Daily Scripture Reading Jude 1:1-11
The Bible teaches us that God is full of grace. The Bible also teaches us that God is just and punishes sinners. Christians have a tendency to choose one of those over the other. In the 21st century, the trend has been to overemphasize God’s grace and minimize the threat of God’s justice.
Today, we will start reading the book of Jude. This book clearly warns us against putting so much emphasis on God’s grace that we ignore the reality of God’s vengeance.
Jude 1 ¶ Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, ¶ To those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ:
Jude 2 May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.
Jude 3 ¶ Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you exhorting that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.
Verse 3 tells us why Jude wrote his letter. He exhorted the called to contend earnestly for the faith. The word contend implies struggle, effort, and fight. In other words Jude exhorts Christians to put forth effort and fight uphill to promote and defend Christianity.
This is an area where modern Christianity is failing. Many churches refuse to talk about sin, hell, repentance, personal sacrifice, and the cost of being a Christian; thus, they have attracted a congregation of people who think the Christian life is easy. So-called Christians who want an easy life will not contend earnestly for the faith.
Churches should make it clear that being a Christian is difficult, motivate their congregations to contend earnestly for the faith, and give them the training they need to do so.
Jude 4 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 sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Ponder the phrase “ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into sensuality”. God has very high standards. The Bible gives us some very specific instructions about how to live. All people, including all Christians, will stand before God someday and give an account of everything we have ever said or done. This means Christians should constantly strive to become more obedient to the Word of God.
However, some Christians overemphasize the grace of God and teach that since God is full of grace, Christians do not need to worry so much about what is right and wrong. That is not correct. That is an example of turning the grace of God into sensuality.
Jude 5 ¶ Now I want to remind you, though you know all things, that Jesus, having once saved a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe.
Jude 6 And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day,
Jude 7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, having indulged in the same way as these in gross sexual immorality and having gone after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
Verses 5-7 are examples of God punishing sin. The point is that while God is full of grace, He is also willing to mete out justice and punishment.
Jude 8 ¶ Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and blaspheme glorious ones.
The term “these men” refers to the “certain persons” mentioned in verse 4, the people who turn grace in sensuality and deny Jesus.
Jude 9 But Michael the archangel, when he, disputing with the devil, was arguing about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a blasphemous judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”
Jude 10 But these men blaspheme the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed.
Jude 11 Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have poured themselves into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.
The people mentioned in verse 4 who turn grace into sensuality and deny Jesus are making a mistake similar to the mistakes made by Cain, Balaam, and Korah.
The Bible teaches that God offers both grace and vengeance. Christians have a tendency to emphasize one of those over the other. Jude warned us against turning the grace of God into sensuality.
To what extent does your church overemphasize the grace of God and minimize the reality that God executes vengeance?
What examples have you seen of modern day Christians using God’s grace to minimize the severity of sin?
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“Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com.”