Words of Wisdom #27

Yesterday, in the opening verses of Jude, we saw a warning against the twisting of grace. Grace is not letting someone stay in their sin and do whatever they want to; it is God's gift to help us change and live our lives in obedience to Christ.  In our verses today, Jude strengthens his warning with some Old Testament examples:

5 Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— 7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

These are three examples of judgment, where those who are punished at one time knew and experienced the goodness of God.  Note that in the first example it is Jesus, the Son, who saved Israel our of Egypt, and He later destroyed some of the same people who rebelled in the wilderness. Christ has authority to save and to judge. The same thing applied to the fallen angels: created to praise God, but judged when they puffed up with pride. Thirdly, Sodom and Gomorrah, the most pointed and appropriate example of the three: it had been a place of plenty, which God had caused to prosper and bloom - that's what had drawn Lot there.  It became a place not only allowing sexual immorality, but promoting it officially.  The implications are obvious: the same thing would happen for the people of God in Jude's day if they twisted grace into saying such sexual perversions were not only permitted, but to be celebrated.  Judgment was to be expected.