Jude 1:7 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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Jude 1:7

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The people of Sodom and Gomorrha did not want any restrictions, and they wanted to explore and to indulge themselves sensually in whatever they felt was open to them. This third example shocks us. Was it really appropriate to compare those certain men who had crept in with the people of Sodom and Gomorrah? This judgement of God is notable because the Lord did not wait until the great day to show his hostility to their sin, letting them die naturally, but he intervened supernaturally to destroy them in dramatic fashion. How could those false teachers think that they could get away with their licentiousness while Scripture recorded the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah? Does God changes attitude to sin? It is enough for there to be one such example in history for us to know that God forever hates this sin. In like manner as God made an example of Israel in the wilderness and of the fallen angels, so he made the people of these cities an example of his judgment of sin. What was the particular sin of Sodom and Gomorrah? Two things are mentioned: they had 'given themselves over to sexual morality and gone after strange flesh'. The second may be given as an explanation of the first, or it may be in addition to the first. Certainly there are few societies that have fallen into the evil of homosexuality that have not also practised all kinds of heterosexual immorality. Paul too describes homosexual behaviour as 'leaving the natural use' and says that they 'did change the natural use for what is against nature'. Jude calls this 'going after strange flesh' because it is contrary to nature for men to be attracted to other men and to seek sexual gratification; it is contrary to natural emotions and feelings. But evil men and women do violence to their own emotions and twist and distort them until they enjoy what naturally they would have been disgusted by. 'Suffering the vengeance of eternal fire'. Why does the text say this? We know that Sodom was destroyed by fire but not by eternal fire. The ruins of the cities are thought to be in the area at the south end of the Dead Sea but there is no fire there now. Yes, but the supernatural way that God chose to destroy them was itself a warning of eternal punishment. Their physical death was rapid but they will suffer the judgement of fire for eternity.

Application

Questions

Is this sin really against nature? The teaching of Scripture is that human beings come into this world with a fallen nature which produces fallen desires. Some imagine that their responsibility begins where their desires end. They imagine that they are not responsible for desires themselves since they arise from nature, and nature is a given. They therefore excuse their behaviour as driven by desires which are innate. 'I cannot help doing these things, God made me attracted to them'. This is a great mistake. They forget that the nature we have now is not the nature that God created, but a fallen nature. What they therefore call ‘natural’, God calls 'unnatural' for the nature by which they justify themselves is that corrupt nature which they perversely approve. But when the Scripture charges them with being unnatural, it does not deny that their sins originate in their nature; only it insists that the nature is not what God originally made. It is relatively easy for human beings to reprogram their desires in accordance with this fallen nature within them. In truth, we are held responsible by God not only for our actions, but also for our desires and even for our nature. This last produces in man the greatest outrage of all and yet from the earliest age, he gives evidence that he approves of this nature. 'But what can you do against his nature?', you ask. Indeed, repentance and conversion are an attack upon our own nature by ourselves. Under conviction of sin we condemn ourselves and we justify God; we acknowledge that we have broken his laws and brought guilt upon ourselves so that we are without excuse.

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Jude 1:7 Commentary and Bible Study