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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: They also possess pastoral power, and the way they define that is quite interesting. In the Catholic dogma, it is refined as -- defined as legislative, judicial and punitive. Their idea of pastoral work is not comfort and care and compassion. It is legislative, judicial and punitive. They make laws to which they hold people. They adjudicate as to whether people have violated those laws, and they mete out punishment. And through the years, that punishment has been everything from excommunication to execution. Thirdly, they possess sacerdotal power. And what that simply means is the power to impart grace through the sacraments. They would say in their dogma that these three parallel the threefold office of Christ as prophet, priest and king. Now, their dogmas have been crystallized very well, thanks to the Reformation. It was the Reformation that caused them to pronounce anathemas. When -- we're all familiar with the whole story of the Reformation to one degree or another, when Martin Luther and Zwingli and Calvin and Malanchthon all came along and assaulted the system. The system had to respond. And one way it responded was by, of course, digging its heels in the ground, changing nothing, and affirming what it had always held to be true, and then damning everybody who didn't believe it. But out of that came some very clear articulation of their unchanging dogma. One of the primary things that they stood against with regard to the reformers was the priesthood. The reformers rejected completely the idea of a special priesthood. And with it, they rejected the Catholic hierarchy, which essentially is the Pope, and then the bishops, from whom the cardinals are chosen, and then the priests, and under them the deacons. |