There are two senses in which the expression “last days” is used in the New Testament. In the opening of the Epistle to the Hebrews there is mention of “these last days.” There it is intended to designate this present dispensation. But the expression is also applied to THE CLOSING DAYS of this present dispensation. In this way it is used in 2 Tim. 3. “In the last days perilous times shall come;”—that is, in the closing season of Christendom. To this season Jude also refers, when he speaks of “the last time” when there should be mockers (v. 18).
Now it is important, that we should know what are the features which the Spirit of God describes as attaching to these “last days.”
In this Epistle we find two distinct marks, by which the Holy Ghost has described the closing hour of this dispensation. 1St—The spirit of intellectual liberty, or of freethinking, which rejects the mysteries of God. 2nd—The prevalence of moral laxity.
In 2 Peter 3 we are told that “there shall come in the last days, scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming?” Here, “the last days” are marked by a spirit of scoffing, and the object of it is one of God’s precious mysteries—the second advent, or coming of the Lord.
If we turn to the Epistle of John, we find the same thing spoken of as the spirit of Antichrist, which was already working, and which scorns the mysteries of the truth. “Little children,” says he, “it is the last time” (1 John 2:1818Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. (1 John 2:18)); and then he describes what characterizes the last time—the denial that Jesus is the Christ—the denial of the Father and the Son.
Now, from these two witnesses (Peter and John), we get one very definite character of the last times. They are to be marked by a scoffing and infidel spirit, which mocks at the coming of the Lord, and which denies the great mystery of the Persons of the Godhead.
If we refer to the Epistle of Jude, we shall find it is not these features which are given as marking “the last days,” but a fearful state of moral laxity, such as Paul gives us in 2 Tim. 3. It is moral laxity which is spoken of in both these Epistles. According to the testimony of Paul, men are “lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, unholy, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” This is an awful picture. And remember, it is Christendom that is described. It is not about the heathen world that Paul is speaking. The anticipations of Peter and John and Paul and Jude are about Christendom. They instruct us beforehand, that the last days of Christendom are to be marked by a fearful moral or practical condition, as well as by a free-thinking and scoffing spirit which rejects the mysteries of the truth.
Now you may ask me, what have we to do with these things? Ah! beloved friends, we have to do with them. We ought to know the enemies against whom we have to contend—the forms of Satan’s power against which we have to watch;— and it will not do to escape one of the snares, and fall into the other. It will not do to guard only the mysteries of the truth; we must watch over our whole behavior, that we do not slip into the general practical condition of the “last days.” It is very likely that both the features described will not attach to the same person. The free-thinking intellectualist may be moral and amiable, whilst the man of ungodly walk may be the professor of an orthodox creed. Jude does not glance at that of which John speaks.
Now I desire to be practical—to direct your attention specially to one point. When the Holy Ghost takes His rightful direction, He speaks of Christ—of the common salvation. His office is, to “take the things of Christ, and to show them unto us.” But He is in the place of service in the Church; and therefore, when there is mischief at the doors, He turns aside, and exhorts to “contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.” It is not for the orthodoxy saints are here exhorted to contend, but for the holiness of the faith. We are exhorted “earnestly to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints,” against the “ungodly men,” who are described as “turning the grace of God into lasciviousness;” the “ungodly men,” who deny—not the Father and the Son, but who deny the “Lord” Jesus Christ. Mark! —who deny Jesus Christ not as a Saviour, but Jesus Christ AS A LORD; that is, who practically gainsay His authority—who “despise dominion,” (κυριοτητα) or Lordship—who reject restraints. Jude is not speaking of Jesus as a Saviour, but of Jesus as a Lord. His government is the thought in the mind of the Holy Spirit here. We should welcome this as a sound and salutary word. Is it not evil when a saint does not exercise this continual check on his thoughts—his tongue—his doings? We are not to say our thoughts, or our lips, or our hands, or our feet, are our own. They should be understood to be under Lordship. We are not to despise dominion. The Epistle of Jude puts every one of us on a holy watch-tower, to watch, not against a spirit that would gainsay the precious mysteries of God (Peter and John’s word does that) but against the tendencies of the natural heart to gratify itself. The Spirit of God is an active principle—the Spirit is life—the cherubim were all eyes; and the saint should be all living, holy activity. If Peter put you looking in one direction—watching against the forms and actings of the infidel mind, Jude erects another watch-tower, from which we are to look out, and guard against the self-indulgent and defiling ways, that would reduce the whole moral man—to watch against the spirit that gainsays the Lordship of Jesus over the thoughts, the words, the doings, and the goings of His people.
Then he goes on to say, “Woe unto them! for they have gone into the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.” Here you observe how wonderfully fruitful in instruction is the book of God. We get instruction drawn from the history of heaven. The Spirit in Jude gives it to us (v. 6). He then descends the stream of divine history from the beginning, and gathers these various examples to press them on ourselves, to warn us against a state of moral laxity. And mark how he describes these ungodly despisers of dominion. “These are spots in your feasts of charity, feeding themselves without fear.” The absence of this “fear” indicates this state of moral laxity of which I speak.
O beloved! I would that this word on which we are meditating, might incite us to “gird up the loins of our mind.” Do we imagine that we have a right to take our own way in anything? We have no such right. As has been said, “The moment you do a thing, because it is your Own, will, you have sinned.” To do our own will, because it is our own will, is the very essence of rebellion against God.
Here, beloved, Jude is showing us the danger of tampering with the girdle that is to be about the loins. May we bear away his word. We shall be much happier—we never can be losers by giving up our own will to the Lord Jesus. As one who is redeemed by Christ, and who belongs to Christ, I should have no will of my own. I have no right to do my own pleasure. I have no right to take a walk just to please myself. The Lord may give me the indulgence of it, and strew the path of my feet with ten thousand mercies; but the moment I erect my own will as the principle of my actions, I have “despised dominion”—I have despised the lordship of Jesus. This is the force and bearing of the word of God by Jude.
He then goes back to the prophecy of Enoch. What is it? Is it a prophecy of the Lord coining to visit those who are under the power of the infidel spirit? No; but “to execute judgment upon the ungodly, for all the ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed.” It is on ungodliness that the judgment is anticipated to fall. And if you and I look around upon Christendom, even now, shall we not see a prevalence of ungodliness enough to provoke the judgment of the Lord?
But let us take this word home to ourselves. May the Spirit apply it to the conscience. If I take my own will as the rule of my actions, and thus “despise dominion,” I am (in the principle of my mind), on the road to the judgment of which Enoch prophesied.
O beloved! may we welcome this exhortation. Do you wish the Church of God relaxed in its behavior and moral ways? Is it not to bow to the cross—to the scepter of Jesus? If He be a Saviour, He is also a Lord.
“But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith.”
There, again, is the same subject of warning. The saints are urged to build themselves up “on their most holy faith.” “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” And what is “the love of God” of this passage? It is the love of God of the fifteenth of John. “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.” It is the complacential love of Christ. Does this make the path of a saint legal? No; it only binds the heart to Jesus, with a new cord, as the fresh spring of our affections—the object of all our desire.
Then again, “And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.” Does he speak here of the infidel spirit? No; but take care lest the garment spotted by the flesh get around you.
“Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling” i.e. not from the truth, but from the holiness of the truth; for it is added, “and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy; to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.”
In conclusion, let me repeat it, may we welcome this word of warning. Would that it were sounded in the ears of all the people of God. Let them know that we are living in a day of easiness and self-seeking. Christendom is filling itself with a thousand gratifications. Every hour is multiplying the means and opportunities of indulging nature. “The lusts of the mind” (Eph. 2), are greatly nurtured. Skill of all kinds, and labor too, is taxed to contribute to their indulgence. “And the lusts of the flesh” are all akin to this. O may we, in the midst of it all, love the lordship of Jesus! Let us bow to His scepter. Let us kiss it more and more; and instead of saying, “This is my pleasure—that is my will,” let us pray that Jesus may reign in our hearts, “The Lord of every motion there.”
But again, let me remind you, it is Jesus that is to be our Lord—He who loved us and gave Himself for us—He who has saved His people. And He is to be served, not in the spirit of bondage, or the mere observance of religious rites and injunctions, but in the spirit of liberty and love—a spirit that can trust Him at all times, and that can take all conscious short-coming and failure to a throne of grace through Him, with happy boldness. O beloved! it would be but a poor return for His love and salvation, to watch in any wise as against Him, and not entirely for Him, for He has “not given us the spirit of fear, but of love.” May we watch, therefore, that lie may be glorified in us by free and happy service now while He is absent, that we may be glorified in Him, when He shall appear to take us to Himself (John 14:33And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (John 14:3)).