The Characteristics Of Error

(ii) These evil men have a second characteristic. They set up divisions--they are fleshly creatures, without the Spirit. Here is a most significant thought--to set up divisions within the church is always sin. These men set up divisions in two ways.

(a) As we have already seen, even at the Love Feasts they had their own little cliques. By their conduct they were steadily destroying fellowship within the church. They were drawing a circle to shut men out instead of drawing a circle to take them in.

(b) But they went further. There were certain thinkers in the early church who had a way of looking at human nature which essentially split men into two classes. To understand this we must know something of Greek psychology. To the Greek man was body (soma, Greek #4983 ), soul (psuche, Greek #5590 ) and spirit (pneuma, Greek #4151 ). Soma ( Greek #4983 ) was simply man's physical construction. Psuche ( Greek #5590 ) is more difficult to understand. To the Greeks soul, psuche ( Greek #5590 ), was simply physical life; everything that lived and breathed had psuche ( Greek #5590 ). Pneuma ( Greek #4151 ), spirit, was quite different, it belonged to man alone, and was that which made him a thinking creature, kin to God, able to speak to God and to hear him.

These thinkers went on to argue that all men possessed psuche ( Greek #5590 ), but very few really possessed pneuma ( Greek #4151 ). Only the really intellectual, the elite, possessed pneuma ( Greek #4151 ); and, therefore, only the very few could rise to real religion. The rest must be content to walk on the lower levels of religious experience.

They, therefore, divided men into two classes. There were the psuchikoi ( Greek #5591 ), who were physically alive but intellectually and spiritually dead. We might call them the fleshly creatures. All they possessed was flesh and blood life; intellectual progress and spiritual experience were beyond them. There were the pneumatikoi ( Greek #4152 ), who were capable of real intellectual knowledge, real knowledge of God and real spiritual experience. Here was the creation of an intellectual and spiritual aristocracy over against the common herd of men.

Further, these people who believed themselves to be the pneumatikoi ( Greek #4152 ), believed that they were exempt from all the ordinary laws governing a man's conduct. Ordinary people might have to observe the accepted standards but they were above that. For them sin did not exist; they were so advanced that they could do anything and be none the worse. We may well remember that there are still people who believe that they are above the laws, who say in their hearts that it could never happen to them and believe that they can get away with anything.

We can now see how cleverly Jude deals with these people who say that the rest of the world are the psuchikoi ( Greek #5591 ), while they are the pneumatikoi ( Greek #4152 ). Jude takes their words and reverses them. "It is you," he thunders at them, "who are the psuchikoi ( Greek #5591 ), the flesh-dominated; it is you who possess no pneuma ( Greek #4151 ), no real knowledge and no experience of God." Jude is saying to these people that, although they think themselves the only truly religious people, they have no real religion at all. Those whom they despise are, in fact, much better than they are themselves.

The truth about these so-called intellectual and spiritual people was that they desired to sin and twisted religion into a justification for sin.