Study in the Epistle of Jude # 81: Verse 16

by Chris McCann

EBible Fellowship (http://www.ebiblefellowship.com)

Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study. We have progressed in our study of the book of Jude to the last half of verse 16, which says:

…having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage.

We have been wondering, “What does this mean?” God is once again pointing out the errors, the faults, the failings, of these individuals who associate themselves with the Gospel of the Bible and with the name of Christ as they call themselves Christians. They, however, lack the most important ingredient to Christianity, which is being born again. Without that, no one is a true child of God or a true Christian. God is pointing out this fault and that fault in them, and God’s purpose is that they might see and recognize that when they are complaining and speaking great swelling words and so forth, that this is not in accord with the will of God. When individuals are not walking uprightly in the truth of the Gospel, it indicates that there is something wrong.

If only they would take a look at themselves. If only they would honestly ask themselves the question, “Am I truly a child of God?” God tells us in the Bible to do that. He commands it; He does not just tell us, but He commands everyone who professes the name of Christ to examine themselves to see if they are in the faith, lest they be reprobates (2 Corinthians 13:5). God wants us to ask ourselves the question, “Am I saved, or am I fooling and deceiving myself?”

Yet a great many people might say, “We do not have to ask ourselves that. I accepted Christ. I did this and I did that and I know my own heart. I know whether I am saved or not.” Do they? Do they really and truly know their own heart? Do they know what the Bible says about the heart of man? It says in Jeremiah 17:9:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Who can know it? God is speaking directly to you and to me and to mankind. Who among us truly knows his heart? Which one of us can say, “Yes, I have searched my heart. I have searched all the crevices and the depths of my heart. I have examined myself, and I know that I am a child of God. I know this by my search, as I have looked at my heart.”

However, the heart of man is deceitful above all things. It is more deceitful than anything you can imagine, and it is certainly capable of deceiving us. The heart within us is more than able to convince us as we look at ourselves. It tells us the things that we want to hear. It tells us, “Everything is right between us and God.” Yet, it is all lies; it is all deceit. That is why God says that our “heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

Who can know it? Are we so analytical and intelligent and holy that we can know our own heart? No, we cannot. That is why it is such a dangerous thing for someone to say, “I did this and I did that and I am not going to question myself. I am not going to look at myself ever again to see whether I am saved or not. I performed that act and I did that work, so I am a child of God. May it never be doubted; may no one ever try to get me to look at myself and ask myself the question, ‘Am I a Christian?’”

That kind of an attitude is contrary to what the Bible says. Let us look at what the Bible says; it is good for us to think about this every now and then. In 2 Corinthians 13:5, we read:

Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves…

“Prove” means to test or try. The verse continues:

…Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?

God is being very straightforward with us. No one else can examine us. God is not speaking to just anyone, but to each one of us as individuals. He is telling us to examine ourselves. He is telling us to take the mirror to ourselves and take a close look at what we see in the mirror. He is telling us to look at how we are living our life in relationship to the Law of God, the Word of God. Are we breaking that Law? Are we breaking His Commandments in our thoughts, words, or deeds? Are we doing things according to our own will and our own pleasure? Are we not really all that concerned with doing the will of God and doing things according to His Word? In this manner, we look at ourselves and examine ourselves.

Let us go back to Jeremiah 17 and read the next verse. God has told us that no one can know the heart, and then He says in verse 10:

I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.

God is the One who does the searching of the heart; God is the One who knows our heart better then we know it ourselves. Yet, what is this? Did not God command us to examine ourselves? Is not God telling us to search ourselves, to search our heart?

Yes, God did give that command; yet like many commands in the Bible, such as “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” or “repent,” we have no ability in ourselves to perform the doing of it. We cannot believe; we are spiritually dead in sin. God has to grant us the faith of Christ in salvation. We cannot repent; God has to first turn us and then we will turn (Lamentations 5:21).

We cannot truly and honestly examine ourselves. Just think of it—if you are an unsaved person and you do take a look at yourself, you will come away thinking, “I did not see anything all that bad—maybe I am a child of God.” You will be deceived. Yet you would say to yourself, “Yes, I examined myself. I took a look, I saw what there is to see, and I passed. I approved of what I saw in my heart; I am a child of God.” However, you were an unsaved person, so you did not have a right understanding as you looked at yourself. Therefore, you were never saved, and you will end up in Hell. Your examination will be shown to be a false examination—you were wrong about yourself.

How then can we examine ourselves? How can we look at our heart as God commands us? The answer is that we cannot. God commands us, it is true, “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith, lest ye be reprobates.” Yet like so many commands of God, we have to say, “Oh Father, I cannot do it. I cannot perform the doing of it. As you say in Jeremiah 17, if I do look at my heart, how can I know it? How can I be sure about what I see? Yet, oh Lord, You know the heart.”

Let me read a verse, which is really what God is leading us to by the commandment in 2 Corinthians 13. This verse is found in Psalm 139, a Psalm of David. In verses 23-24, we read:

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

That is the answer. God tells us, “Look at yourself and make sure that you are in the faith,” but we cannot do it. So many think that they do this, yet they fail. How could we ever trust in our own examination? How could we ever place any trust or gather any assurance by our own looking inward? That is not where assurance of salvation is found. Rather, when we are faced with this command, we turn our eyes unto God. We turn our eyes unto the Lord and cry out, “Search me, O God, and know my heart,” and God does know it, does He not? He knows it perfectly. “Try me, and know my thoughts.” We are beseeching the Lord to test us and to prove us.

Let us remember what we read in 2 Corinthians 13. That word “trial” or “testing” is found there. We read:

Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves…

It is the same idea here as in Psalm 139—”Try me, and know my thoughts.” How would we try ourselves? We would give ourselves some test that we would certainly pass, and it would mean nothing; it would prove nothing. However, God knows the hearts of men. He knows what we are clinging a little too closely to in this world. He knows our sin weaknesses. He knows our desires. He knows everything about us, and He will develop a test; He will develop a pattern in our life. He will arrange circumstances and orchestrate events and details to bring it all together perfectly at the right and proper time. God will try us and He will show and reveal to us through the trial what is in our heart.

Perhaps we are unsaved or perhaps we are not born again. God will arrange a trial that will test us severely. Our bitterness and our anger and wrath and lust and pride and envy, or whatever sin it is, will show itself. Oh, we thought that we knew God. We thought that we were a child of God; but with shame, we must begin to realize, “Maybe I am not; I failed the test.” Therefore, it begins again; it begins anew. Again, we want to be sure. We go along and we cry out, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts,” and God once again works on us. If we are one of the elect of God, if we are a true child of God, then God will prove us and He will grant us that assurance of salvation. He will grant us the knowledge that we are a child of God and that we know Him by the keeping of His commandments (1 John 2:3). We will rejoice in the joy of His salvation because He is leading us in the way everlasting.

This is God’s purpose. Many times, as He writes these Scriptures, one of His purposes is to point out the fact, as He has so often done in Jude, that many people in the church are not saved. It is to move someone finally to stop trusting in their own profession of faith, to stop trusting in what they think about their salvation, and to make sure of their salvation by going to the Lord God directly.

Let us go back to the last part of Jude 16, which says:

…having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage.

The word “admiration” is most often translated as “marveled.” We find this word “admiration,” for example, in Matthew 9. Let us read verses 6-8, which say:

But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.

We can picture this very well. A man with a serious disease, a serious ailment, is lying upon a bed; he has the palsy. Christ heals him instantly, and he takes up his bed and walks away. There is a multitude there, and they witnessed this. They saw this tremendous miracle. They saw the power of God right before their very eyes, and they marveled. They are looking at this man walking away and then they look back to the Lord Jesus Christ and wonder about Him, “How did He do it? How could anyone have such power? How could anyone heal a man who is so obviously sick with a severe disease?” They would speak and whisper among themselves, “Did you see that? Did you see what happened? Can you believe it? He must be the Messiah.” All kinds of things would begin to be spoken in admiration, in marveling, at what the Lord Jesus Christ had done.

That is the positive use of the word, yet in Jude, we find that there are these ungodly men who have men’s persons in admiration; that is, they marvel at men. Let us take the same idea that you are amazed at what Christ has done and place that amazement, that marveling, in the direction of men. Some look to their fellowman and marvel because of advantage.

That word “advantage” is the word profit, as in “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul” (Mark 8:36)? They are having men’s persons in admiration; that is, they are marveling at men because of advantage, because of some type of profiting. Maybe these men are very successful and very wealthy men, men of renown, men of a name, men whom others look towards. Maybe they have achieved something in their life or obtained some high standard in their profession—they are a doctor or a lawyer, someone who has made a great deal of money. Perhaps they are a beautiful person. All these things tie in together; this is what God is saying—”having men’s persons in admiration.”

This is especially true as it has worked itself out in the churches and congregations. There have been men who have come into the assembly, and they are wealthy and rich men; they have a lot of money. Therefore, what is said to them? Are they treated like anyone else? There is an attempt made at that, but the pastor cannot overlook the wealth because unfortunately, in many cases, the pastor himself is not a saved man. You cannot overlook the fact that his pockets are stuffed with money, and you cannot overlook what good can be done with all that money. You might think, “If this individual were to take a real interest in the church and if he were to begin to give a great deal in offering, why we could do a lot of good for God. We could build another wing and we could do all kinds of good things.” The focus shifts from marveling at God and at His Word to having men’s persons in admiration.

God speaks of this in James 2:1. He says:

My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons.

We are not to be a respecter of persons—that is God’s commandment. We are not to esteem man because of who he is. We are not to lift someone up because of their physical presence or their wealth or their profession. We are not to respect persons for any reason. In Deuteronomy 1:17, God says:

Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgment is God’s: and the cause that is too hard for you, bring it unto me, and I will hear it.

We are not to operate in this manner; we are not to think that someone who is successful in the world will likewise be successful in spiritual things. The church has made this error countless times. They thought that the doctor would be perfect as an elder; they thought that the person who is a great businessman would be a wonderful deacon or pastor, and the church has suffered because of it. They were not looking at the man’s spiritual qualifications, but at his physical qualifications.

Back in James 2, after God says that we ought not to have the faith of Jesus with respect of persons, it goes on to say in verses 2-6:

For if there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment; And ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place; and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool: Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges of evil thoughts? Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him? But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats?

God is giving us His wisdom. He is the One who searches the hearts. He knows what is going on in the heart of man. Man can put on a very good and wonderful outward appearance. Man can be as beautiful outward as you can imagine. He can be impeccable outwardly in his clothing and in his mannerisms, but inwardly, there can be a great deal of spiritual problems. God knows the heart, and God is telling us that we are not to respect persons.

When someone comes in who does not have the nice clothing and is not rich but is a poor man in vile raiment, you are not to say to him, “Go over there,” and then have the big smile for the rich man. You shake his hand without letting it go and you grasp his arm and say, “Is it not wonderful to see you again! How are you?” You have all the time and all the attention for the rich man, yet you were nice enough to let the poor man in, even though you did tell him to move over there. Are you not respecting persons when you do this? This is what God is saying.

Of course, there is a spiritual meaning to all this as far as the rich man and the poor man is concerned—perhaps we will get into that later. Yet for what we are looking at in Jude, this is basically what God is saying. These men who are not saved have men’s persons in admiration; they marvel at them because of advantage, because of their advantage or their profit or position in this world. These men are respecters of persons, and that will definitely bring them under the judgment of God.