Study in the Epistle of Jude # 86: Verse 22

by Chris McCann

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

Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study. We are approaching the end of this Epistle of Jude. We have come to verse 22, which says:

And of some have compassion, making a difference:

God is speaking to believers. He made this transition back in verse 20 when He began to address the beloved. In verses 20-22, He says:

But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of some have compassion…

God is addressing the beloved, and the only beloved of the Lord are those whom God saves. “Jacob have I loved,” God says, “but Esau have I hated” (Romans 9:13). God only loves those whom He has saved. He only loves those whom He has a plan of salvation for, those whose lives He will apply the work of Christ to—they are the only ones whom God loves.

These ones whom God Himself has had compassion upon, these individuals who are a great multitude—they will finally total all those who are part of the elect of God, the whole company of saints. God is speaking to each one of them and He is saying, “I have had mercy upon you. I have forgiven all your sins freely. I have forgiven you a tremendous debt, a great debt that you have owed Me because you have sinned and rebelled against Me. It is to Me that you owed that debt, the payment of an eternity in Hell. However, I have sent My Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, eternal God Himself, to come and take your sins upon Himself. I have sent Him to make payment for those sins and to suffer the equivalent of an eternal damnation in your place. This is the great mercy that I have had upon you; this is the great compassion that I have bestowed upon you.”

Oh, how merciful God has been to each one of His children! He is definitely a merciful God; He delights in mercy (Micah 7:18). God is speaking to us now, those of us who profess to be Christians. With our profession, we are making the statement, “We have been the recipients of the mercy of God, the blessed recipients of God’s grace and His mercy. God has had mercy on us.” This is what we are saying if we say that we are a Christian.

Now God says, “All right, you make the profession that you are a child of God and you say that I have forgiven you a debt that is a tremendous, huge debt that you could never repay. Now I am speaking to you—of some have compassion; have mercy yourself as I have had mercy upon you. Be ye merciful to others. Demonstrate the love of God; demonstrate My mercy with your life. You go forth now into this world and carry the Gospel message, dear sinner who believes that you have experienced the mercy of God. You now go with this same Gospel that has saved you. Go with this wonderful Word of God that God has blessed to your heart, and share this Gospel with any and all who will listen. Of some, have mercy; of some who are out there, have compassion. Use your money that you are earning in this world as you are going to work and putting in your time and your hours.”

That money is a representation of your time, really, and what we do with our time is a representation of our life. In a real way, our money and what we do with it represents what we are doing with our life. Therefore, God is saying, “Take your money and have compassion and mercy. Use your money for good; use it to share the Gospel with this world, to bring the Gospel message to others. As you have received that Gospel message, now take your money, which is representing your time and your labor, and use that money; use it not to indulge or to satisfy your lust, but to have compassion, which will make a difference.”

This will make a difference in the world. When true believers send forth the Word of God, God blesses that Word. His Word will not return void, but it will accomplish the purpose that God has sent it forth to do (Isaiah 55:11). God’s purpose is to save sinners; it is to apply that Word to the spiritually dead and to resurrect them spiritually and give them life. It is to cover their sins and to have mercy upon them. This is what God is instructing us to do. We, likewise, are to show ourselves merciful as He has been merciful to us, and this will make a difference

There is a verse in 1 Corinthians 4:7 that uses that same word “difference.” That word “difference” is translated a few different ways. We are not going to look at that, but we are going to look at this one verse. It says:

For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?

This is a very humbling verse; it is a good verse that each one of us can ponder and think about. Everything that we have in our lives—whether it is physical blessings or material blessings or spiritual blessings—how is it that we have them? If we are a young man who is a tall young man, where did we get our height? If we are a young lady who has long, beautiful hair, where did we get that beautiful hair? If there is any feature that others find attractive on us, where did that feature come from? Where did our blue eyes or our green eyes or our brown eyes come from? “What hast thou,” God asks, “that thou didst not receive?”

What is it about you that is charming and lovely and a benefit to you, no doubt, and something that others admire you for? Maybe it is your ability to speak or maybe it is your intelligence because you are very smart. Whatever it is—if it is the way you look, if it is the way you think, if it is the way you talk, if it is your wealth, if it is the money you have, the house you possess, or the car you drive—God asks this question, and it is an excellent question: “What hast thou that thou didst not receive?”

It is all a gift from God. God has given us the ability to work and to earn our money. God has given us certainly our physical bodies—He formed us in the womb. He developed us and created us and formed us into the person who we are. God has given us the brain that we think with. God has given us our parents and our surroundings that have developed our personality and made it charming or whatever we are like. God has given us all these things. Therefore, what is there, as we look at ourselves, that we did not receive, even on the earthly level, in the earthly realm? The answer is that there is absolutely nothing; we have received everything directly from God.

Then God goes on to ask in 1 Corinthians 4:7:

…now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?

What the young man does when he finds that he is a tall and handsome young man is that he begins to glory in his appearance. If he is a strong young man or if God has given him very strong and fast legs so that he can run quickly, he glories in his athletic ability. If there is a young lady who has blonde hair that is very attractive, she begins to glory in her hair or some other feature that God has given her. The intelligent person begins to glory in the fact that they are smarter than others and that people look to them for answers. This is all a result of pride and sin. It all flows forth from rebellion against God. It flows from the fact that man does not wish to acknowledge God or to acknowledge that we have received everything from the hand of God. Our very breath is in God’s hands (Job 12:10); He controls everything. He gives us every second that we live and everything that we have in this life. Yet for the most part, mankind does not give God the recognition that He deserves nor the glory that is His, but man glories in his achievements.

Simply look at the scientific world today. God has given them these minds to ask questions and to design the technology that is advancing science. God has given them the ability to reason and to think things through. Yet with this very wisdom, they are turning it around to say that there is no God, that man has evolved and that we are a result of evolution. God has given them this wisdom, yet they deny the wisdom of God. They deny the truth of the Word of God, the Bible, but they glory in themselves.

Without a God, a creator, man is now free to glory in himself. “Oh, what a wonder I am,” man thinks. “How tremendous I am and with my two hundred IQ. I can figure out all the mysteries of the universe. I know how everything has begun, from the “big bang” to the present. I am exploring space. We shall become greater and greater in the future.” However, it is all a puff of smoke. It is all vain glory; it is all emptiness and foolishness (Psalm 62:9). It is all really rebellion against God, and it all stems from the fact that we do not give God His proper due. God says to give honor to whom honor is due (Romans 13:7), and God is deserving of honor for the fact that He has given us all things. That is where we have to stop and recognize, “I have nothing that is mine; God has given it all to me.” Therefore, if we glory, we are to glory in the Lord (1 Corinthians 1:31). That is why God says this in 1 Corinthians 4:7:

For who maketh thee to differ from another?…

This word “differ” is our word “difference” in Jude 22, where we read:

And of some have compassion, making a difference:

Making one to differ—when we have shared the Gospel and God has applied that Word so that someone becomes saved, immediately, a difference is made; they are now made to differ from the other inhabitants of planet earth. Not from all of them, of course, for there are other believers; but a separation has occurred so that now someone is translated out of the kingdom of darkness and into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son (Colossians 1:13). This person now has been made to differ spiritually from others, from the vast multitude of those who are in the world, since there are many more unsaved than there are saved (Galatians 4:27).

God has given us this gift of salvation. Now when it comes to salvation, we ask ourselves, “Who made me to differ from another man that I should be saved? Who made me to differ from my brother or other family members or friends or neighbors? Why is it that God has saved me, yet He did not save my brother or my neighbors?” Some, in response, begin to glory. Of course, this does not happen as much, if at all, with the true Gospel. But it happens when people develop gospels that, when it comes down to what one does with Christ—whether you accept Him or not—come back to themselves. “It is what I did to get saved. I accepted Christ. I was humble and broken enough and I suffered enough, or whatever it finally was, and I took that step. I reached out, I took hold of Christ by faith, and I accepted Him. Now, I am saved; I am different than others in the world, the unsaved. Who made me to differ? Well, I would have to say that I did. It was something in me that is not in these other people. I do not know why they do not accept Christ—there must be something wrong with them—but within me, I was able to stir up myself and reach out and find salvation.”

We can see how pride loves that kind of thinking; we can see how it all stems from pride. Of course, the true Gospel does not allow that at all. The true Gospel states that God is the One who causes us to differ from another. Just as in the physical realm, God gives some people blonde hair and some people dark hair, some people brown eyes and some people blue eyes, one personality He makes very gregarious and another one very shy. Likewise, spiritually, God is the One who saves one person and does not save the other. Therefore, if we find that we have been the recipients of God’s grace, we cannot take any credit or any glory in it because others in this world have not been the recipients of that same grace. It is God who has done it; God has given us the gift of repentance and God has given us the gift of the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ that has saved us. God has given us the gift of assurance of salvation. Everything about salvation stems forth from the Lord; it comes from God. Salvation is of the Lord, and it is none of us (Jonah 2:9). God is the One who has made us to differ from others. This is what Jude was saying, writing under the inspiration of God, when we read:

And of some have compassion, making a difference:

It makes them thereby to differ. When we share the Gospel, when we bring the Gospel message and someone truly does become saved, a difference is made in their life; a difference is made between them and everyone else in their family or in their neighborhood. This is the point that God is emphasizing here.

I will just read verse 23, but we will save this for next time, Lord willing. Verse 23 says:

And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.

As we look at this verse, we have to keep in mind that these kinds of verses almost give the appearance that we are the ones who are doing the work—we are going to win people for Christ; we are the ones who are out there in the harvest field sharing the Gospel, and we have to save them. We have to pull them out of the fire and we have to convince them to sign on the dotted line and become a Christian. However, we do not want to get that idea at all; we do not want to go down that road at all. Rather, we have to recognize that God is speaking about us sharing the Gospel. We tell them the whole counsel of God, the whole Word of God. We tell them that there is nothing that they can do to save themselves; salvation is entirely in God’s hands and under His control.