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NASB | Jude 1:4 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. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Jude 1:4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed [just as if they were sneaking in by a side door]. They are ungodly persons whose condemnation was predicted long ago, for they distort the grace of our God into decadence and immoral freedom [viewing it as an opportunity to do whatever they want], and deny and disown our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. |
Subject: Scandal of the Catholic Priesthood |
Bible Note: We are all very familiar with Catholic priests. We've grown up seeing them in our society, along with nuns, and we see them on the television all the time. We read about them in the newspaper before there were any scandals. We've been very much aware of them. Many of you in your youth were affected or impacted by the image of the priest in his black robe going through the machinations of ceremonies in the Catholic church that you attended as a kid. So we all know that. There's this sort of idea that there's a holy aura about these men; that somehow, they're almost unearthly and transcendent. And we need to kind of put that in perspective. So let me start by just talking about the divine origin of the hierarchy. There is in Catholic dogma the confidence that the hierarchy of the Catholic church is from Christ; that it is Jesus Christ Himself who granted to the Catholic church its hierarchical structure. And essentially, what that boils down to is an office of clergy, sort of across-the-board, that has three categories of power. Roman Catholics talk about teaching power. They talk about pastoral power, and they talk about sacerdotal power. Teaching power is what you would think it is. They speak authoritatively for the church; church being the only true interpreter of scripture. They don't speak for the scripture. They speak for the church. That is their teaching power. |