“And angels which kept not their own original estate, but abandoned their proper dwelling, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under gloom unto [the] great day's judgment; as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, having in the like manner with them, greedily committed fornication and gone after strange flesh, lie there an example, undergoing judgment of eternal fire. Yet likewise, these dreamers also defile flesh, and set at naught lordship, and rail at dignities” (vers. 6-8).
If we compare this chapter of Jude with the Second Epistle of Peter, we get a very clear view of the precise difference between the two. No doubt there is a great deal that is common in both Epistles. but it is the difference that is of great account in taking a view of Scripture, as has been already observed. In these two Epistles there may be many points in common, but the two accounts are thoroughly different. The same thing is true as regards the testimony that God gives us. The marks of difference are the great criteria.
You will notice that Peter in the second chapter of his Epistle, after alluding to false teachers, alludes to “sects of perdition.” The word heterodoxy gives a different idea. There was something of this difference in the minds of the apostles that ought to be in ours, viz.—a very strong horror of the breach amongst those who belong to Christ and the church that He formed in unity here. There is a certain willfulness that is particularly offensive to God. People now have such a sense of “wrongness,” that they think it a natural thing that people should be justified in doing what they like; but to look at the matter in that sense would be to give up God. Perhaps, men can be trusted in matters of ordinary life to form a sufficiently sound judgment as regards certain things, such as being careful of their food, and careful of their dress, and so as regards other things that belong to this life. We find that God says little on the matter, except to guard His children from the vanity of the world and the pride of life. Still there is nothing technical or narrow laid down in the word of God, but it is quite another thing when we consider that Christ died to “gather together into one the children of God that were scattered abroad” (John 11:52), that we should allow ourselves to extenuate a willful departure from the right course, by allowing our own notions to carry us away therefrom. Persons should, not allow themselves to do this kind of thing, nor should they think that they are superior to others. To do this is generally a great delusion on their part. You will not find that men who are devoted to Christ set themselves up in this way, because we all know that Christ teaches us to, count others better than ourselves. That may become merely a foolish sentiment by the separating us from a spirit of power and of love, and of a sound mind—we are to judge of everything by Christ. If we let in “self,” we are sure to go wrong. This readiness to see Christ in everything is a happy thing, when it is applied to our dealings with our brothers and sisters. It is not that others are necessarily better than ourselves, it is that we are to count them so in our spirit and in our dealings with them. When Christ is before us we can afford to judge our sins as stronger than those of others. We are well aware of our faults; but it is only when we are much occupied with others' doings that we know much about their faults. The great thing is that we are to see Christ as our guide, and we are to judge ourselves in ourselves; we are also to see Christ in others and to love them, and to count them better than ourselves.
There are other senses in which people get into this spirit of sect and thereby give an improper value to certain views. For instance with regard to baptism. In modern times at any rate, and very likely also in ancient times, there is, I suppose, hardly anything that has troubled the church more than this subject. By some people, a superstitious value is given to baptism, causing them as it were, to despise those who have a reasoning turn of mind, and those who have a strong theory and notions about the Jewish remnant; but, so far as I know, the Jewish remnant has nothing to do with Christian baptism, because the handing it over to the Jewish remnant means giving up our relation to Christ. For Christian people, who are already walking in the ways of the Lord, to be occupied with baptism is in my opinion a most extraordinary inversion of all that is wise and right, because Christian people have passed through that experience already. Perhaps, when the ceremony was performed it was not done in the best way, and we may think, that, therefore, if we had known then what we know now, we might have been more careful in its performance. Baptism is merely an external visible confession of the Lord Jesus, and for persons who have been confessing the Lord for twenty, thirty, or forty years, to be occupied with baptism seems to me to be an extraordinary change from all that is wise. Baptism is an initiatory step; our Christianity begins when we begin our Christian confession—we should, therefore, be going forward—not backward.
Baptism has even been used as the badge of a sect, and time would fail to narrate the many other ways in this regard. But here in Peter's Epistle we have a darker thing referred to, “sects of perdition” (2 Pet. ii. 1). It evidently was not merely a sect, but a sect of perdition. In this case the sect of perdition was evidently something very dreadful, and it was apparently against the Lord, because the words are “denying the Sovereign Master that bought them.” This, as we have already remarked, is not “redemption” but “purchase,” and so takes in all men whether converted or not. It is the denial of His rights over all as the Sovereign Master. So too, Peter begins at once with the flood, the deluge, but there is not a word about that in Jude. That is another great mark of difference to note, the manner in which the denial of the Lord is described, and now we find God's mode of dealing with this matter. So one sees the propriety of the flood being brought in by Peter, because it was the universal unrighteousness and rebelliousness of the whole world. Jude, on the other hand, was not given to look at that particularly, but at the hostility that is shown to the truth and to Christ. Peter looks at the general unrighteousness of mankind and so he says: “For if God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to lowest hell and delivered them up to chains of gloom reserved for judgment, and spared not an ancient world, but preserved Noah ax eighth [person], a preacher of righteousness, having brought a flood upon a world of ungodly ones; and reducing to ashes [the] cities of Sodom and Gomorrah he condemned [them] with an overthrow, having set an example to those that should live ungodlily; and rescued just Lot” etc. (2 Pet. 2:4-7).
What makes the reference again more remarkable is, that Jude speaks of the “angels that kept not their own estate,” but Peter, of “angels that sinned,” and who consequently come under the dealing of God. The flood is upon the world of the ungodly, and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are turned into ashes for an example to those that should live ungodlily; but just Lot was delivered because he was a just man. The want of righteousness brought this punishment upon everyone. It is their general ungodliness, but no doubt there is a particularity which Jude takes up, whilst Peter takes up the universality. That is the marked difference between the two. I have dwelt upon this because it shows what the world of modern unbelief is, what is called higher criticism. For these men have been struck by the resemblance between this Epistle of Jude and the Second Epistle of Peter; but with all their boasting of unbelief they have not got the discernment to see that there is a marked difference between the two. These men have been caught by the superficial resemblance of the two Epistles; but when you, as it were, lift up the superficial veil in which these epistles agree, you will find that the colors are different. You will find darker colors in Jude than in Peter, although it is bad enough in Peter, most terribly evil. But it is of a general kind; whereas, Jude was led by the Holy Ghost to devote himself to the peculiar form that wickedness takes when it turns from the grace of God, when it turns to licentiousness.
Hence Jude begins with what is not referred to in Peter at all, and it is for this reason that I read that verse over a second time to-night. I will therefore put you in remembrance “though once for all knowing all things, that the Lord, having saved a people” —mark that— “out of the land of Egypt” —that is the sovereign grace that shows the salvation. I am not speaking of it now as eternal salvation. It was sovereign grace that chose Israel; they were not chosen for everlasting glory, but only delivered out of Egypt. That surely shows a manifestation of God's goodness, who, instead of allowing them to be oppressed and terrorized over by the cruel Egyptians, smote the Egyptians and delivered His people. They came into the narrower circle in some sense of what were God's people, in some sense also they were saved; but they gave up the grace, they abandoned God. This latter is what Jude has particularly in view. He looks at Christendom as being about to abandon the truth. He shows that whatever the special favor shown by God, men will get away from, and deny, it; and further, that, instead of using grace to walk morally, they will take advantage of grace to allow for a kind of immorality—they will turn the grace of God into licentiousness.
Peter says nothing about this, but Jude does; so that it is evident that these learned men (that think they are so clever in showing that Jude and Peter are merely imitators of one another, and that it is the same thing in substance in both—that there is no particular difference, that they are in fact the same human picture), do not see God in either. Now what we are entitled to is to see God in both epistles, and whit is more we should hear God's voice in both. You see then that Jude begins with this solemn fact that the Lord “having saved a people out of the land of Egypt” —I am going now to the strict force of the word— “the second time” (that He acted) “destroyed those that believed not.” The first act was that He “saved” them, He brought them out by means of the paschal lamb, and that was His first great act of “saving” —the first time that God's glory appeared, and He put Himself at the head of His people—He saved them out of the land of Egypt. What was “the second time”? When He “destroyed” them. It is not vague, but it specifically mentions “the second time,” that is the great point. At the time the golden calf was set up, that was the beginning of “the second time,” and God went on smiting and smiting until everyone was destroyed except Caleb and Joshua. That was the second time. This went on for forty years, but it is all brought together in the words “the second time.” God “destroyed them that believed not.” That is the charge brought against them. Their carcasses were falling in the wilderness. In Heb. 3 (as is very evident also in the book of Numbers and elsewhere) there is the threat of their passing through the wilderness—that is one of the great facts of the books of Moses. As regards those that came out of Egypt they came under the hand of God, some perished at one time, some at another, but all perished in one way or the other, until all disappeared, and yet they had all been “saved” out of the land of Egypt by the Lord.
Oh, what a solemn thing to set this before us now! When I say, before us, I mean before the church of God, before all that bear the name of the Lord Jesus here below. This is put expressly as a sample of the solemn ways of God to be recollected in Christendom. Then it also refers to the angels. I think the wisdom of that is evident. Peter begins with the angels and then goes on to refer to the flood. I think therefore if any person looks at the sixth chapter of Genesis he will find a great deal of wisdom in that. I am well aware, of course, that there are many that view “the sons of God” in a very different way to what it appears to me. They are sometimes very surprised, and expect one to be able to answer all their questions. I do not assume any such competency. I admire the wisdom of God in that God does not stop to explain. He feels the awful iniquity of what occurred in reference to these angels. They are fallen angels, and of quite a different class to those Who fell before Adam was tempted.
It appears there were at least two falls of angels, one was the one we call Satan—when man was made, Satan tempted man through Eve. With regard to those ordinary evil angels of which we read in the Bible from Genesis down to Revelation, they are not under everlasting chains at all. They are roving about the world continually, and so far from being in chains of darkness, in “tortures” as it is called here, they are allowed access to heaven. You will see that in a very marvelous way in the history of Job. A great many believers do not believe in the book of Job. You will see there “the sons of God” referred to. What is meant by “the sons of God” there? Why, the angels of God. The angels of God appeared before God. We learn from this that they have access, and include not only the good angels but also the satanic angels. Satan was a fallen angel, but still he was an angel, and when “the sons of God” came, Satan was there too, so that it is evident, from the Book of Revelation more particularly, that Satan will not lose that access to the presence of God until we are actually in heaven. It has not come to pass yet. People have an extraordinary idea in their heads that whatever access Satan had before that time, he lost it—either when our Lord was born, or when our Lord died—but there is nothing of this in the Epistle to the Ephesians, where, on the contrary, it is expressly stated that our wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against wicked spirits in the heavenlies. We are not like the Israelites fighting against Canaanites. Our Canaanite is a spiritual enemy in heavenly places, that is, Satan and his host of demons or angels.