Jude 1:14-19 - Homiletics

Future judgment an anticipation of nature and a truth of revelation.

"To execute judgment upon all," etc. Its declared era is the Lord's advent; its declared functions are those of correction and retribution. "Great swelling words "—the natural language of the errorist and the deceiver. "Very many such words are recorded in Church history, and that, too, as spoken in justification of unbridled lust. Some of the more openly abominable belong to the Gnostic and other antinomian heretics of early times, when men were taught that by faith and what was called knowledge they were raised above all restraints of law and obligations of morality—became, in fact, incapable of sin, and especially so superior to matter and all material influences that no degradation or pollution of the body could possibly affect them in any way whatever, any more than the ocean is defiled by what you throw into it. The later centuries also supply abundant illustrations of the text, as in the arrogant pretensions of popery, the extravagances of the libertines in the Reformation, and the Mormon and 'free love' and spiritualistic ravings of our own day" (Lillie). "Mockers"—the class most impervious to grace, the most hopeless to reclaim. The rise of such is the most deadly symptom of evil in the Church. But the sins of discontent with providence, immoral license, swelling vanity, cringing servility, and malignant scoffing are near of kin. "The lack of the Spirit" is the last word in the description of impiety. The grace of that Spirit is the sole guarantee of the higher life. The loss of that Spirit is the way of death.