Lessons from Jude (1)
This week I am going to discuss different topics from one of my favorite books. The book of Jude is a no-nonsense hammer to the church from Jesus’ brother. (At least that is the supposition)
I won’t be going verse by verse, because honestly that is boring. I am going to pull out of it and just go. Jude is only one chapter with 25 verses, but there is enough in there to teach for a year.
3 Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. 4 For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
I find it exceedingly NOT 2026 when Jude says he stopped writing about salvation, and decided instead to write to tell those people to fight for their faith. Jude doesn’t go into a discussion of heavy persecution, or heavy hardness of hearts in the world, but HE stopped everything to tell them to fight for those who were turning the gospel into fleshly-free-for-all.
Even at the time of this writing early in the first century the enemy’s plan to subvert the gospel had moved from fighting, to joining.
Hyper-grace. The belief that we have been saved, freed, so we have the freedom to live our lives in whatever manner we decide. People had seen that God’s grace forgives, and the more sin abounds, the more grace abounds. So, sinning really is not a thing anymore. This was what Jude stopped everything to write about.
Not idolatry, not gossip, not adultery….but the belief that grace is a license to do whatever you want.
Let me be clear, if you look at the first rule of Satanism it is this, “Do what you want.”
Yet, these so-called Christians were teaching just this. Let me rehash what Paul said, ‘Should we sin, so grace abound more?” “God forbid,”
However, in 2026, this is the primary message from the pulpits. A have-it-your way gospel. You don’t have to change, you just have to say the sinner’s prayer.
Jude is going to light these people who believe this way up. Any gospel that expects no change is an idol. Idolatry to self. Serving your self is what got you into all the problems of your life, why do you think Jesus would allow you to continue the same way?
The gospel is not a wiping of your sinful life, just for you to continue in that same sin. No, repentance in the gospel was a forgiveness and adoption. The adopted child has to succomb to the rules of the family name. That is the point. You are now not your own, bought (adoption fee) by the precious blood of Jesus.
How dare any of us continue to walk a life that is not pleasing to our Father. Paul said in the book of Romans that we were grafted into the vine as a wild branch….and if we fail to heed the gospel, we too will be cut off, just like Israel. We are not ‘special.’ God will not change his holiness, righteousness, and justice for us, even if we sobbed at the altar that one time….
The fight is for the truth of the gospel, the truth of repentance, the truth of adoption. Anything less, we have to fight.
