Our Indentifier

DEVOTION

JUDE

OUR INDENTIFIER

Jude 17-19

17 But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. 18 They said to you, "In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires." 19 These are the men who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.

NIV

It sure appears the whole letter is about these wolves in sheep’s clothing and this time Jude even invokes the warning about them which Jesus spoke. The difference here is he also uses the phrase in the last times. Now Jude might of thought he was living in the last times, but it is evident that he was not. Hundreds of years have passed since Jesus gave that warning and when Jude repeated it. Of course we are not sure if we are indeed in the last times either, even though there are quite a few people who could qualify as scoffers that follow their own ungodly desires who infiltrate the church for the purpose of dividing it, gathering onto themselves followers for their own personal gain. So we are still left with not knowing exactly what Jesus meant when he said last times. The Greek does not give us any further insight as it says final of place or time. Could that be a complete era? The time from the ascension of Jesus until his return could be considered the final time, at least in respect to all of time. So from the moment Jesus left there has been and will continue to be people who will try their hardest to divide us. Sometimes it would seem it is not easy to determine just who they are, but if we are living or as we use the phrase, “Walking in the Spirit” we should be able to detect them easy enough as they do not have the Spirit. It should be like as if we all had a secret handshake or decoder ring or some other special identifier, which they do not and so it would be obvious to us they are not one of us, but are a scoffer. But that is exactly what we do have for we have the Spirit and they do not. Surely they will come in the name of the Lord. Surely they will use all the right Christianize phrases. Surely they will appear as children of light. They may even have all the degrees and pedigree certificates of ordination from somewhere, but they will be missing the one pedigree which certifies them as born again members of the Body of Christ. They will be missing the Spirit. They will use their smooth words to mislead believers and to divide us up. All too often the immature believer follows after men, rather than God. They follow after one person because of his personality or preaching style, the way he presents his message, or maybe even the way he looks, but are not looking for the Spirit within him. Once again we need to use the Spirit as our secret handshake, as our identifier.