Practical Holiness
The Holy Spirit speaks of Christ — of the common salvation. His office is to take the things of Christ and show them unto us. But He is in the place of service in the church; therefore in Jude, when there is mischief at the doors, He turns aside and exhorts to “contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” It is not for orthodoxy that saints are here exhorted to contend, but for the holiness of the faith. We are exhorted to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints,” against the “ungodly men” who are described as “turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness.” These “ungodly men” are those who deny — not the Father and the Son — but the “Lord” Jesus Christ. Mark! who deny Jesus Christ, not as a Saviour, but as Lord; that is, who practically gainsay His authority — who “despise dominion,” or lordship — who reject restraints. Jude is not speaking of Jesus as a Saviour, but of Jesus as a Lord; 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 and 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.
Self-Indulgence
The Epistle of Jude puts every one of us on a holy watchtower, 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 active, and the saint should be all living, holy activity. If Peter puts you looking in one direction — watching against the forms and actions of the infidel mind — Jude erects another watchtower from which we are to look out and guard against the self-indulgent and defiling ways that would corrupt the whole moral man — to watch against the spirit that rejects the lordship of Jesus over the thoughts and movements of His people. And notice 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. Do we imagine that we have a right to take our own way in anything? We have no such right. As someone has said, “The moment you do a thing because it is your own will, you have sinned.” To do our own will is the very essence of rebellion against God.
Despise Dominion
He then goes back to the prophecy of Enoch. What is it? Is it a prophecy of the Lord coming to visit those who are under the power of the infidel spirit? No, but to execute judgment upon the ungodly, for all “their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed.” It is on ungodliness that the judgment is anticipated to fall. 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. If Christ is a Saviour, He is also a Lord.
But again, let us remind ourselves, 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 shortcoming and failure to a throne of grace through Him, with happy boldness. Let us never watch in any wise as against Him, but rather entirely for Him, for He has “not given us the spirit of fear, but ... of love” (2 Tim. 1:7). May we watch, therefore, that He 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)).
Christian Truth, 1:241, adapted