Jude 1:4

‘For there are certain men crept in surreptitiously, even they who were of old written of beforehand to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.'

Note the suggested insidiousness of their movements. They did not come in openly as those who professed to have a different Gospel, but tried to present their ideas as being the same as the genuine Gospel. But God's people should recognise that this was simply what had been prophesied of old, that there would be men who turned the truth of God into a lie (Romans 1:25). ‘They say, “Peace, peace,” where there is no peace.' (Jeremiah 6:14; Jeremiah 8:11). Indeed he will go on to demonstrate how the Scriptures have already condemned them.

They are guilty of two things. Firstly they turn the grace of God into lasciviousness. They make God's free grace a grounds for sinful behaviour. Many do that today when they say, ‘You can have Jesus as your Saviour, without having Him as your Lord'. That is making a mockery of the grace of God. Not all may go as far as these men did, but the principle is the same.

Secondly they ‘deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ'. The ‘only' indicates that they did this by making Him only one among a number. It is not that they totally rejected Him. It was more subtle. They degraded Him by refusing to see Him as their  only  Lord and their  only  Master. And it is probable also that, as with those described in 2 Peter, they denied His earthly coming in the flesh, and His second coming in the flesh, seeing Him simply as a spirit being.

Any who introduce intermediaries between ourselves and God other than our One Mediator Jesus Christ are guilty of this heresy. It is a grave danger for Roman Catholics when they allow Mary and the saints to be intermediaries. It is not long before subconsciously they are relying on them for salvation. And the same danger is inherent in what is called Christian spiritism. For the truth is that there is only one God, and only one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5). None others are necessary.

On the other hand those who fail to see that God became truly man in Christ Jesus are also equally guilty of this heresy. For the fact that true God became true man is central to the Gospel.

Three Examples Of How God Has Dealt In The Past With Those Who Behaved In A Similar Way.

Jude now selects three incidents from the Old Testament which demonstrate what happened to people who were guilty of similar sins. They are especially interesting as they cover the whole of mankind together with heavenly beings. The first concerns the people of the Law, representing the Jews. The second concerns heavenly beings. The third concerns the people outside the Law, the equivalent of Gentiles. The first is an example of open disobedience and unwillingness to depend only on God, even though they have seen His power to save. The second is an example of where ‘angelic beings' deserted their own sphere to intermingle with another sphere, thus corrupting both themselves and those with whom they intermingled. And the third is the incident where the peoples of Sodom and Gomorrah and their surrounding towns had sunk into gross indecency, and even tried to become involved with angels in their evil acts. The first incident ended in destruction. The second ended in their being kept in everlasting bonds until the final Day of Judgment. The third resulted in their suffering ‘eternal fire', a fire that had eternal consequences from which there was no recovery. Thus in each case the punishment was final.