Jude 4
Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Jude 13 describes them: “Wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.”
Question: Were “certain persons” “long beforehand
marked out” to “turn the grace of our God into
licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord,
Jesus Christ”?
Answer: No. What “certain persons” were “long
beforehand marked out for” is “this condemnation.”
God did not author their sin. Rather, God authored
the consequence of their sin, not the act of their sin.
By God’s omniscient foreknowledge, He has prepared condemnation for those who commit such acts. This verse does not say that God predetermined, or authored, the sinful acts of these men. Based upon Jeremiah 32:35, we might also conclude that God neither commanded nor decreed that they do these things: “They built the high places of Baal that are in the valley of Ben-hinnom to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I had not commanded them nor had it entered My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.” (Jeremiah 32:35)
John Calvin: “He speaks of the condemnation or ‘doom’ or ‘reprobate condition’ which lies at the end of those who subvert the teaching of the truth. It is an action no man can pursue, except to his own ruination. The metaphor derives from the fact that God’s eternal purpose, wherein the faithful are ordained to salvation, is called a Book. When the faithful hear that these men are set on the path of eternal death, they should beware of being caught up in the same destruction, though (at the same time) James is wanting to anticipate the danger that they will be disturbed or shaken by the suddenness of the affair. If these men were long since ‘written down’, it follows certainly that, what the Church experiences, comes from the sure counsel of God.” (Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, Matthew, Mark and Luke, Vol. III, James and Jude, p.325, emphasis mine)
Although I’m at a loss as to why Calvin attributes to James, what Jude had written, God did not set these “certain persons” on the path of wickedness, by some kind of eternal script. They set themselves on the path of eternal death, and God prepared the consequence:
Calvinist, William MacDonald: “They are not foreordained to fall away, but once they do apostatize by their own free choice, they face the punishment predetermined for all apostates.” (Believer’s Bible Commentary, p.2340, emphasis mine)
Agreed.
The Calvinistic, Westminster Confession of Faith: “III. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.” (Westminster Confession of Faith, III. Of God’s Eternal Decree, emphasis mine)
This is what happens when you remove the “foreknowledge of God” from the “predetermined plan” of God. (Acts 2:23) The result is a blind, Calvinistic decree.
