Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19:18) Here’s the verse Jesus quoted (in part) as the second part of “the greatest commandment.” Putting it in its original context is enlightening. We have two possibilities: seeking revenge/bearing a grudge and loving. Put another way, we can either hate or love. Put even more clearly, we can either not love or love. It’s not a difficult concept, until our human nature gets involved. At that point, we start trying to pretend that our hatred is not hatred because, of course, hatred isn’t nice and we want to be seen as nice. The whole “nice” bit is a pitfall for us, because to be nice means we must accept, ...
For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord. (Jude 1:4) Not long ago, we explored some of what Paul wrote about false teachers. Today, let’s look at what Jude wrote. As a reminder, Jude was one of Jesus’ half-brothers, like James. In this letter, he wanted to write something about what he and his audience had in common: their salvation, but something had happened or been said that took the letter in a different direction. This is a common theme in the New Testament, so while we may be tempted to ignore it, we need to pay attention. ...