent to human viewpoint thinking, which is equivalent
to worldliness. It has different manifestations, different emphases, different
proportions of ingredients; but it is all basically the same thing: autonomy
and antagonism to God.
As we
have looked at this in the past we have had rationalism, empiricism and
mysticism set completely over against revelation. We have chosen to call this
category revelation because we are dealing with the Bible and the authority of
God and Gods revelation or unveiling of His truth to us—truth that we
cannot know apart from His revelation. There are certain things God has chosen
to reveal to us that is the critical missing information. Without is we are
just guessing like blind men in a dark room. Revelation gives us the information we need, it turns the
light on so that we can then properly organize and understand and interpret
what it is that we have experienced or what has gone through in our reason.
A
question that has come up is: Why cant we say that faith is a means of coming to
know things? It is, but faith is what under girds all of these for three
reasons. First, the hidden
assumption in rationalism is faith in human ability, belief that man has the
innate ability in his mind to, starting from first principles, assumptions,
start and achieve truth and know everything. This is what Plato and Descartes
did apart and distinct from utilising knowledge that comes from the senses.
That would be empiricism: the starting point is what is perceived through the
senses. Then that writes itself upon the mind and this is when knowledge begins
to be organised by the mind.
Mysticism is the dark side of either rationalism or empiricism.
Rationalism and empiricism believe in the vigorous use of logic; mysticism
rejects logic, is inherently irrational; its starting point is what is
perceived mentally through some sort of internal perception, feeling,
experience.
In
all of those there is an implied faith in human ability, the human mind, to
correctly organise the information. So even though they dont talk about faith
there is an implied faith there that man can know enough to come to truth
through the use of his own faculties.
So
the first point is, faith under girds all of these. The object of faith is what
is different. Faith is in human reason, in human sense perception, faith is in
the intuitive meaning of the mystical experience, or faith is in revelation.
Among philosophers who talk about things of this kind what they will use
instead of the term revelation is authority. An authority tells us something.
We dont arrive at it through our own reason, we dont get it from the starting
point of empiricism; it is something we are told by an authority; we trust the
authority. So the authority we trust is the Word of God. It is God who has revealed
Himself through the Word, and so we believe Gods Word.
Everything
goes back to faith. When discussing this with someone who is an unbeliever, who
is an evolutionist, his whole theory ultimately hangs on his faith in being
able to organize the sense data of the fossils, what he sees in the stars, his
scientific information, and that he can organize that from just an
infinitesimally small amount of data he can extrapolate and understand the true
meaning of the universe. And yet, if he is missing just one critical piece of
information then is can completely destroy every theory that he sets up, no
matter how brilliant it might be. His faith is in the wrong object.
All
of these systems of knowledge are based on faith ultimately—faith in
human ability; faith in Gods Word. It is one or the
other; those are the only options.
A
verse to reinforce the fact that we are to be engaged in this personal battle
to root out, to contend for the faith in our own thinking:
2 Corinthians 10:2 NASB I ask that when I am
present I {need} not be bold with the confidence with which I propose to be
courageous against some, who regard us as if we walked according to the flesh.
[3] For though we walk in the flesh [our human bodies], we do not war according
to the flesh That is not how we handle those who are in opposition. We do
not war according to the principles of the sin nature out of anger, resentment,
bitterness, vindictiveness, we war on a different
basis. [4]
for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh
[not of the sin nature], but divinely powerful for the destruction of
fortresses. He is using a military metaphor of warfare and uses a term for a
fortification. We all have fortifications in our soul protecting these
cherished areas of autonomy and antagonism to God because we think that helps
us understand reality, it helps us make life work. We
have to pull those down; we have to destroy them; we are on a search and
destroy mission from God to wipe out every place where we are holding on to
these human viewpoint ideas. And that involves [5] destroying speculations
and every lofty thing So we are to be involved in analyzing, critiquing and
refuting arguments in support of positions set forth by the world system of our
day. We cant be dismissive and say well it is postmodernism, it is relativism,
Satan was the first relativist. That is all true.
Plato was the first rationalist so why read Descartes, why understand the
different forms that rationalism took? Why deal with the reaction to
rationalism, which was empiricism? Because each of these takes on different
aspects, different nuances, different dimensions, and Satan uses those little
subtleties to drive wedges into our souls to separate us from the truth of
Gods Word. raised up against the knowledge of God,
and {we are} taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Every
thought. That is not just talking about the content of the thought, not just
talking about a thought that is perhaps a mental attitude thought of anger,
anger or bitterness; it is talking about thinking, the areas of intellection in
human history—areas of the arts, areas of literature, area of politics,
areas of government and of law. Every area of thinking is to be brought under
the spotlight of the Word of God, and that which is not part of Gods Word or
cant be derived from Gods Word is excluded, it is not within the framework of
divine thought.
In our age we have as part of our
mental baggage—the younger the person the more this is part of their
mental baggage—certain ideas picked up from the culture around us and
part of this comes from the idea of multiculturalism. In multiculturalism is
the idea that everything is good, every culture produces some values, every
culture is good because there is no external reality beyond human existence,
theres no overriding ultimate criteria for making evaluations that one culture
is good and one culture is evil. In practice they cant do that. Sooner or
later they use words like that is wrong. Usually they use it against Christians—Christians
are wrong because they are so judgmental—by why isnt that so judgmental,
the attitude that they express? Why is it that they are the only ones allowed
to be judgmental against Christians and against those who hold to views that
oppose theirs?
As part of this idea that all cultures
are equal, whether it is an Islamic culture that is going out and abusing women
in any number of different ways, promoting their form of Jihadist warfare, that
that culture is superior to Christian culture that is not based on Jihad,
destroying the enemy, but is based on love for God and love for one another.
But modern man and postmodernism think that all these cultures are equal. For
them one of the worst evils is to evaluate any form of thinking and to conclude
that someone elses form of thinking is wrong, is judgmental. So if you are
involved in contending for the faith the very fact that you think that there is
something that you should contend for that is superior sets you at odds with
the culture; you are by definition bad. There is a battle for the mind that is
going on.
When we get into the next verse in Jude
we are going to get into the core area of this epistle talking about the fact
that there is a set group of men referred to as the ungodly. Jude 1:4 NASB For certain
persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for
this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into
licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
The body of this epistle is going to
focus on these opponents and the certainty of divine judgment upon those who
have rejected Gods truth and who are false teachers. In the context of Jude he
is dealing with a specific historical situation where the source of this false
teaching is coming from unbelievers. This is very clear from the text. Even
though believers can be influenced by false teaching, true born again children
of God can promote false teaching, that is not the situation Jude is facing.
These are not believers who have been subverted but are unbelievers who are
subverting believers and so the job of the believer is to contend for the
faith.
How these unbelievers are described:
godless men, v. 4. We are going to see that that term godless is always
used of unbelievers. Believers are not godless. They may act like the godless
but they are not Godless, not the ungodly; they turn the grace of our God into licentiousness, they
deny Jesus Christ, v.4; they are compared to Sodom and given over to sexual
immorality, v. 7; they are compared to dreamers who pollute their own bodies,
v. 8; they are compared to unreasoning animals, v. 10 who destroy themselves;
they are blemishes or spots, or some translations have underwater reefs upon
which you shipwreck yourself, v. 12; they are shepherds, so this indicates
they are in positions of leadership, who feed only themselves, v. 12; clouds
without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead,
uprooted; [13] wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam;
wandering stars, for whom the black darkness [another term for eternal
judgment] has been reserved forever; they are identified by characteristics
such as grumbling, faultfinders, v.16; scoffers who follow their own ungodly desires,
v. 18; they do not have the [human] spirit, [that immaterial part of man which
is gained at regeneration], v. 19; they flatter others for their own advantage,
v.16; and they are those who are divisive, v. 19. This is describing this group
of ungodly, which means they are unbelievers.
That does not mean that believers cant
do this. Anybody who has been a pastor for any length of time knows that there
are Christians who fit any or all of these characteristics.
In verse 4 Jude explains why he has
given this command to contend for the faith. This is indicated by the English
word For. The Greek word is gar
[gar] which
often indicates the giving of an explanation, explaining why something is a
certain way. So the reason we are to contend, strive for the faith, is because
there are enemies of the faith who have snuck in, who have joined with the
church but it is not obvious that they are unbelievers. They are covert
disciples of Satan who have infiltrated the local church and are the root and
the cause and the source of false teaching and false doctrine, causing division
within a congregation.
They are identified here as certain
persons have crept in unnoticed. This is the Greek verb pareisduno [pareisdunw].
It is in the aorist tense indicating it is just simple past action. This is
what has taken place in the past, whereas the warnings in 2 Peter refer to
future false teachers that are coming. Here in Jude these are false teachers
who have already entered into the congregation. This word pareisduno is translated a number of
different ways. It has the idea of creeping in, sneaking in stealthily, of
covert activity, infiltrating a group. They are not noticed; it is not obvious.
They are described in the text as a group of individuals who have been
identified from the past, previous writings (Old Testament writings), from
previous revelation as those who were long beforehand marked out for this
condemnation, those who will be judged by God. Unbelievers will reap the
judgment of God in time or in eternity, or both.
Then they are called ungodly, the
Greek word asebes [a)sebhj] which indicates those who are without God. In Romans
chapters 4 & 5 the context is justification by faith alone in Christ alone.
Justification means that when we believe in Jesus as savior at that instant God
the Father imputes or credits to our account the righteousness of Christ. The
terminology is the imputation of Christs righteousness to us. It is ours at
that instant. It doesnt change us, it is not imparted to us, we dont become
righteous in an experiential sense; it is ours positionally or legally; it is
assigned to us in an accounting or judicial type of procedure. At that instant
that that is assigned to us God looks at us and sees that we are righteous and
He declares us to be legally justified.
At the instant of salvation God the
Father is imputing righteousness to an unbeliever at the instant that he
believes. The ungodly is being justified. That is the process. So the word
ungodly there clearly means the unbeliever.
Romans 5:6, talking about the work of
Christ on the cross: NASB For while we were still helpless, at the
right time Christ died for the ungodly. [8] while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He died for unbelievers. Ungodly is a term that
describes those who are without God, without
Christ, without hope, without eternal life.
We see it again in 2 Peter 2:5, talking
about the world wide flood at the time. NASB
and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of
righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the
ungodly. Everybody in the world except Noah and his family were unbelievers.
Ungodly, again, is a term used as synonymous with all of the unbelievers in
the world. Peter uses another example in verse 6 and {if} He condemned the
cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing {them} to ashes, having
made them an example to those who would live ungodly {lives} thereafter. Those
who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah were called ungodly.
Remember in Genesis chapter 19 before
God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah He informed Abraham that He was sending His
two angels to destroy the cities of the plains because of their sexual
perversion. Abraham enters into this dialogue and says, If there are a hundred
righteous people would you deliver it. God said yes. The point that Abraham is
getting at is his nephew Lot, his wife and daughters were there and he wants
God to preserve them. Those are the only ones considered righteous. Later on
Lot is called righteous Lot. All the others are unbelievers, and so God
brings that judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah.
2 Peter 3:7 NASB But by His
word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction [perdition] of ungodly men.
They will be destroyed because they did not believe in Jesus
Christ—eternal destruction in the lake of fire. So we see very clearly
that ungodly is a term for unbelievers exclusively.
Jude says that there are certain men
who have infiltrated the local church and bringing in false doctrine. These men
were identified as a category in the previous writings in the Old Testament as
those who would be brought to judgment. That is the theme of this epistle: God
judges false teaching.
And what have these unbelieving men
done? They have perverted the grace of God. The term is metatithemi [metatiqhmi]. It describes removing something, changing something,
transforming something. It is to exchange one thing for something else, so they
are exchanging the grace of God for licentiousness. The grace of God doesnt
give permission to sin; the grace of God provides a solution and recourse if we
do sin. Licentiousness has the idea of sensuality; often it refers to sexual
sin, immorality—fornication, any form of sodomy, lesbianism, any form of
sexual activity outside of the bonds of marriage between one man and one
woman—a lack of self-control, anything outside the bounds of Gods standards
and thinking well its fine because Gods grace has covered it. This is the
idea of licentiousness, a license to sin without retribution.
And second, they deny our only Master
and Lord, Jesus Christ. That term Lord for the Lord Jesus Christ is the
Greek word despotes [despothj]
which is a term that refers to His sovereignty, His authority, and it is used
in 2 Peter 2:1. In both of these passages they are talking about unbelievers.
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false
teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even
denying the Master [despotes] who
bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. This is a great
passage for unlimited atonement: that Christ died for the lost.
So we see in Jude 4 the warning that
these infiltrators are there teaching destructive
heresies which will destroy the spiritual impact of the congregation, it will
wipe out the spiritual growth of the individuals. Why? Because
they failed to contend. The solution is to contend for the truth; first and foremost to know the truth.
Now Jude will go forward. He talks
about examples of how the Lord in the past has brought judgment on this kind of
people. He wants to remind them, to bring it back to their memory. He says: You
knew this. In other words, what he is saying is youve been taught this in the
past and I want to bring it back to your recall. the
Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed
those who did not believe.
Here he is using an example of Gods
judgment on false teaching that included believers. He is not making a
distinction here between believers and unbelievers. It is clear from everything
he says in the epistle that he is talking to a historical situation where the
false teachers were believers. His point is that God judges false teachers. He
applies it to his current situation where the false teachers are unbelievers
but he also will use examples of God judging false teachers who are believers.
Because the principle he is talking about is not God judges
unbelievers or God judges believers, but God judges false teachers. In this
context they are unbelievers but the example he uses in Jude 5 is of being
rebellious grumblers who were part of the group of saints that came out of
Egypt—the Israelites who were believers but they rejected Gods grace
provision, rejected the authority that God had set over them, and who rebelled
against Him. And because they didnt believe God or trust God in the wilderness
they were brought to judgment. The object of faith here is not salvation, that
original circumstance in the Old Testament was related to Gods provision in
the wilderness. It is an example of the principle that God judges those who
oppose Him.