Jude

⁴ For 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. ⁵ Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. ⁶ And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— ⁷ just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

In a seminary chapel service at a school in New Jersey, a Lord’s supper service is held. In this service a hymn is sung to a goddess named Sophia instead of to Jesus. Some of the words sung to this goddess include:

She’s the teacher we esteem,

And the subject of life’s theme.

Lover, counsel, comforter,

Life is gladness lived with her.

One person present at this service recounted how the minister “then offered the invitation to come to the Lord’s Table, not in the Lord’s name, but in the name of the goddess who was speaking through Jesus…The Inviter was not the crucified Lord of glory but the Sophia figure who was speaking through him, by her own authority.  Ironically, we were being invited to his table, but only so in her name.”[1] The participant got up and walked out with a few others.

A member of one church in Walnut Creek, California, proclaimed, “Every person, no matter their age, sexual preference, gender, or nationality, has the right to have access to the divine, however they see the divinity made manifest.”[2]

An openly gay bishop of the Episcopal Church proclaims that his relationship with his male partner is “sacramental” and sacred before God.[3]

A talk-show host decides to send in some money to a televangelist to see what happens. He then recounts to his shocked and guffawing audience the dozens of letters he receives from the televangelist in return, all of them asking for more money, many of them sending him a few dollars and telling him that if he will send that few dollars back along with a larger gift of $100 or so then he will receive an even bigger blessing. He is also sent strange talismans: supposedly blessed cloths and the like that will allegedly open the treasury of heaven to him. Some of the letters suggest that if he does not respond with more money he is being disobedient.

A famous New Testament scholar argues in print that Jesus did not rise bodily from the dead but rather that his body was likely thrown into a ditch and possibly eaten by dogs. His book is a bestseller. He is celebrated as a great biblical scholar until he retires in comfort.

The editor of a large Christian book publisher is asked (by me) whether or not a person can be a Christian if they felt that Jesus did not bodily rise from the dead but rather that his body was, say,  eaten by dogs. He responds by saying that such a person, yes, might be a Christian after all.

I want to talk about the Greek word hairesis. We know this word in its Anglicized form: “heresy.” In his book Heresies, Harold O. J. Brown defines “heresy” as “something that seemed to undercut the very basis for Christian existence.” He points out that “[p]ractically speaking, heresy involved the doctrine of God and the doctrine of Christ—later called ‘special theology’ and ‘Christology.’”[4]

This is important for two reasons: (1) it tells us that heresy is a corruption within the church and (2) heresy is not a synonym for “opinions different from my own.” When I say that heresy is a corruption within the church, I am saying that non-Christian religions and theologies are not heresies, they are rather utterly foreign ideas outside of the church. Heresy, by definition, refers to taking the faith or vital aspects of it and corrupting or distorting them. When I say that heresy is not a synonym for “opinions different from my own” I am saying that you cannot refer to differences of opinion on non-fundamental matters “heresy” even if you might call some of them “error.”

Not every error is a heresy though every heresy is an error.

For instance:

• Precisely how we understand predestination is not fundamentally a heresy issue.

• Precisely how we understand the details of end-times prophesy is not fundamentally a heresy issue.

• Church government is not fundamentally a heresy issue.

• The mode of baptism, while important, is not fundamentally a heresy issue.

• Whether or not Jesus rose from the dead is a heresy issue.

• Whether or not Jesus is divine is a heresy issue.

• Whether or not God is just and good and all-knowing is a heresy issue.

So let us be careful on what we call heresy…but let us also be keenly aware that heresy does in fact exist! The late Methodist theologian Thomas Oden has publicly complained that heresy is simply not even allowed to exist in many of our seminaries today.

            It seems worth noting that the liberated seminary at its zenith has finally achieved a condition that has never before prevailed in Christian history:  Heresy simply does not exist…No heresy of any kind any longer exists.  You cannot find one anywhere in the liberated seminary – unless, perhaps, you might consider offenses against inclusivism.  There is absolutely no corruption of Christian teaching if under the present rules all notions of corruption are radically relativized.  Not only is there no concept of heresy, but also there is no way even to raise the question of where the boundaries of legitimate Christian belief lie, when absolute relativism holds sway.

It is like trying to have a baseball game with no rules, no umpire, and no connection with historic baseball.  Yet we insist on calling it baseball, because a game by that name is what most people still want to see played.[5]

And Philip Lee has asked, “…within the Church, has heresy not become a heretical word?”[6]

No, we must not get rid of the word “heresy.” We must keep it. And we must define it rightly. And we must apply it carefully, but, when needed, boldly.

We lose a lot if we lose the idea of heresy. Not the least of which would be the ability to understand the book of Jude, that speaks of heresy and the need for the church to respond rightly to it.

Heresy quietly slips into churches unnoticed.

The first quality of heresy that Jude mentions is how it tends to appear in the church of the living God.

⁴ For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people…

Heresy is brought in:

• by ungodly people

• unnoticed

In 1854/55, Soren Kierkegaard wrote:

The apostasy from Christianity will not come about openly by everybody renouncing Christianity; no, but slyly, cunningly, knavishly, by everybody assuming the name of being Christian, thinking that in this way all were most securely secured against…Christianity, the Christianity of the New Testament, which people are afraid of, and therefore industrial priests have invented under the name of Christianity a sweetmeat which has a delicious taste, for which men hand out their money with delight.[7]

Kierkegaard was right. Heretics and heresy (what Kierkegaard called “the apostasy from Christianity”), will not come with fanfare and t-shirts and banners. No, rather, it will be smuggled in as “a sweetmeat which has a delicious taste” but which is, in reality, poison.

What, then, are we to do? How do we guard against the poison sweets of heresy? Let us remember Peter’s cautions in 1 Peter 5 about the devil and how the church is to guard against him.

⁸ Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Be sober-minded.

Be watchful.

Guarding against heresy does not mean being uncharitable, impatient, or suspicious. Rather, it means being careful, thinking clearly, and watching with our eyes wide open.

This is not a call to be an internet heresy-hunter. Many of these self-proclaimed doctrine-police are frankly the most noxious people you can find online, and that is saying something. They attack the brethren constantly, conjuring up heresy sometimes where there is none at all. Needing a name and financial banking, they create controversies where there are none. They are suspicious, quick to accuse, and adept at insinuation.

No, this is not what it means to be “sober-minded” and “watchful.” Rather, to be “sober-minded” and “watchful” assumes that we are so deeply grounded in the scriptures and the truth of the gospel that we can simply tell when a distortion or corruption is being proposed or attempted. We do not assume the worst of people, but we do realize that the devil exists and “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” We are not quick to call somebody a false teacher (unless there are obvious reasons to do so, of course), but neither do we deny that the church has always had to deal with false teachers!

Church: be charitable but be careful. Listen with understanding but listen with clear conviction. Do not be suspicious but do not be gullible. Do not insinuate in the absence of evidence but do not shrink from diagnosing where the evidence is clear!

Heresy will come in quietly and unnoticed. Beware, church! Beware!

Heresy is a doctrinal distortion holding hands with an ethical corruption.

And then Jude shares with us something about the nature of heresy.

⁴ For 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.

If you read this carefully, you will notice that heresy has both a doctrinal and ethical component. It has to do with theology, yes, but also with behavior. See how the two are wedded in verse 4:

• who pervert the grace [doctrine] of our God into sensuality [ethics]

• and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ [doctrine and ethics (since Christ is no longer our Master)]

First, the doctrinal side of heresy. Here, heresy is depicted as (1) distorting a biblical understanding of grace and (2) denying the full truth about Jesus (which includes His deity).

Doctrine matters. Belief matters. The faith matters. Heresy corrupts these things. We must understand that heresy does not usually begin with an outright, blatant, obscene, total denial of a key doctrine. Rather, it begins by equivocating, by hedging here or there. T.S. Eliot wrote wisely when he wrote:

Heresy is often defined as an insistence upon one half of the truth; it can also be an attempt to simplify the truth, by reducing it to limits of our ordinary understanding, instead of enlarging our reason to the apprehension of truth.[8]

Yes. That is so. Heresy does not have to deny all the truth. It just has to whittle it down, reduce it, minimize it, play with it, nuance it to death, and then render it meaningless. The first heretic, after all, was Satan. Notice how Satan played with words in Eden in Genesis 3:

¹ Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”

There it is: “Did God actually say…”

Heretics play with words the way children play with Play-Doh. They mold it carefully and subtly…so subtly that you can miss, if you are not careful, that it is being shaped into something very strange indeed.

But let us not miss this: heresy is a doctrinal distortion holding hands with an ethical corruption. There is usually a behavioral corruption being smuggled in beneath these doctrinal compromises. Oftentimes there is an outright reason why the heretic wants to believe and have others believe this or that false idea. Oftentimes they are wanting to justify this or that behavior. Listen again:

⁴ For 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.

Notice the attributes of the heretic himself or herself:

• ungodly

• pervert the grace of our God into sensuality

And there it is. The particular heretics that Jude was warning the church against were people given to sensuality. We will see as we progress that this had to do with sexual license. They were immoral people wanting to be immoral. And, frankly, there is no real reason to deny that these people really did want to hold simultaneously to some modified and lessened form of the faith alongside a license for their sensual behavior.

There is a connection between our doctrinal convictions and our behavior.

Some years back I read this in National Liberty Journal:

In December of 2001, Time magazine columnist Roger Rosenblatt wrote an article entitled “God is Not On My Side. Or Yours.” In this column, he spoke of how he viewed God. He made a rather amazing statement in this regard.  Here is what he said: “So indefinite is my idea of God that I do not even connect it to morality…”[9]

Once again, there you have it. If God can be rendered in our minds and hearts as less than who He really is, then we can disconnect Him from your behavior, from morality, from right and wrong. Then we can pull off the great American quasi-Christian coup: we can have enough of God to feel like we will be ok when we die but not enough of God to get in the way of us doing what we want to do before we die.

Heresy and those who promote it will fall under the judgment of God.

All of this is tragic. The heretic is a tragic figure. Heresy is a demonic force. Both fall under the judgment of God as Jude vividly demonstrates using three historical examples.

First, Jude points to the judgment that fell upon disobedient Israelites after the Exodus.

⁵ Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

Let us first note that some versions say “Jesus” and some say “the Lord” “saved a people out of the land of Egypt.” There is some ambiguity here in the text. Douglas Moo, a careful and trustworthy scholar, sums up the problem:

Jude reminds his readers that “the Lord delivered his people out of Egypt.” We encounter in this statement an interesting textual variant. As noted in the footnote to this verse in the NIV, a number of Greek manuscripts, in place of the word translated “Lord,” have the Greek word for “Jesus.” Some commentators think that this reading is original and that Jude here thinks of the preexistent Jesus as the one who delivered the people out of Egypt. They point to 1 Corinthians 10:4, where Paul identifies the “rock” that followed the Israelites in the desert with Christ.3 Others think that “the Lord” is the best reading, but identify this Lord as Christ.4 But the flow of the passage shows that whoever delivered and destroyed the people (v. 5) also kept the disobedient angels in darkness (see “he” in v. 6). It is unlikely that Jude identifies Jesus as the one who did all these things. Probably, then, we should read “the Lord” and identify him as “Jehovah” God.[10]

Maybe so. Or maybe it should indeed read “Jesus.” Regardless, the point is that God both delivered Israel out of Egypt and judged those who rebelled after He delivered them. We likely see an allusion here to Numbers 14 and how God’s judgment fell on those Israelites who actually wanted to return to Egypt.

Second, Jude points to the judgment that fell upon fallen angels.

⁶ And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—

This is probably a reference to Genesis 6 and the angels who lusted after women:

¹ When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, ² the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.

These angels, Jude tells us, are “kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.” God judges His rebellious creation, be they men and women or angels.

Third, Jude points to the judgment that fell upon Sodom and Gomorrah.

⁷ just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

This is interesting at least in part because of the modern, liberal, revisionist attempt to say that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was not primarily sexual but had rather to do with a lack of hospitality. But clearly there was a sexual element to the sins of these notorious cities.

But the point here is clear enough: God’s judgment will fall upon those who distort the truth. This judgment will be severe and devastating. There heretic is not to be winked at, giggled at, coddled, or given shelter. Rather, the heretic is to be called to deep and profound repentance.

Church, we must contend for the gospel by guarding against any and all corruptions of the gospel and the bad fruit it brings! We must be diligent and careful and cautious and true.

Love the truth. Reject the heresies.

Be on guard. The devil hates the gospel. He will try to corrupt it, and he loves nothing more than corrupting it in the very house of God.

I ask you this: would you say that your study and engagement with the gospel is such that it equips you to both identify and combat heresy? Are you so grounded in the truth that you can spot a lie? Do you spend so much time in the light that you can sniff out the darkness when it comes in crafty disguise?

Stay close to Jesus, church.

Let us stay faithful and true.

 

[1] Oden, Thomas C. Requiem: A Lament in Three Movements (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), p.29-32.

[2] Dekar, Paul R. Community of the Transfiguration (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008, p.128.

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/08/02/bishop-elect-relationship-is-sacramental/a3c949a8-8d78-4b3f-85aa-af662ab0346e/

[4] Brown, Harold O.J. Heresies. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1988), p.2-3.

[5] Oden, Thomas C., p.46-47.

[6] Lee, Philip J. Against the Protestant Gnostics. Kindle Edition. 269-271.

[7] Kierkegaard, Soren.  Attack Upon Christendom.  (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1968), p.46-47.

[8] Eliot, T.S. Christianity and Culture.  (San Diego:  Harcourt Brace & Company, 1977), p.41.

[9] National Liberty Journal, February 2002, p.23

[10] Moo, Douglas  J. 2 Peter, Jude. (The NIV Application Commentary Book 18) . Zondervan Academic. Kindle Edition.