What Jesus' Brother Jude Wanted Us to Know | Verse 4, Part 3 | (False) Doctrine Stimulates Actio
"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" (Jude 4).
The second major indictment that Jude makes of the ungodly, false teachers is in their denying the Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.
If the Bible makes one thing clear, it is that there are only two types of people in the world: those who are saved and those who are not. Both types of people will be identifiable and evinced by their lifestyles. People can lie, deceive, and pull the wool over the eyes of many for a time, but the actual nature of someone will always end up betraying its own existence as it directs everything the individual says and does.
Here in verse 4, Jude highlights the inextricable link between doctrine and action. The former informs the latter and, consequently, the latter betrays the former. The sinful, lustful tendencies being taught and condoned by the false teachers under the pretense of God’s “grace” prove that they are actually deniers of God Himself—specifically the Son of God in Jude’s context. In other words, their twisted take on the meaning of grace is a result of their doctrinal position that denies both Christ’s lordship in general, resulting logically in a denial of Christ’s personal ownership, specifically.
The denial of God is prevalent in our world. It is easy to find people who deny that Jesus is the Christ, or that He is God in the flesh, or that He is the only way to be reconciled to the Father, or that He was killed in the flesh and resurrected in the flesh. What is more difficult to distinguish on the surface, however, are those who call themselves Christians and bear the name of ‘brother’, yet do not hold to some of the fundamental doctrines of Christology just mentioned.
That said, we have been equipped by the Word of God to discern these things and Jude highlights this very necessity.
Jude uses two Greek words to describe Jesus here, namely despotes, translated as “Master”, and kurios, translated as “Lord”.
Despotes is derived from the words Deo, meaning “bind”, and posis, meaning “husband”. Essentially, it is a word designating a head of authority as in a contractually binding marital relationship where the husband is the head of the home. It is from this understanding that we still use the term “landlord” today. The British Empire is still well known for the continued use of the term for official capacities, such as their House of Lords in Parliament. Due to its wide application, we can understand why Jesus is called the Lord of lords.
The Apostle Paul knew this: “There may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor 8:5–6).
Kurios comes from the word kuros, meaning “sovereign”. Not only is it a title of respect and veneration, but it designates ownership and total control.
Both of these words overlap in meaning, but they each magnify important aspects of the complete and total ownership of, headship of, and sovereign rule over, our lives by the Lord Jesus Christ.
We must not err in thinking that we make Christ Lord when we confess He is Lord, we simply recognize and admit what is already true and thus submit to Him as the Lord. This submission is an act of giving up our will, now being under His. This is exactly what takes place at the moment of salvation.
“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Rom 10:9–10).
What also takes place at the moment of our salvation—in fact, what causes it—is the awakening of our spirit by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit (1 Pet 1:23). This precedes faith. Our faith, then, having been established is followed by an irrevocable seal of the Holy Spirit, guaranteeing our salvation (Eph 1:13–14), and His irremovable presence in our heart to direct the course of our life, thus Paul tells the Philippians that “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2:13) (emphasis mine).
It follows, then, that the new creation will look and behave differently than the old one. This is the context from which Jude argues. The sensuality and lust of the world that the false teachers teach and allow for themselves betray the fact the Lord Jesus Christ is not their Lord and Master—a position that does not change God’s actual dominion, rather, it is simply a manifestation of their rebellion.
Paul draws all of this out so clearly in the first half of Romans, giving us the frightening reality that “you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness” (6:16).
That being the case, “the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality [same word Jude used earlier], idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these” (Gal 5:19–21).
Paul then levels with his readers: “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (v. 21).
Indeed, it is only “those who belong to Christ Jesus [that] have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (v. 24).
Doctrine and action go hand in hand.
Paul tells Titus that the false teachers and false brethren “profess to know God, but they deny him by their works” (Tit 1:16) (emphasis mine).
Jude is reaffirming this point exactly by warning his readers that these ungodly people deny the only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ, by their sensuality and they do so in the name of “grace”—an abysmal mischaracterization of God and a perversion of His glorious grace.
The Apostle John also reminds us that “no one who denies the Son has the Father” (1 Jn 2:23). In other words, there is no forgiveness or reconciliation to the Father taking place if the Son is not embraced as Lord. He is no savior to those who refuse to acknowledge Him as Lord. When He is your Lord, then He is your Savior.
Friends, may we never forget that the entirety of Holy Writ makes clear that God’s command to us is to be holy as He is holy. Leviticus is chock-full of God’s call to “be holy for I the LORD your God am holy,” something that Peter reiterated in 1 Peter 1:16 as well.
We must strive for this holiness, without which no one will see the Lord (Heb 12:14). Is it any wonder that in order for an unholy man or woman to make it into God’s presence, one must call upon the name of the Lord to be saved (Acts 2:21), indeed the same Lord who credits to us His own righteousness having taken the wrath of God due us, to Himself?
Let us marvel with Paul that “because of [God] you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Cor 1:30–31) (emphasis mine).
Friends, don’t deny God by your works and don’t spend a moment around those who do either.
In Christ Alone,
Ben
