If you’ve ever wondered how to recognize an apostate in your church, look for the man who watches pornography habitually but says the grace of God covers his sin. Look for the man who uses the grace of God as a license to practice sexual immorality. “I am eternally secure in my salvation,” he says. “I know God will forgive me for my sexual sins because they are all covered—past, present, future—by His infinite grace.”
The book of Jude in the New Testament warns you against such men, apostates who deny our Lord.
“For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Jude 1:4
Lewdness means licentiousness, that is, promiscuous and unprincipled sexual behavior. It also means lasciviousness, namely, wanton, lewd, lustful activity. What this passage warns is that there will be men sitting in the pews of your church who use the grace of God to justify or excuse their immoral sexual behavior. They will distort the grace of God into decadence and immoral freedom, viewing grace as an opportunity to do whatever they want.
The thing to note about apostates is that they claim to be believers while practicing sexual immorality. They attend church on Sunday and watch porn the rest of the week. They worship God with their friends in the church youth group while having sex outside of marriage. They proclaim that God loves them while habitually doing those things that God hates.
If you struggle with habitual sexual sin, such as masturbating to pornography, this does not automatically make you an apostate. But if you are an apostate, you will certainly turn the grace of God into a license for immorality. That is guaranteed. So, this should naturally lead you to examine yourself. If one sign of apostasy is using God’s grace to justify sexual immorality, and if you are using God’s grace to justify your sexual immorality, are you an apostate, or soon to become one?
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