Compassion and Caution

And on some have compassion, making a distinction; but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh.

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,

To God our Savior, Who alone is wise, Be glory and majesty, Dominion and power, Both now and forever. Amen. (Jude 1:22-25)

We don’t know much about what happened to the apostles after the Scriptures were completed. What we do know is part of a tradition that is not inspired, so we can listen with interest, without banking our lives on it. We do read from several sources that the apostle John lived the longest of all the apostles, and may have been the only one not to be martyred, but to die of old age. When a very elderly man, perhaps in his late nineties, he was carried most places, and it’s said that towards the end of his life, his one reply when people spoke to him was, “Little children, let us love one another.” But even though by then, he was no doubt very frail, his love was no sentimentalism. You remember that Jesus called him and his brother ‘the sons of thunder’. Apparently, he once went to the public baths in Ephesus and once inside, he saw the heretic Cerinthus. Cerinthus taught that the divine Christ had come upon the human Jesus temporarily, but denied that Jesus is the Christ. He denied that Jesus was fully God, fully man, two natures, but one person forever combined. And once John saw that Cerinthus was present, it is said that he rushed out of the bath house, shouting, “Let us flee, lest the bath house fall down! For Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within!”

I think John shows us that love and truth walk together inseparably. Jude has modelled that for us too, showing us the truth we must contend for, while teaching us to keep keep ourselves in the love of God, by building ourselves up in our most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, looking for the return of Christ.

Before Jude closes off with an appropriate benediction of praise, he still has one more commandment for us. Jude has told us what we are to do in our churches and in our own lives. But there is still the obvious question: what do we do with the false teachers we meet? For that matter, what do we do with those who have believed the false teachers, and have joined false teachers?

Jude gives us the answer in verses 22 and 23. The command here is one act of mercy, split into two applications. In dealing with false teachers and false teaching, you are going to find two kinds of people, and the way you show mercy to them will differ.

I. Compassionately Evangelise the Deceived

And on some have compassion, making a distinction;

Now if you have a translation other than the KJV or the NKJV, verse 22 is going to read something like “be merciful to those who doubt”. The reason for this difference is that the original Greek word in some manuscripts has two extra letters, which shades the meaning from make distinctions to doubting. In the majority of texts, it is ‘make distinctions’. I lean towards the majority reading, meaning that it is we who must make a distinction in our evangelism.

We have to know whom we are dealing with, and distinguish between them. You might be dealing with someone who just recently was pulled into a false teaching. She hardly knows up from down in Christian doctrine, and she is just riding the current of what her friends believe.

You might be dealing with someone who has been in this teaching for years, loves it, spreads it, encourages it, but perhaps he has never really examined it. He just assumed it was Christianity, found that it worked for him on some levels, and has just happily attended the same false church for many years.

You might be dealing with a leader or teacher in the movement. This person has studied the ideas. He has already encountered arguments against his position, and he has either developed a sophisticated theology to answer your arguments, or he has chosen to vigorously dismiss and denounce any attacks on his position.

Jude tells us to make a distinction. We must understand where someone is in this false teaching, and realise that there are different approaches to these different people.

How would I know where someone is in respect to error? Here are three questions you can ask to find out:

• First, how aware is the person of the error? In other words, does this person understand that denying the deity of Christ is a denial of the atonement? Does he or she understand that what their church teaches is not in Scripture, or contradicts something in Scripture?
• Second, how deeply does the person identify with the error and promote it? Sometimes a person finds himself in a group for social reasons, and doesn’t recognise the error. Others are drawn to churches because of the error, and become vigorous proponents of the teaching.
• Third, in which direction is the person moving? Is he accepting more and more of the error, or is he questioning it?

When you ask those questions, you can make the distinction. And the key distinction is this: some people are mostly deceived, but have not identified themselves with the false teaching. Other people were once deceived, but they have now so deeply embraced the error, that they too are deceivers. One person is still a student of false teaching, the other has become a teacher of false teaching.

So once you make that distinction, Scripture tells you what to do with the first category of people: have compassion on them. Show mercy to the deceived, to the people who have been swept up by a false teacher. Pity the person who is a sheep with a false shepherd, leading him or her to the same destruction reserved for false teachers.

What does that mercy look like? Compassionate evangelism. Sharing the Gospel with someone in a false church, or in a cult, or in another religion is the same as sharing it with anyone else. You teach them the four principles of God, Sin, Christ, Faith. The holy Triune God made us and made us to worship Him. But we have rebelled against Him and gone our own way, which will lead to death and judgement. But Christ, the God-Man came to take our punishment on the Cross and grant us eternal life. But we must repent of sin, and believe in Him as our life and righteousness.

And you open the Bible, to show the person the Scriptures. Yes, show the person the error of what the false teacher has taught, but keep coming back to the solution – the Gospel.

In fact, many people here can probably point to an experience like that. You were either unsaved, or in an off-beat church, and someone compassionately showed you truth. And yes, there was a moment of feeling annoyed and disturbed, when you confronted the possibility that you might be wrong. But once you did that, and you came to truth, were you or were you not grateful that someone had spoken to you? Well then, let us love our neighbour as ourselves, and do for them as was done for us. Compassionately evangelise those who are still in the early phases of deception, indeed, doubting as the other texts have it.

But now we come to the second group. This is not the group of those naïve people who have been deceived. This is not the fool of Proverbs. This person is the scoffer of Proverbs, the mocker, the deceiver. Here Jude tells us to do something different:

II. Cautiously Rescue the Deceivers

but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh

Again, some translations are going to say something like “save others, snatching them out of the fire, and on others have mercy with fear”. I don’t think there is a big difference between the readings, but again, I am going to go with the Majority text.

But the difference here is the warning: try to save this group with great caution. The words with fear mean save them with great carefulness, great caution. The fear here is a fear of danger to yourself.

This is a safety warning. This is God’s Word saying, when you approach this kind of person, with the intention of rescuing him from his error, you have to do so with extreme care, extreme watchfulness. Because if you don’t, your rescue attempt may end up pulling you into destruction.

Look at the image Jude gives us. He says you need to look at this like someone in a fire, wearing flammable clothes. You are trying to get them out. But in order to get someone out of a fire, you often have to physically grab them, and pull them out, or carry them out. But as you do so, you have to know that you are now in physically close contact with a false teacher just contaminated with error and deception. It’s as if their very clothes are infected and ready to spread error to whoever comes into contact with them.

So how would you rescue someone who is burning up in a fire, but also contagious and infectious? The answer is, very quickly. You would brave the flames, wear gloves, grab the person, pull him out, and then throw away the gloves. On the other hand, you might get in there, and find the person doesn’t want to go. He wants to discuss things. At that point, you don’t sit down in the burning building and have tea and scones with him. What do you do? You leave him, and you get out.

What does this tell us about dealing with apostates who are scholars? When you are dealing with a false teacher, with a leader in a cult or false church, with a scholar or apologist for error, you do not enter into long and protracted debates with him on a personal level. Yes, there is a place for public debate, for discussion where ideas are challenged out in public. But what Jude says is this: don’t attempt, on the individual and personal level, to debate and engage a false teacher for a lengthy debate. Unless you’ve been equipped to the level of church leadership, don’t spend hours reading his material, or listening to his material. I’ve been blessed with an excellent theological education, and I don’t do that.

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall, and many has been the person who felt that he or she could handle anything, and engaged the false teacher in disobedience to this Scripture, and came out confused, bewildered, or even deceived. I have seen professing Christians go to a false teacher, have a long discussion, begin reading, and turn around and deny the faith.

There’s a reason Jude has been so graphic in describing the sinister nature of false teachers. They are reefs upon which we shipwreck, wandering stars that lead astray, flatterers. They’re dangerous. The default approach is what we have seen: Romans 16:17 – avoid them, 2 Timothy 3:5 – from such turn away, 1 Timothy 6:5 – from such withdraw yourself, Titus 3:10 – reject a divisive man 2 John 1:10 – do not receive him into your house and do not greet him.

So what does Jude’s rescue look like? It looks like a short, sharp rebuke of false teaching, like a swift preaching of the Gospel, a calling on him to repent and believe the biblical Gospel. It should not be done by a novice, and if you are alone, it should never become a protracted debate. Understand the longer you stay, the higher the risk of contamination. Hating the garment polluted with the flesh: not wanting contact. This is a one-sided, swift act of rescue, that may or may not work, but when it doesn’t, you don’t linger.

Jude has finished teaching in this epistle. But he hasn’t finished preaching, because Jude now ends his epistle with one of the New Testament’s most beautiful benedictions, tailor-made and appropriate for this epistle. All of this evangelism, compassion and keeping ourselves in the love of God takes place under this last umbrella.

III. Confidently Rejoice in God

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,

To God our Savior, Who alone is wise, Be glory and majesty, Dominion and power, Both now and forever. Amen.

Instead of ending the epistle on a gloomy note, with a sense that false teaching might just win in the end, Jude finishes with a rousing celebration of the sovereign, wise, saving God, who knows what He is doing, and is in control of it all.

Jude ascribes glory and majesty, dominion and power to God. When Scripture gives one of these doxologies, it is not saying, God does not have glory and majesty, dominion and power it is saying, of all beings, God has and deserves ultimate beauty, ultimate authority, ultimate royalty. Doxologies say, no one is like God. No one is as beautiful as He is, no one is as great a Lord as He is, no one has the power He has. He has it, He owns it, and He deserves it.

And Jude says, He has it now, and He will have it and deserve it forever. Some texts have three phases – before all time, now, and into the ages.

Now what makes God so worthy? Why should we finish this book with admiration and adoration in our hearts?

The answer is in three statements about God, which gives us joyful confidence.

To God our Savior,

First, He is the Saviour.

We should remember and meditate that God has saved us. This is the beginning of the faith once delivered to the saints. He has saved us not only from Hell, and death. He has saved us from ourselves, from what we would have done with our lives, from how we would have spent our time, and used our bodies. The shame we would have brought to ourselves, the pain we would have inflicted on others.

And He has saved us from Himself. He has saved us from being children of wrath, where we live as fugitives from God’s justice, always trying to outrun God, living in His world, breathing His air, eating His food, but never with submission, never with gratitude, never with faith and trust. Every day a sinner lives out of relationship with God, he keeps adding to his own debt, storing up more and more penalties and fines, so to speak, accruing a greater and greater debt of severe justice from a good God who has ever only sought the good of His creatures.

The song of the ages, which angels cannot sing, is that God our Creator became God our Saviour through Jesus Christ our Lord. And when you think of all the false teachers, and of all those being deceived, you should ask yourself, why did I believe the truth? It should recall to mind the words of Isaac Watts:

While all our hearts and all our songs
Join to admire the feast,
Each of us cry, with thankful tongues,
“Lord, why was I a guest?
“Why was I made to hear thy voice,
And enter while there’s room,
When thousands make a wretched choice,
And rather starve than come?”

‘Twas the same love that spread the feast
That sweetly drew us in;
Else we had still refused to taste,
And perished in our sin.

And that should remind us of the words back in verse 1

Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, To those who are called, (Jude 1:1)

Second, He is Supremely Wise.

To God our Savior, Who alone is wise

Jude doesn’t mean no one else can obtain wisdom. It means all true wisdom finds its source in God. He is the author of true wisdom. He alone is wise in Himself.

Wisdom is skilled thinking and acting. It achieves the best possible ends using the best possible means. When we say God is wise, we say He can achieve the best of all possible worlds using the best of all possible methods. When we step back and see the plan of the ages, we will spend an eternity gazing at the genius and mastery, the sophistication and simplicity, the incredible harmony that God used. We will see how God weaved dark threads in a light tapestry, how His symphony included discordant sounds to contrast the harmonious, but still came together to make a glorious whole. We will see simply be staggered to see how God could have included the problem of evil, the problem of pain and suffering, and include that in a final plan that will amaze angels. In fact, Ephesians 3 tells us that the story of the church will show the wisdom of God to angels:

to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, (Eph. 3:10)

Now why should that help us at the end of the book of Jude? The problem of false teachers is part of the problem of evil. Why does God allow apostates to roam around? Why does He allow deception and lies? It is not because He cannot control things. It is because God is including all the free acts of men and angels as part of His ordained plan for the ages. We can confidently rejoice, because God knows what He is doing. The false teacher is sinning, but he is still fulfilling God’s plan. Jesus even said of Judas:

“But behold, the hand of My betrayer is with Me on the table.

“And truly the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!” (Lk. 22:21-22)

The best stories are the cliffhangers: where the problem or the crisis seems so great, we cannot see how the hero will resolve this or come out right. But when he does, we are amazed, we rejoice, and we marvel. So it will be as we one day see God’s mastery over a world filled with false teaching.

But the third stanza of our song is particularly comforting as we think about apostasy.

Third, He is Sovereign.

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,

In English, the words, “who is able” sound rather weak. It sounds like God has this potential, which may or may not work. But the word here is actually the word for power. God has the power, the sovereign right and might to do what He wants. Here this power is exercised negatively and positively.

First, God’s power will keep you from stumbling. He will literally guard you, to prevent you from falling. Falling how? Falling into false teaching. God is going to guard you from becoming an apostate.

Wait, isn’t it our responsibility not to believe lies? Yes, it is. And we saw our responsibility last week: to keep ourselves in the love of God. But here is the joyful confidence we can have. Behind and underneath our keeping ourselves in the love of God is God keeping us. This is exactly the same word Paul uses in 2 Timothy 2:12: for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day. (2 Tim. 1:12)

It’s rather like when you are first teaching a child to swim. The reason the child doesn’t drown is because he is kicking his legs and moving his arms. But behind and before that is the parent, right there, propping up, there to ensure the child doesn’t go under. So we are to kick our legs, move our arms, in other words, discern, guard against falling, cleave to the truth, and if we don’t do that, we sink. But if you are truly saved, you will do that, because there is someone under you able to keep you from sinking.

This power doesn’t just keep you from falling, though. The positive is even better.

God is powerful to then cause you to stand in His glorious presence. This is a reference to Heaven. God keeps you from denying the Gospel, and clothes you with Christ’s righteousness, enabling you to be able to confidently stand one day in God’s presence with this quality: faultless, and with great exultation. You will be before God without a single sin sticking to you, not one spot of evil on your record. As guiltless as Christ Himself, not a blemish, and not a spot. And this will be in an exuberant joy.

The word for joy here takes an image from Hebrew festivals, where a sweet-smelling anointing oil was poured on for a festival. The closest we’d associate that with would be a rich, smooth cream for the skin, combined with a beautiful fragrance. This is what we put on for special times, times of rejoicing, of celebrating.

One day, God will place us before Him, and it will be like a feast with family. We will not shrink back in painful guilt, or want to hide as Adam did. But clothed in the merits of Christ, and now actually glorified and fully transformed in body and soul, we will stand there in an innocent, unspoilt, and pure joy.

How? Through God’s sovereign power. Sovereign power that isn’t just potential power, but actual power, exercised towards us. How do we know? Look again at the first verse:

Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, To those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ: (Jude 1:1)

Jude, half-brother of Jesus wanted to write his equivalent of Ephesians, a letter rejoicing in salvation. But he couldn’t because he noticed an infection in the body of Christ that had been growing: gospel-deniers who had slipped in. He described them in detail, more their character and nature and attitude than their message. And when he was finished doing so, he called on believers to abide in Christ, reading, praying, waiting. He told them to show mercy to false teachers, but to distinguish between the deceived and the deceivers. All of this could be done with confidence because of the wise, saving, sovereign God that Christians call Father.

Jude says: contend for the truth, but keep yourself in the love of God, and remain confident in His wise, sovereign, saving power.