Who Turned Grace into Lewdness?

Jude's warning points at men who kept the word grace and let go of the Lord

In twenty-five verses, Jude uses the word grace exactly once. It's in the verse that gets quoted whenever somebody thinks grace preaching has gone too far.

For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. (Jude 4)

A pastor listens to a message on the finished work and gets nervous. Tell people they're forgiven for everything, he says, and some of them will hear it as permission. Jude saw it happen in his day. Keep a little fear in the message. Keep the brakes on. Plenty of pastors who say this have watched someone use grace as cover, and it's broken their hearts.

But read the verse again. Jude tells you exactly who he's talking about, and it isn't people who leaned on grace too hard.

Who Crept In

So who are these men? Jude gives you three things to go on. First, they crept in. Jude's word pictures someone slipping in sideways, and nobody noticed until the damage was underway. Second, they're "ungodly men" who "deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ." Third, Jude calls them "sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit" (Jude 19).

Watch the pronouns. Again and again Jude points at the intruders with the word these. "These dreamers." "These speak evil." "These are spots in your love feasts." And every time he turns to the church, the word changes. "But you, beloved." The warnings in Jude describe these. The beloved hear them so they can recognize these men, not so they can wonder whether they're one of them.

What the Word Turn Means

The word Jude uses for turn means to move something or swap it for something else. It's the same verb Paul used when he wrote to the Galatians.

I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel. (Galatians 1:6)

Paul's churches were moving off grace toward the law of Moses. Jude's intruders were moving off grace toward lewdness. Opposite directions, same move. Grace gets carried out of the room and something else gets carried in. The shared verb is an illustration, not a proof. Still, both warnings describe a move off grace, and neither one describes an overdose.

When you take grace out of the picture, all that's left is sin. Sometimes sin moves back in carrying the law of Moses, and sometimes it carries nothing but appetite.

Grace With Nobody in It

Look at the second half of verse 4 again. They turned grace into lewdness and denied the Lord Jesus. Those two belong together. They kept the word grace and let go of the Lord who gives it, and that's what permission is. It's grace with nobody in it, a pass you carry around on your own.

Security is not permission. Security is being held by Someone. Jude opens his letter by calling the church "preserved in Jesus Christ" (Jude 1), and he closes it praising the One "who is able to keep you from stumbling" (Jude 24). The person who knows they're perfectly right with God because of what Jesus did isn't holding a permission slip. They're being kept by a Lord. You can't hold on to that grace while you deny the Lord, because the grace came with Him in it.

Paul fielded the same question in Romans 6 with "Certainly not!", which is about as close to cussing as Paul gets, and then he pointed the believer to his death with Christ. That answer gets its own walk-through in Does Grace Lead to Sin?

The Verse Right After It

If you want the strongest case for keeping fear in the message, it isn't verse 4. It's verse 5.

But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. (Jude 5)

Saved, then destroyed. If it happened to Israel, the argument goes, it can happen to you, so you'd better watch yourself. Start with who it names: "those who did not believe." The trouble in the wilderness was unbelief, and Hebrews 3:19 says the same. And Jude reaches back to Israel to describe these, the men who deny the Lord Jesus. So why remind the beloved at all? Because they're the ones who have to recognize these men. A few lines later he tells them to "remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles," that mockers would come (Jude 17-18). The reminder shows the church where unbelief ends. It doesn't put the beloved on probation, because he told them in his opening line that they're preserved.

What Jude Told the Church to Do

Here's the part that ought to answer the nervous pastor. Jude had intruders in the room doing the very thing people fear, so what did he prescribe?

But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. (Jude 20-21)

No new rules, and no threat aimed at them. In Jude's Greek, keep is the same word he used in verse 1 for preserved. People who are kept get told to stay where they're kept. That wasn't easy for them. Jude says these men were "spots in your love feasts" (Jude 12), so week after week the church sat down to the shared meal with them across the table, and staying in the love of God meant not letting them sour the bread.

Then he sends them toward the people being pulled under.

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. (Jude 22-23)

Secure people get sent into rescue. The fear Jude names there is the care of someone working close to a fire, and it has nothing to do with dread about their own place.

Grace gets named only once in Jude, but it's all through the letter anyway, in a church called and preserved and kept, and in the last thing Jude wrote down.

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 24-25)