Read with Me
Jude 3-4 (HCSB)
Dear friends, although I was eager to write you about the salvation we share, I found it necessary to write and exhort you to contend for the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all. For some men, who were designated for this judgment long ago, have come in by stealth; they are ungodly, turning the grace of our God into promiscuity and denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord.
Listen with Me
Jude’s original plan was to write a pleasant letter to his acquaintances in the Church about how wonderful it was to be living and working together in the kingdom of God and to know that they were all on a journey that would safely end at the gates of heaven. But things had come to his attention that had completely changed his intentions.
Jude had noticed the rise of heresy within the ranks of the Church, much as other New Testament writers had noticed it at about the same time. Peter had warned of these same heresies arising in 2 Peter chapter 2. In fact, the wording of 2 Peter 2 and Jude’s letter are so similar in places that scholars argue over whether Peter was copying Jude’s words, or whether Jude was copying Peter. They seem to completely disregard the third possibility, that the issue was so important that God was calling both men to write a warning to those with whom they had contact, and that He gave them both the same or similar words to use.
John had also written warnings about these same heresies in 1 John 2:18-27, and Paul had written about them in several of his letters as well. These heretics were largely Gnostics, whose Christian faith was corrupted by Greek philosophical principles.
Whereas the Hebrew concept of mankind is that we are an integrated whole, with all parts, physical, spiritual, and emotional, so intermeshed that they can’t be separated, and with each part constantly interacting with and influencing all the others, the Greek idea was different. They saw all those aspects of human beings as discrete, and able to operate independently.
The Greek concept led to the Gnostic idea that the body was separate from the soul, and that each worked independently. They taught that the soul was made of finer spiritual matter that was perfectible through faith in Jesus. But they taught that the body was made of corrupt physical matter that could never be perfected, but which was doomed to sin every day and would ultimately be destroyed.
A corollary of this belief was that the sins that the body unavoidably committed did not touch the pure soul, so they were unimportant. They taught that the freedom we have in Jesus meant that a person could allow their body to sin, knowing that the soul was just fine and was on its way to heaven regardless of a person’s behavior.
These Gnostics also denied that Jesus was God’s one and only Son, claiming that He was simply a great teacher sent from God who had discovered the secrets of how to live in “Christ Consciousness”, a state that any other believer could achieve if they followed His example.
Of course, this teaching is a corruption of every true teaching of Jesus, and it was leading Christians into sin for which they felt no need to repent, since they believed that their soul and thus their salvation was unaffected by it. Jude had watched this teaching start to penetrate deeply into the church, and thus felt the need to sound the alarm.
Pray with Me
Father, this false teaching has never died out. Even though it usually doesn’t go by the name of Gnosticism these days, it still surges up from time to time, and is actually resurging again today among all the groups who discount the biblical standards of behavior, claiming that a person can do what You clearly forbid in Your word and still be a Christian. Thus, efforts are made to normalize sinful behavior in the Church under the rubric of love and acceptance. But You have clearly warned us in Your word, not only about the fatal effects of this philosophy on individual lives, but also of the corrosive effects it has on the Church as a whole. Lord, open our eyes to truly see what’s going on, so that we can repent and turn back to You. Amen.