The book of Jude is a sobering reminder of the perilous spiritual conditions that would accompany the last days. Though brief, its warnings are weighty. Jude writes with urgency, contending earnestly for “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (vs. 3), making mention of “ungodly men” who “crept in unawares” turning “the grace of our God into lasciviousness…denying the Lord Jesus Christ.” (vs. 4).
The language of this text is incredibly significant. These ungodly individuals did not necessarily deny Christ with their lips, but with their lives. They weaponized grace as permission, denying its true goal: transformation. What God intended as mercy that would lead to repentance, they reinterpreted as liberty for the flesh. What Jude understands is critical: when grace is divorced from holiness, it ceases to function biblically.
The word lasciviousness carries with it the idea of an unabashed, public rejection of moral restraint that broadcasts one’s abandonment of truth. This distinction matters! A person may struggle privately with temptation, confusion, fear, or even seasons of internal contradiction while still maintaining reverence for truth and a desire to submit themselves to God. Scripture is full of individuals who battled weakness yet turned toward God in humility and repentance.
Lasciviousness, however, represents something much more corrosive. It is not merely the weakness of the flesh, but the deliberate casting off of shame itself. It is the normalization, celebration, and even promotion of what ought to produce conviction. What was once hidden is now paraded openly, defended publicly, and often justified with a reframed spirituality.
The person who once hid their compromise eventually flaunts it, and in that flaunting, they’ve fully inverted their value system. Truth isn’t merely abandoned; it’s actively scorned. This explains why Paul warns that such people become “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud” (2 Tim 3:2), extending the shamelessness to their entire orientation toward life.
The process is progressive but severe enough to warrant the profound admonitions found throughout the New Testament as a means of avoiding apostasy. Apostasy, unlike the prodigal who still remembers the Father’s house, presents us with something more dangerous: a move toward forgetting.
Forgetting the goodness and holiness of the Father. Forgetting conviction. Forgetting what His presence once felt like. Forgetting the voice that called, corrected, and comforted. Forgetting the divine moments that could only be explained by the Father’s active agency in their lives.
This is why spiritual decline is so perilous. It can result in relational amnesia. The further one moves from the truth while consistently resisting conviction, the easier it becomes to harden one’s heart to the voice and presence of the Father. This is why remembrance becomes such a powerful biblical theme throughout Scripture. God continually calls his people to remember. To remember the covenant, the works of His Spirit, the mire from which He dug them, and the deliverance He once secured in their lives.
This is why, following the urgency of Jude’s letter, he would then admonish the church to “remember ye the words which were spoken before of the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ…” (vs. 17):
18 how that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. 19 These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit.
Remember, Jude wrote, that the last days would be evidenced by those who would, by their words, actions, and lifestyles, mock the truth they once embraced, walking about their own ungodly lusts. Notice, these are those who “separate themselves.” They remove themselves from the source of life meant to protect and save them. They separate themselves from sound doctrine, from spiritual accountability. They separate themselves from the body of Christ and, ultimately, from the influence of the Spirit itself.
What stands out as the catalyst of separation? Notice the word sensual. This word describes being governed by the natural man that is driven by fleshly appetites, emotions, impulses, carnality, and worldly desires. What feels right replaces what is right, tragically leading to a position where the Spirit of God is absent from their lives, a perilous place where understanding is darkened, and the conscience can become seared.
Yet, with this in mind, Jude exhorts the believer:
20 But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
While others are separating themselves under the governance of fleshly appetites, make sure you are “building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost!” There it is! Prayer! That is the key! A consistent, Holy Ghost-filled prayer life! I have long said it as the pastor of ANPC. If you stop praying, you stop leading, and when we stop leading, something else does.