False teachers and false believers are truly some scary words nowadays. They are everywhere from the workplace to churches to even some families. These are people like Jude was saying, “secretly slip in among you”. They misinterpret God’s grace and think they can do whatever they want because God forgives. Romans 6:1-2 says “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” These are people that abuse what Jesus did and even deny Jesus. When we encounter or know that there are false teachers among us, we must be cautious but most importantly come back to scripture. Some of these false teachers are even pastors in some churches teaching others about the wrong things. As followers of God, let’s be careful and have very open ears. We have to filter what people say and understand that if they are a false teacher we must resist and fight for our faith in Jesus. As Christians, we also must have a solid foundation which comes from knowledge in the Word, through prayer and through our personal walk with God. We can’t let those false teachers get in our way with this and must remember the truth and have faith that the Holy Spirit is with us.
Have you ever seen or heard of a person who was extremely boastful and did whatever they wanted? Someone who comes to mind would be someone like Thanos from the Marvel Universe. He had one primary goal in mind and that was to balance out life by destroying half of it in every world. In a sense, he was trying to play God and was trying to create his own destiny, but not only that; he was following his own desires which were evil. He was also a false teacher in a sense and tried to make people (mainly his followers, the children of Thanos) believe that what he was doing was the right thing. Now in our world there might not be people as drastic and overwhelming as Thanos, but there false teachers all have the same pattern for the most part. If you had watched the Avengers, you would’ve noticed that with Thanos being extremely powerful, especially with all the infinity stones, it not only took multiple tries to defeat him, but it took an entire team as well. We need to ask ourselves, who is on our team? The person that we will always want on our team is God, the one True God. At the end of the day, He gives us the plan, the resources and finally the victory when it comes to our battles with anything. He is the one that will be able to shield our ears so that we can resist these false teachers. He is like Iron Man in one of the last scenes in Avengers Endgame, but instead of saying, “I am Iron Man”, He says “I am the One True God!”. As followers of God, we will always get the victory, but we need to know that we cannot do it without Him. When these false teachers come into play, we need to be careful and we must put our faith in God that He will handle it and show us what we need to do as well.
Have you ever had a moment where you were struggling and were in need, but by God’s grace you made it through that struggle? Every single person around the world deals with struggle at some point in their lives, whether it’s family, friends, your spouse, money, addictions, and much, much more that just occurs with everyday life. This is all the more reason why we as followers of Jesus need to lift up one another and make our faith grow stronger. In verse 22 and 23, Jude is saying to have mercy for those that are doubtful, save others by taking them away from the fire and also show mercy for those that are mixed with fear. Overall, this verse is saying that we have a couple things that we must do as believers. One of those things is being able to help other believers by showing love and compassion to one another. Likewise, we must be patient and caring with some, but for others we must be more drastic and have to be quick to action if they are deeply etched in sin. Through all of this, it is important that we ourselves must also be careful and like Jude is saying with sin, “hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh”. So when you see a fellow believer in need, think to yourself and ask God, “God, what can I do for this person to help them?” Sometimes, it can be as simply as taking that person out to eat or even simpler like giving that person a phone call. God works in mysterious ways and we must remember that.