The Weekly Perspective
by Burke Shade, Associate Pastor
“…even denying the Master who bought them….” 2 Peter 2:1
“For certain people have crept in…and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” Jude 1:4
These two verses, along with Hebrews 6:4–8 and the stories of King Saul and Judas, demonstrate that apostasy is real. People bought and ransomed by Jesus Christ who then walk away from him, denying their attachment and faith in him. People in the church leaving the Lord of the church to follow after Satan. That is what Judas did; even Saul’s last meal was a false Passover with a witch at midnight.
But many Christians have a hard time with this apostasy. Isn’t “once saved, always saved,” true? Or “once elect, always elect?” But jingles don’t satisfy; it is not man’s free will that puts us forever into relationship with God, nor pretending to have an infallible view of God’s decrees.
Salvation is of the Lord, and God’s ways are often mysterious to us. Such is the question, “How can a person ransomed by Jesus, ever flee and fall away into league with Satan and everlasting condemnation? It is akin to the question, “How did a sinless Adam not believe his Creator and God?” We have to stop our mouths and minds and admit we can’t know; to know so would make us God!
But those questions miss the point of the contexts in 2 Peter and Jude. Both write to exhort their hearers to perseverance, to running the race with eyes only on Jesus. Both exhort to faithfulness in the gospel delivered to the saints. That’s our focus as Christians; we cannot know what isn’t revealed. As Moses taught in Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.”