⁴For 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.

The battle for the truth of grace is like fighting a war on two fronts. And judging by the opposition to the Christian movement from the beginning, it is war. Opposition has come in many forms: people have been killed for their faith in Christ; livelihoods have been destroyed; families have split. It is no wonder, though, when we consider that the spiritual forces of darkness have been continuously trying to snuff out the truth of God’s grace. If we take the NT writings seriously and in their entirety, we must acknowledge that the battle for truth is serious business.

Much has been written on the well-known battlefront of legalism, the effort to puts laws above grace as the means and motivation for living holy lives. Legalism opposes what the Spirit teaches us in the NT:

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Eph. 2:8–9)

The other battlefront is what the inspired writer, Jude, addresses: the distorted notion that grace means living however one wants, without responsibility or accountability. This is what Jude calls turning the grace of God into licentiousness, that is, abandonment of moral restraint, with a strong inference of sexual activity.

It is true that in Christ, we are free from the Law of Moses as our daily mandate for living (see, for example, Gal. 2), but we are not free from all moral restraints. Unfortunately, as often happens with fallen human nature, the pendulum of reaction swings to the extreme in opposite directions: either legalism or unrestrained behavior.

This unrestrained living, you will notice, creeps in very subtly, “unnoticed.” At first, seemingly small things are justified and appear in the so-called gray areas where Christians disagree over acceptable behavior. Personal rights, judgmentalism, and freedom to determine one’s own standards of conduct begin to dominate, rather than submission to our loving Master and Lord, Jesus Christ, and the outworking of love, peace, joy, sacrifice, patience, turning the other cheek, etc. Some people take the proverbial “inch” and gallop for a “mile” in using their “freedoms” to eliminate all boundaries for behavior. That is not grace; it is sin worthy of God’s condemnation!

Lord, I choose to live in humble submission to Your loving Lordship over me.