Jude 1:4 Commentary and Bible Study

‘For there are certain men’ – I suppose there is a happy implication here because the language suggests they are a minority, at least at the time Jude writes and in the place to which he writes. ‘There are certain men’ – it is the language of a minority – ‘crept in.’ But minorities can become majorities, and if the minority are corrupting the faith and that situation is neglected then, of course, their work is effective, and they ruin the understanding of the people, and they become a majority. Here they have not quite reached that point yet.The words ‘crept in unawares’ are very suggestive. It suggests that from the beginning there are certain people who were never really converted at all. They may assume they are and they may use the right terms and phrases, and other Christians may think well of them but they never truly were and they always had an agenda of their own – ‘I do not like this faith particularly; I do not like some aspects of it, and I am going to keep quiet at the moment, but when I have the opportunity or I meet with people who are fairly sympathetic with me, I shall utter my complaints and my doubts, or start to draft my amendments.’ It suggests that they always had reservations. They did not change their minds or lose their faith, but they were very crafty, and kept their opinions to themselves until it was safe to speak.Jude calls them ‘ungodly men’. Today, if you say ungodly, you simply mean they are impious or lawless or not devout, but the Greek word actually means more ‘irreverent people’. It is a word which has to do with worship, even pagan worship and your attitude to the gods. What is your attitude to your God? Is it one of reverence and care and caution, or of abandon, lightness and disrespect? ‘Turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness’ – not a word we use too much these days, but in a nutshell the Greek word means licence: turning the grace of God into liberty to do as you like. Oh, we are forgiven by God, our sins are washed away, therefore we can proceed lightly and jauntily, doing what we like, God will forgive us. ‘And denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.’ Now these words are very, very important. By misunderstanding these words you can at a stroke empty the letter of Jude of all its meaning and force. Some people say, we can see who he is speaking about. He is speaking about people who deny Christ. They deny the doctrines, the fundamentals of the faith. We have not got any like that, not in evangelicalism, not in the world of Bible-believers, so none of this applies to us. Wrong! The words do not mean that they literally deny him. They mean that, by their conduct, they have denied him. A person who is irreverent and who interprets the Bible according the way he wants, twisting it this way and that, and invents things which are not in Scripture. He is not listening to what God says. He has denied what Christ has come for, which is to save from sin and to transform hearts and to make us holy because he is living in an ungodly way. These errorists were actually sitting at the Lord’s Supper with everybody else. They had not been thrown out, which they most certainly would have been had they denied the deity of Christ or the fundamental doctrines of the faith. They are not deniers literally, that is the cunning of it.