Free Bible Commentary
“Jude 1:17-19”
Categories: Jude“But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, ‘In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.’ These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.”
--- End of Scripture verses---
The fact that there were ungodly men disrupting the Lord’s church and corrupting the Lord’s doctrine for their own personal gain should have come to no surprise to the brethren that Jude wrote to. The Apostles of Christ had previously taught by spoken and written word that “In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts” (verse 18). Consider the Apostle Paul’s warnings in 1 Timothy 4:1-3 and 2 Timothy 2:1-5 as prime examples of this truth. Paul had also warned the elders in the church at Ephesus that, “savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29-30). We surpass naivety and embrace foolishness when we ignore the Lord’s warnings to “be on the alert” (Acts 20:31) for that dangers that ever threaten the peace and sanctity of the body of Christ.
Jude echoed the Apostle Peter’s words when he wrote of “mockers” who would disparage the Lord’s promises and humiliate the Lord’s people in order to satisfy “their own ungodly lusts” (2 Peter 3:3). Self-willed pretenders cannot prevail upon the minds of godly people with logic and reason, so they naturally resort to mockery and contempt to accomplish their ends. The truth has nothing to fear and no reason to berate others with belligerence. If someone comes across as hypercritical or hostile when trying to make you see things their way, chances are their motives are impure and their doctrine in untrue. “But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and disputes about the Law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned.” (Titus 3:9-11).
Please notice that it is not the faithful brethren striving to stick to “the ancient paths” (Jeremiah 6:16) that cause factions and “divisions” (verse 19), but the ones who endeavor to introduce innovative doctrines and practices foreign to the “truth once for all handed down to the saints” (verse 3). It is the Apostles of Jesus Christ that bear the standard of authority in the Lord’s church and their “sound doctrine” is found only in the clearly written passages of the New Testament. “Some things” are “hard to understand, which” the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction” (2 Peter 3:16). Any strange teaching that appears to be too complex and convoluted to be true probably is. “But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3).
Please read Jude 1:20-23 for tomorrow.
Have a blessed Lord’s Day!
-Louie Taylor
