Jude 8 – Yet in like manner these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.
If you think of God’s Word as having lines that should not be crossed, then you can think of progressivism in every generation as seeking to move that line. In the name of progress, thanks to increased learning to move us beyond the more “primitive” thinking of generations prior, every generation lives under the evolutionary myth that we are good and getting better, and that changing moral lines is how we make moral progress.
In our day of global communication that is instant, the pace at which lines are moved is faster than ever. The eventual goal is always the same – to keep moving the line or standard of morality until there is no line. For example, since I was born, same sex attraction has gone from being a diagnosed mental health condition to a civil right complete with same sex marriage and a gender spectrum that denies God made us male and female.
The next lines to be erased will be polygamy and the age of consent so that minors will be having sex with adults now that they have been sexualized by public school curriculum, entertainment, and social media platforms.
The same battle we are fighting to hold the lines that God drew in His Word are not new. In Jude’s day, he was writing to a church under attack from cultural forces in the world that were the same as in our day.
One Bible commentary says, “The epistle of Jude is an impassioned exhortation to a church that is being compromised. The writer’s concerns, while touching on doctrine, are foremost ethical in nature. Posing a threat to the Christian community is a self-indulgent group that spurns spiritual authority and arrogantly appropriates its own authority.” (1)
To warn God’s people in that day, and our day, Jude uses more negative examples, which we’ll look at tomorrow. This tactic is important – to help people become mature disciples, we need to tell them what God is for and what God is against.
Why?
Otherwise, they do both what God is for and against, which in God’s eyes is like being in a covenant with Him and committing adultery on Him.
What are some of the most popular and powerful lies that people are believing in the world and Church today?
- Erland Waltner and J. Daryl Charles, 1-2 Peter, Jude, Believers Church Bible Commentary (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1999), 274.
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