Jude 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 God into a license for immortality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
There are two areas in life that seem to trip up so many of our contemporaries. Both deal with the most fundamental aspects of life here on Earth. So, since they are so fundamental, you would think that there would be a solution that was widely known and applied.
When the Church was in its infancy, there were two struggles that they faced, just as we face these same two today. As a matter of face, humans down through history and across cultures have faced these same two issues. They are universal!
The first issue deals with the role of sexual relationships in the formation and fulfillment in life. Just take a look at any music video or movie trailer today. Sex sells. When I was growing up, there was almost always a bikini clad attractive woman used to sell just about everything, from cars to gadgets that could improve life in some way.
The second one has to do with origin and ultimate purpose. This one answers the questions “Why am I here?”and “What is the meaning of life?” This fundamental axis of belief and philosophy runs at the core of every belief system that has existed throughout history. These questions rise spontaneously in pre-teens and teens, and they continue throughout the rest of our lives.
We seek after a Truth that will answer these questions satisfactorily. And every belief system has the responsibility to answer these questions, because they foretell the trajectory of our lives. Different answers result in very different outcomes.
Our text answers this question by seeing what false teachers of his day were introducing to the Gospel. Two things were being added: sex and the identity of Jesus. Why these two things? How did the sidetracking of the Gospel by these two factors pose such a threat to the Gospel.
The role of sexual relationships and how we see them within the marriage bonds, can speak to who we think we are. Do we have the authority to define the relationships we have in life, or has that definition already been issued? Are we willing to submit to that already defined definition, or will we choose to be the dictionary writer for ourselves?
Sex goes much deeper than the physical act. How we view sex speaks to our autonomy or submission to the LORD. When we choose to ignore or alter God’s definition in this area, where will our rewriting stop? What will the next revision include? How far will we move away from God’s definitions?
The second error that these false teachers introduced had to do with the identity and nature of Jesus. Was He, as the eyewitnesses attest to, the Son of God, fully God and fully human, or was He some partial, hybrid of something else? Much of the first several centuries of the Church was engulfed in answering this question.
We might be tempted to dismiss these questions as being from a different timed age when these kinds of questions were more important because of the ignorance of the age. But now that we have “science” these questions are being answered in the test tube and the telescope. When the aliens arrive, all our questions will be answered! Or at least that is what we are told.
But how did the aliens begin? The same questions that we would have to grapple with just get pushed to another place and time. Their existence wouldn’t help us answer our questions. They would still be on our tables.
We can see this battle over sex and the identity of Jesus still playing out today. We even see it playing out in some churches as they abandon the Scriptures as the source of all Truth. They substitute some hybrid or partial in place of the Rock, Jesus. They become self-help peddlers and snake oil salesman.
I would rather hold tightly to what I know to be solid. How about you?
The Arnold Journey 