Judgment seems to have taken on a negative connotation. So often we hear people –especially those who know very little about the Bible and less about Jesus Christ- chastise Christians by quoting, “ judge not, lest you be judged.” This is taken so much out of the context of what Jesus was talking about and is actually not really what many think he was saying, but nevertheless, it is quoted as this rock-solid proclamation. Hence, many come away with some ideas: 1. That all judgment is bad 2. That Jesus never judged anyone 3. We are never to judge anything or anyone if we are really loving Christians 4. That somehow God will not judge us either, because if we have been good people, and done good works, attended church, been pillars of our own social order or profession, we are entitled to heaven.
There are two things that this thinking allows us to do. It allows us NOT to take the need for salvation seriously and it allows us to believe that no judgment exists by God. This underlying thinking is pervasive in our culture, fortified by current liberated attitudes that are completely disconnected from an understanding of who God is, or what the Bible says, and why Jesus Christ was brought to us. It is often like trying to listen to an illiterate person explain why they enjoyed the novel War and Peace. They may have heard about pieces of it, but their understanding is miniscule, their depth thin. They fall so short because, like so many things, they just do not have time for it. We see it everyday in our society and we also see it every day and more and more in the liberal end of Christianity.
Jude is a serious book, one that I must confess, I really had not read. It is serious because the writer is showing great concern, as many of these letters have, over waning faith and the distortions that came with it in the early church. He talks a lot about the scoffers out there who have no time to believe or care to believe.
How many of us know scoffers? Now, they do not have to be only atheists or agnostics that we encounter, but how many of us know people who have been baptized and confirmed and yet never or rarely attend church? Oh, they celebrate Christmas, and mention Easter but beyond that there is not much. Do you think that any one of these people feel that they will not meet the Lord in Heaven? I know that church attendance is not everything, but faith is the only thing that supports our soul. How do we gain faith and grow in faith if we never or rarely connect to the Lord. Is he a date on the Calendar (December 25th)? Can we really understand a God who has spoken to us through the Bible and more importantly through his son, when we never break open his word? I have witnessed associates dismiss attending a Bible study because they claimed to want to “read the Bible at home.” But, I am not sure that ever happened. Like most of us on a diet, accountability is helpful especially when we have many good intentions, but have trouble realizing them.
More concerning, are individuals who are lost from the Lord, who scoff at his word, and those who are committed to immoral lives, as Jude mentions in 1:8-10. I say committed to immoral lives because we rarely think that people commit to such a thing. But if that is how we live and what is an important part of our life, is that not a commitment? We do not have to go far in our neighborhoods to find such commitment to immorality. Ask any social worker, teacher or any one in law enforcement. Turn on your TV and invest time surfing through many channels that are committed to focusing on the immoral, the seedy, the depraved, the debauched, to greed and the desperate lives of the lost who may never be found.
Yet, there is something more in this book of Jude then just what affects an individual. There is the collective direction of our thinking and of where Christianity is headed. Jude says: These people are…., living only to satisfy their desires…..But you, my dear friends, must remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ said. They told you that in the last times there would be scoffers whose purpose in life is to satisfy their ungodly desires. These people are the ones who are creating divisions among you. They follow their natural instincts because they do not have God’s Spirit in them.” Jude 16-19.
When I read this it made me think of our brethren in many main line churches who now advocate for abortion, or at least the right for a woman to have one, who advocate that being homosexual is acceptable, even in the pulpit, that marriage is unnecessary and won’t last anyway, who have determined that Jesus is no longer considered divine, that most of what is in the new testament is not what Christ said (The Jesus Seminar), that no one needs saving and that those who believe that salvation is important are hysterical. There is an intentional desire to make immorality less immoral, or even acceptable. Many have worked hard purposefully to satisfy their ungodly desires and then make it OK to think or act out what they desire. This is being preached in many liberal churches and it is easy to find the discussions that have ensued in denominational conventions by looking it up on the internet. The truth that was once cherished as God’s truth has become circumspect, relative and nearly invisible. I once heard a pastor from one such denomination scoff and laugh at what he saw as the incredibly stupid evangelicals who felt the need to be saved, because he is of the belief that we are saved upon baptism, no matter how we live our lives or how invisible our faith becomes.
Jude reminds us that there is judgment, that thing that we all want to claim will not happen. He tells us in 1:10-11 “But these people scoff at things they do not understand. Like unthinking animals, they do whatever their instincts tell them, and so they bring about their own destruction. What sorrow awaits them!” Furthermore, he says this: “you must show mercy to those whose faith is wavering. Rescue others by snatching them from the flames of judgment. Show mercy to still others, but do so with great caution, hating the sins that contaminate their lives.” Jude 1:22-23
So what can we say about judgment? Does it exist? Jude makes it clear that there is judgment ahead for all, no matter what a church denomination has approved about a lifestyle that individuals have chosen or the positions that they have taken on God’s word. And for the scoffer or the religious malcontent, there is little hope. Judgment will happen. Accountability to God is inevitable. Yet, here is the thing that so much of the scoffing or liberal, media-driven public does not grasp, those who have Jesus, have life and they have the divine intercessory in our savior, who will stand with us. Not one of us will be able to claim perfection or a sinless life, but all who claim Christ and have surrendered their life to him will see him standing with them before the righteous judgment of the Lord. Jesus will be our protector, our ministering champion, our all in all. There is nothing – absolutely nothing like him. Shame on those who scoff and ridicule his holiness and his power, his grace and his mercy. They have no idea who they are talking about.
Laurie Erdman
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