Jude’s Vocabulary
“For certain persons have crept in unnoticed” Jude 4
Crept in unnoticed – Jude writes like an e-mail memo. He gets right to the point. He’s brief. His words are carefully chosen. His message carries a punch. Most importantly, Jude sends out this Greek e mail to warn us. There’s a deadly virus on the loose. Be careful!
In its brief 25 verses, Jude uses many Greek words that are not found anywhere else in the New Testament. This word, pareisedusan, in one of them. It means, “to get in by the side”. Jude has nothing good to say about the people who get into the fellowship of grace by the side door. They are responsible for two hideous heresies. First, they turn grace into license (we will want to know a lot more about this word), and secondly, they deny that Jesus is the only Lord and Master.
Now you’ll say to yourself, “Well, I would recognize these heresies in a minute. No one is going to fool me.” Not so fast. Remember our unusual word. They “slipped in by the side door.” They snuck in. No one noticed them. They mingled right in with the rest, , took on some of the outward character of the rest. These soldiers of the enemy worked behind the scenes in order to corrupt the real message. They didn’t shout in your face. They just changed a few things. Things that you didn’t think too much about until it was too late.
“Those are just culturally based issues. They don’t really apply to us.”
“But we have to be tolerant of others. After all, God loves them, doesn’t He?”
“OK, so maybe it is wrong by some standards, but it’s not hurting anyone.”
“My church teaches this doctrine so there’s just no debate about it.”
“But God promises to bless us. Why shouldn’t I have the life that I want?”
Behind every one of these voices is a paradigm that crept in by the side door. You’ve heard them all. You might have even been the one speaking. Jude (and all the rest of the writers of the Bible) is warning you and me. Don’t be fooled! If you want to know what God’s will for your life is, be prepared to dig deep; so deep that you will hear the side-door seductions as soon as they float on the breeze because you know the character of God.
When you know God, He promises to keep you from being fooled. But when you only know about God, you’re open to attack. Every word should draw you closer to His heart, not just fill your head.
