How do false teachers enter into the ‘church’? What are the tactics? What are we to do to keep them from deceiving us? Jude, one of Jesus’ half-brothers, has given us another warning on this important subject.
Jude 1:3 Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.
Here is an important insight into this worldwide problem. Jude had thought he would write a letter of encouragement. He felt that he would remind everyone about our common salvation.
This would be a message stressing unity of the body. It would most likely remind everyone that this salvation was a gift from Jehovah and could not be earned nor was it deserved. He may also express the wonderful truth that are all equal in their relationship to Jesus through His death and resurrection. Finally, he tells us that we need to strive, work out, and persevere for the faith that has been revealed to all the saints in Christ Jesus.
However, Jude put that plus more, aside to issue a warning.
1:4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Notice how they start to destroy the ‘church’.
First, they destroy from within. I know that we can all see how the world attacks our faith from the outside. During these troubling times, their attacks are coming from all elements of our society. This co-ordinated attack can only be orchestrated by Satan, as it is visible worldwide. But, Jude reminds us that the far more dangerous attacks always come from within.
Secondly, Jehovah has always known these false teachers and has already condemned them. However, they are still actively plying their sinister work from within. They are just out on ‘bail’, but their sentence is final.
Thirdly, they entice the flock to sin without concern or fear. They sell the lie that grace covers all sins and their is no longer any condemnation for sins. So eat, drink, and be merry, you are all going to Heaven! Paul warned of this false teaching as well.
Romans 6:1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 6:2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 6:3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
Paul clearly expresses the need to stop sinning. Grace does not cover those who continue to practice sin. Sin is lawlessness and will be punished.
6:4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 6:5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6:6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 6:7 for he who has died is freed from sin.
6:8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 6:9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. 6:10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
6:11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 6:13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
These closing strong admonitions are to be carefully applied to our lives. We struggle with our old body and its physical lusts. We need to look deep into our hearts to see just what are our true desires. We need to ask Jehovah to reveal our hearts to us, as we often just deceive ourselves about our self-righteousness. Grace frees us from the curse or penalty of sin, not to continue in sin.
Through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we can resist the temptations of sin that lurk within and are broadcasted to us throughout our day. Let us pursue holiness and righteousness.
More next Saturday.