Jude Chapter 1 Vs. 10

 

Judgment on False Teachers

Verses 10-13 “Blackness of darkness forever”, false teachers within the Church, themselves actually lost and without Christ, will suffer the fate of everlasting separation from God, pictured also as “the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:14-15).

But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.

Jude 1:10

speak evil of... Apostate teachers in their brash, bold, egotistical infatuation with imagined power and authority, rail on that which they don’t even understand.

as brute beasts,... They are uncultivated, follow only the depraved instincts, and are slaves to their animal passions.

things which they... Apostates are intellectually arrogant and spiritually ignorant in that they don’t know because they are blinded by Satan (2Cor. 4:4), and spiritual matters are beyond their unregenerate capacity to understand (1Cor. 2:14). In divine matters, they are no brighter that the dumbest beasts (see Phil. 3:19 and 2Pet. 2:12).

they corrupt themselves... This speaks of spiritual and moral self-destruction.

Our understanding of the authority in heaven is not sufficient for us to do much with, except to do the things we know we have permission to do. We have been given power of attorney to use the name of Jesus. Natural knowledge is worldly. We should pray for the wisdom of God.

Whereas Michael did not dare accuse the devil, these apostates, by contrast spoke abusively against what they did not understand. This abusive speech may refer to their slandering of angels (Jude 1:8). Their understanding was debased, for it followed only natural animal instinct. The apostates’ only “reasoning” was like that of unreasoning animals. Rather than comprehending what was above them (the angels), they really understood only what was below them (the animals). Jude thus demolished their Gnostic claim to superior knowledge. And their understanding — polluting “their own bodies” (Jude 1:8) — was, like the sin of Sodom, self-destructive.