Jude is a one chapter letter that packs a powerful punch of apologetics that is as necessary today as it was the day that he wrote it. Jude was going to write something to the saints about the common faith that we have in Jesus Christ. However, when he was about to put the quill to the parchment, the Spirit of God told him to exhort the church to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints”. And the reason for the exhortation was that there were “certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ”. Jude in verses 4-19 is going to give us the “profile” of a false teacher, false prophet or counterfeit Christian, but I want to draw your attention to two heresies that are common to all false teachers and false prophets. One, is that they turn or change, or redefine the biblical meaning of the sanctifying grace God as a license for lasciviousness or sexual promiscuity. Two, they deny the biblical doctrine of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. False teachers and false prophets distort or redefine the Biblical meaning of the grace of God. In Jude’s day there was an apostasy known as gnosticism. Gnosticism taught that all matter was evil, and that the spirit alone was good. Therefore, the material body was essentially evil. Therefore, since the spirit alone is good and you are saved by grace (which is true) you were free to satisfy what the Scriptures calls sexual immorality (which is heretical and false). Beloved, any teaching that winks at, condones, or justifies the practice of sexual sin, be it heterosexual or homosexual, as a God given freedom that we have in Christ is exactly what Paul is addressing when he writes: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid” (Romans 6:1-2). Paul wrote to the church in Corinth: “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man does is without the body; but he that commits fornication sins against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:18-20). Any teaching with any disregard for the moral law of God is known as antinomianism (no law). This heretical description of the sanctifying grace of God is contrary to the scriptural call of God to walk in holiness and righteousness. Secondly, these false teachers denied the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. According to both Jude and Peter, these false prophets and false teachers were denying the Lord that bought them. “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying ( refuse, reject, renounce) the Lord that bought them (that is redemption language), and bring upon themselves swift destruction” (2 Peter 2:1). The Greek word that is translated “Lord” by Jude and Peter describes “One who possesses supreme authority”. What a man teaches or believes about Jesus Christ makes the teacher true or false. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1-2). “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The name Jesus or Yeshua means Jehovah is salvation. Paul writes to the elders from Ephesus in Acts 20:28, “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. Note, the church of God was purchased with His own blood. God the
