What will happen to those who pursue a sinful life
By John Earp
Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ: 2 May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you. 3 Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. 4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. 5 Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, 7 just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 1-7 NASB)
Many in our day like to emphasize God’s love, and that of course is the very essence of His character. The inspired writer, Jude, does as well. He addresses the recipients of this letter as “beloved in God the Father.” He says he had intended to write to them about our common salvation, which is of course a very, very important topic. Then he proceeds to mention false teachers, ungodly persons, who have “crept in unnoticed” into the fellowship of the people of God. He says the basic sin of these ungodly people who have crept into the church turn the grace of God into licentiousness, even denying the Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.
Not everybody who says he or she is a Christian truly is one. Just like the angels who sinned in the past and which are now kept in eternal bonds under darkness while they await the coming Day of Judgement, and just like the people of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (you can read about it in Genesis 19) who went after sexual perversions (most famously, sodomy, which is when two men have anal or oral sex), were judged by God as an example to all, both then and in our day, undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
Some have tried to soften the impact of damnation by saying it really just amounts to annihilation based on passages like this, but this is an example that Jude uses to compare what is coming for all those who set their hearts in opposition to God’s moral law revealed throughout Scripture as loving God supremely and one’s neighbor as oneself. He is not saying they will only be snuffed out/annihilated like Sodom and Gomorrah were by physical fire and brimstone; he is saying that LIKE these wicked rebels against God were dealt with in this harsh but righteous way to bring an end to their sinning at least on earth, in the same way God will deal out fiery retribution and damnation some day to all who reject His will and his ways by persisting in their sin.
Genuine godly love never uses or abuses someone for one’s own pleasure, as homosexuals always by definition do, but godly love instead always seeks the highest good of the other. God created the act of sex to be between one man and one woman in covenant commitment of marriage, with the design being for the fulfillment of the command God gave Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 to be fruitful and multiply and take dominion over the earth.
God is so loving and faithful as a Father that he warns us all what kinds of behaviors to avoid and what kinds of behaviors are for the best according to His original design. In this day of seemingly ever-proliferating gender-bending and sexual perversions, people need to be reminded of what God’s plan for their life is—one of repentance, faith in the blood of Jesus, personal, lived-out holiness and righteousness, walking in the mercy and grace of Jesus every day. This includes every kind of sin, not just sodomy, but lying, stealing, cheating, and so forth. Be aware that many in our day are doing just as some did in Jude’s day way back in the first century AD—they are perverting the grace of God into a license to sin. Such teaching is absolutely as deadly as a pit viper.