Hidden reefs in your feasts of charity

Jude is one of the most astounding letters in the New Testament. It is short, its writer did not write any other part of Scripture, and it very tightly and briefly sticks to just one subject, which is not in fact the subject that Jude wanted to write about initially. It is also very closely paralleled with II Peter 2, similar to the parallels between Ephesians and Colossians, except that these were both written by Paul. The  necessary repetition illustrates the grave importance of its contents.

None of this is what makes it astounding. It is astounding because of the subject that Jude chose not to write about: our common salvation (Jude 1:3). What could be more important than that? This calls us to sit up and take notice. Jude tells us that he had to write instead to exhort us to earnestly contend for the faith. The word "earnestly contend" is used only here in all of Scripture. The same verb (without the prefix here translated "earnestly") is elsewhere translated as "strive" or simply "fight".

This is often taken to be an urgent call to polemics in theological writing and to apologetics generally. While it certainly includes and implies that application, this is not primarily what Jude has in mind. What Jude is concerned about primarily is the exercise of right judgement in the practice of church discipline. Specifically, that such judgement ought to recognize the terrible implications of the doctrine of reprobation for church membership, namely, that there are reprobate hypocrites in the church for whom there is no possibility of remediation and salvation.

The letter is entirely composed around this subject:

1. Jude warns us that ungodly men who were eternally reprobated have secretly infiltrated the church (Jude 1:4).
2. Jude tells us to remember that unbelieving reprobate were among God's people brought out of Egypt in the Old Testament and even among the angels so that we do not deny the possibility of their existence (Jude 1:5-6).
3. Jude highlights Sodom and Gomorrah as specifically designed examples of God's vengeance on the wicked so we do not doubt the end God has appointed for them (Jude 1:7).
4. Jude outlines various characteristics of these dangerous reprobate hypocrites within the church so that we may recognize and rightly identify them when they expose themselves (recall that they attempt, with significant success, to hide these characteristics):
1. ungodly (Jude 1:4; 15)
2. abusing the grace of God as a license for lasciviousness (Jude 1:4)
3. denying the Lord Jesus Christ (Jude 1:4)
4. unbelieving (Jude 1:5)
5. giving themselves over to fornication (Jude 1:7)
6. going after strange flesh, e.g. homosexuality, paedophilia, bestiality (Jude 1:7)
7. filthy dreamers who defile the flesh (Jude 1:8)
8. despisers of authority, ignorantly speaking evil against those in office (Jude 1:8-10)
9. corrupting themselves like beasts even in what they know naturally (Jude 1:10)
10. murderous followers of Cain (Jude 1:11)
11. abusing their gifts and office for material gain like Balaam (Jude 1:11)
12. rebellious gainsayers like Korah (Jude 1:11)
13. blasphemers (Jude 1:15)
14. murmurers and complainers (Jude 1:16)
15. walkers after their own lusts (Jude 1:16, 18)
16. capable of making impressive persuasive speeches (Jude 1:16)
17. manipulating and flattering those in power to gain advantage (Jude 1:16)
18. mockers (Jude 1:18)
19. schismatic (Jude 1:19)
20. unspiritual and sensual (Jude 1:19)
5. Jude contrasts their attitude toward authority with the archangel Michael's manner in contending  even with Satan (Jude 1:9).
6. Jude pronounces a curse on them as followers of cursed Cain, Balaam, and Korah and gives analogies to illustrate how cursed they are (Jude 1:11-13).
7. Jude applies Enoch's prophecy of the Lord's judgement and vengeance to them (Jude 1:14-15).
8. Jude reminds us that the apostles also wrote about such people (consider Paul's pastoral epistles, and Peter's general epistles, especially the second; Jude 1:17-18).
9. Jude tells us in contrast to continue building ourselves up in the faith, in prayer, walking in love, and trusting in Christ for mercy and eternal life (Jude 1:20-21).
10. Finally, Jude tells us to rightly distinguish between such reprobate hypocrites and sinning brethren whom we must attempt to save with compassion with great care for the fiery danger to ourselves and the evil pollution of their sin (Jude 1:22-23).
11. Lest we should be alarmed by the apostasy and judgement of God against these reprobate hypocrites, whom we had supposed to be sincere and beloved Christians, Jude ends with a doxology praising God for His ability to preserve us from falling and sanctify us (Jude 1:24-25). This mirrors his opening address to us as those who are being sanctified by God, preserved in Christ, and called, in distinction from the reprobate hypocrites he describes (Jude 1:1-2).

Notice that of the long list of characteristics, some of these are very general and simply necessarily the case: they are ungodly and unbelieving, even though secretly so. Some may only occur after they have perhaps been exposed and admonished: they become schismatic and perhaps later then even openly deny Christ. Others may be ongoing for years before discovered and recognized. What is remarkable is that none of these characteristics are explicitly or essentially doctrinal.

When Jude says that they deny the Lord, he does not mean that they start teaching Arianism or some other Christ-denying heresy. Heretics do deny Christ that way, and other letters speak of such false teachers, but it is not primarily what Jude has in view. He means that they deny the Lord by their evil and hypocritical lives. By abusing the grace of God as a cloak and license for sin, they deny the Lord.

Jude describes these people, not as openly repudiating Christ, but as hidden reefs in our feasts of charity (Jude 1:12). The ancient Christians, similar to today, would have meals of fellowship together, especially for the benefit of the poorer brethren. Jude means that the presence of these hypocrites meant that these meals became as dangerous as navigating a ship around hidden reefs. These reprobates are harmful to others, while also being cleverly concealed. They look like normal clouds, but they carry no water. They look like normal trees but their fruit withers, and really they have no fruit, being twice dead and even uprooted. They swell up and impress like powerful waves, but they foam out their shame. They look like normal stars, but like the planets, they move erratically, not staying in their courses, or like falling meteors, they disappear forever.

We can summarize the sinful characteristics listed above as basically four categories of antinomianism:

1. Sensuality like Sodom (Jude 1:4, 7-8, 10, 16, 18-19)
2. Rebellion like Korah (Jude 1:8-11, 16, 18-19)
3. Avarice like Balaam (Jude 1:11)
4. Hatred like Cain (Jude 1:11)

Any Christian may sin grievously in these general areas of his life, but what makes these hypocrites different is the depth and extent of their sin considering their knowledge of God and their outward hypocritical profession. They pursue these sins with impunity as long as they can get away with it because of their underlying attitude towards God. They behave this way because they fundamentally have no fear of God and are unbelieving. They know the truth, and they can speak very impressively about it, but they do not really love the truth. Having heard and understood the gospel, they infiltrate the church by a false profession and attempt to use the Christian religion as a cloak for their evil.

Compare this with Paul who was formerly an insolent blasphemer and zealous persecutor of the church. He explains that he found forgiveness only because he did so in ignorance and unbelief (I Tim. 1:13). He did not really know what he was doing, like any heathen. But when these hypocrites commit such enormous sins as a lifestyle and do so in hypocrisy over many years while claiming to be a Christian with careful deliberate deceptions through manipulating, flattering, and persuading others, they show themselves to be no different to apostates. That is, by such behaviour, they deny the Lord Jesus Christ, as really and firmly and definitively as an apostate.

This is not like the lamentable falls of David or Peter, though such falls may be as close as a Christian can come to this. Jude refers to the importance of making a distinction and having compassion on some. Astoundingly, for today's sensitive modern church, this means not having compassion on others. No compassion for the followers of Cain, Balaam, Korah, or Sodom in the church today.

Hebrews 6 speaks of apostates, as those who draw back in unbelief, for whom there is then no possibility of being renewed to repentance:

For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned (Heb. 6:4-8).

Hebrews 10 then speaks of apostates who, having received the knowledge of the truth, continue to sin wilfully and presumptuously, i.e. treating the grace of God as license to sin as Jude describes:

For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? (Heb. 10:26-29)

These practical antinomians are covenant-breakers, subject to the worst punishment, and have no possibility of forgiveness as there is no sacrifice for their sins. Peter, in the parallel to Jude, says that their end is worse than if they had never joined the church and professed to know Christ at all (II Pet. 2:20-22).

John similarly warns against such antinomian hypocrites, calling these apostates "anti-christs" and children of the devil, lumping them together with those who deny that Jesus is the Christ, and comparing them also with Cain (I John 2:22; 3:12):

He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him (I John 2:4).

Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us (I John 2:18-19).

Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him. Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother (I John 3:6-10).

We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him (I John 3:14-15).

If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? (I John 4:20)

If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it. All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death (I John 5:16-17).

John agrees with Jude here, that a distinction must be made. John tells us that some must be prayed for who have not sinned a sin unto death, as Jude says, we must have compassion on some. But John and Jude are not dealing with merely speculative or hypothetical situations when they describe those for whom there is no possibility of salvation, and more, whose salvation must not be sought inasmuch as God will not forgive their sins. These apostates, who deny Christ by their antinomian hypocrisy in the church, have committed the unforgiveable sin by blaspheming the Spirit.

Charitable and compassionate church members ought not to be wasting their time and offending God by praying for such people. Well-meaning and conscientious church office-bearers ought not to be wasting their time and offending God by trying to bring them to repentance when God has said that He will not renew them to repentance.

When such a hypocrite has been exposed, for example, as a serial killer, or a sexual predator, or a scheming rebel, or a greedy embezzler, so that he can be plainly seen to have denied Jesus Christ, such a person must ordinarily be viewed as an apostate. He is a candidate for anathemas, not loving church discipline (I Cor. 16:22). And Scripture gives us specific examples of such people.

An excellent example is Alexander the coppersmith, regarding whom Paul, far from praying for his repentance, prays that the Lord rewards him for his evil works (II Tim. 4:14). Paul prays this not out of spite, but out of a knowledge of Alexander's reprobation. Further, this knowledge was not by divine inspiration, but deduced simply from Alexander's apostasy. Not that he necessarily no longer claimed to be a Christian, but that he blasphemed like Hymenaeus (who claimed the resurrection was past already) and did much evil to the apostle Paul (note, Jude's characteristic of rebellion against those in authority). Paul does not tell Timothy to go a give Alexander a gentle pastoral visit to try again to admonish him to repent, but rather, he simply warns him to beware of this person.

In summary, Scripture no where teaches that the judgement of charity is a command to be naive. Rather we are given very many detailed warnings and examples, exhorting us to judge both charitably and righteously, echoing the principle the Lord taught us:

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves (Matt. 10:16).