"Beloved, being very eager to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For admission has been secretly gained by some who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly persons who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ."
The description of the Christian life is filled with opposites; we are supposed to be this and not supposed to be that. We are supposed to do this and not supposed to do that. As a teacher who deals with student behavior, it can be difficult only to focus on one side of the equation. Sometimes we need to know what we should do and know what we shouldn’t do.
Back in the 60's, a new idea came into the Church, particularly the American Church. It was the idea that God loves us regardless of our appearance or our lifestyle. That, in itself, is true. But it is not entirely true. As my pastor often says, "God loves you just the way you are, but He loves you too much to leave you just the way you are." In other words, we come to God honestly ("This is who I am"), but we don’t stay as that person. Our relationship with the Lord should move us from where we are to becoming more and more like Christ. We should not only be discontent with our sin, we should be ashamed to the extent that we work, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to change! We should want to not sin. And that "want" should come, not from our emotions, but from the knowledge that we have been saved by a sinless God Who desires that we choose righteousness over sin.
In these two verses, Jude describes a situation where ungodly people have come into the Church, posing as Christians, but are trying to convince the believers that it is okay to continue to embrace sin. The word "licentiousness" is interesting. It has a number of connotations.
Licentious, in English, means lacking legal or moral restraints, marked by disregard for strict rules of correctness. In other words, believing that the rules don’t apply to us; we can choose to sin and not worry about it. After all, Christ died for our sins, so it doesn’t really matter what we do. The apostle Paul addressed this very issue in Romans 6:
"What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?" (v. 1-2, NRSV)
Shall we continue in sin . . . for whatever reason . . . once we are saved? Paul (and the Holy Spirit) say emphatically, "No!" It doesn’t matter that this sin, these habits, these behavior patterns, are who we are. We weren’t saved to continue to be "who we are." We were saved to become like Christ! We were saved to choose the fruit of the Spirit, not the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5).
The problem is that, even after we saved, the Lord continues to give us–and to honor–our free will. We can choose at any moment who we want to be, what we want to do. If we choose sin, while God may create circumstances to try to compel us back to Him, He will not forcibly make us love Him or obey Him. He will, instead, allow us to reap the consequences of our choices. And that include even the possibility to rejecting the salvation once so freely embraced.
Strong’s defines aselgeia (G766) (translated here as "licentiousness") as "unbridled lust, excess, licentiousness, lasciviousness, wantonness, outrageousness, shamelessness, insolence." And while this is about sexual lust, it is not only about sexual lust. It is much more about rebellion, about refusing to change our behavior so that we don’t have to obey anyone else. It is about refusing to submit to the will of God as outlined in the Word and as taught by His godly teachers and preachers.
Beloved, we have embraced those teachers and teachings that have allowed us to remain in our own self-indulgence. We want salvation in that we don’t want to go to hell, but we also want to be able to continue to live with our creature comforts. We are willing to sacrifice in some areas as long as we can indulge in others, while the point was to discipline and sacrifice in all areas so that we could indulge in communion with the Holy Spirit and that alone! But we aren’t content with God; we also want _____ (and how we fill in that blank differs with all of us, but the fact that blank exists at all is the problem).
Jude tells us to "contend for the faith." This connotes an active struggle. In other words, this isn’t something natural. We won’t easily embrace the things of God. We need to spend time preparing (studying the Word and praying), encouraging each other as we see both failures and successes, and practicing over and over what it means to live the Christian life. We need to memorize scriptures (such as Galatians 5) so that we can easily describe what our lives should look like and we need to constantly be confessing our sin when we fail to allow God to direct our footsteps (and our mouths)!
A Church infiltrated is a Church that will soon fall. A Church contending for the faith is a Church that will stand. Where do you want to belong?
© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved.
For permission to copy, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com
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