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‘These are they who make separations, sensual, having not the Spirit.’
Jud_1:19 (R.V.)
I. Spiritual degeneration.—Multitudes who have crept into the Church perhaps by the lax administration of Holy Baptism in these days, many others who were once established by the reception of Confirmation, have been at no pains at all to live by and from the graces which in those Holy Sacraments they received. Having received the Spirit, having tasted the heavenly gift, and being made partakers of the Holy Ghost, they have become as if they never had received it at all. They have lived, not from the Spirit, which by the grace of God was made theirs, but by and from their own natural instincts, or their self-acquired knowledge, according to the higher refinements of civilisation that has gained much from the reflex influence of Christianity upon it—from these they have lived, and not from the grace of God. They have continued to live the animal, the intellectual, the natural life. Their whole being is conducted on the plane of the natural order. They are earthly, they are sensual, as St. Jude calls them, having no longer the Spirit which in the Church they received, and which, as they have not cherished and hallowed it, has died down where once it was. As St. Paul would put it, they have fulfilled the desires of the flesh and of the mind.
II. There are two sorts of men then, the sensual and the spiritual.
(a) In outward form they have a similar appearance to the eye of man. We cannot detect the origin of actions, yet God can, God does, and God will do so. Admirable may be the acts of virtue within the range of nature, and virtue may have its great rewards in the natural order, for virtue is ever its own reward; but, beyond that, in relation to the supernatural, beyond the temporal, away in the eternal, it has no range; it belongs to the sphere of human nature. It is not of grace, it lacks Divine life, it is mere human virtue. The fact is that the man of nature, sensual, sensuous, animal, intellectual, affectionate, is but the man begun. Yet he may, by the grace of God, become glorious as the risen and glorified Christ.
(b) A man of grace is by grace brought into vital contact with the supreme object of superhuman existence, man’s chief end, God. His soul is in communion with the common good, God perfects His nature. He has found salvation, the common corporate salvation. He has been born into a society, the Divine society, the society of God’s Church, where the Son of God reigns, where the Holy Ghost operates, and the whole society mutually help each other onwards and upwards, a company of heaven, where the spirits of just men are perfected.
III. For the avoidance of this declension, for the avoidance of this separation from the love of God, and for our encouragement in spiritual life and progress, St. Jude sets before us three specific points:—
(a) Build up yourselves on your most holy faith—edify yourselves upon the faith.
(b) Pray in the Holy Ghost. Prayer is the great evidence of spiritual life; it exists only in that atmosphere, and so becomes the evidence of it. It is the element of virtue and strength. If you have any tendency towards the spiritual declension or separation in any form, ask yourselves the question whether it may not be that you have ceased or been slack to pray.
(c) Keep yourselves in the love of God. The love of God is the great grace, the grace of the graces that He has to give. To your sensual animal nature He adds His own pure love, differing in quality and character entirely from that love which may be between the dearest of human relationships.
So steadfast in faith, joyful in hope, rooted in charity, there can be no separation.
—
Rev. J. H. Anderson.
Illustration‘Let a man begin once to pick and choose about the faith communicated once and for ever to the Church, let him pick and choose about what he will believe or disbelieve out of that which Christ has revealed, which God has delivered, then he separates himself; and the ugly name for that kind of personal separation, altogether apart from any disciplinary action of the Church, is heresy. Let a man under a specious appearance of liberalism and broad-mindedness exhibit a sort of dignified patronage to every competing and perhaps contradictory religious organisation, ancient or recent, human or Divine, then, thus forgetting the one Holy Communion of the Saints, thus forsaking the common corporate administration of salvation, he makes for separation; and the ugly name for that kind of work is schism. Let a man take leave of religion altogether, let him negative the faith of God, the Apostles’ Creed, let him turn his back for ever upon that, the Sacrament of unity expressed in the one Bread and the one Cup, let him assume a cynical disregard for all the gracious creations of a Saviour’s love, and then he separates himself, he promotes by bad example the separation of other Christians; and the specific name for that particular form is the ugly word “apostasy.” ’