Jude 1:23 And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. In these words the apostle speaks figuratively. He wishes to exhort to abstinence from all and every kind of sin. And to make his exhortation the more easily remembered and the more deeply impressed, he clothes it in metaphor. The religion which preceded Christianity was the Jewish, established amongst a peculiar people for certain wise and intelligible reasons. In this dispensation God taught His people more by signs than words, by ceremonies than by precepts Time will not permit to speak of all the figurative instruction of the Jewish religion. But, in connection with our text, I may speak of the figurative distinctions of clean and unclean. Under this dispensation, then, there were many things considered unclean. Certain animals — as, for instance, swine — came within this evil distinction; and persons with certain diseases, such as leprosy or an issue of blood, were prohibited all intercourse with their fellows during the time the disease lay upon them; and a corpse was considered unclean; and those who might happen to touch it, or to come in contact with persons already unclean through disease or other causes, were themselves for a season unclean. Now, this calling of some things clean and unclean was designed to notify unequivocally the broad immutable distinction between sin and holiness, their utter, unending contrariety. But our text has a more especial reference to the uncleanness of leprosy. Leprosy in the East was a very loathsome disease, and fitly symbolises sin. And such was the virulence of his malady that none might approach or touch him; for there was uncleanness, not only in his personal touch, but in his garments. The garments became "spotted by the flesh"; they partook of the infection, and brought beneath a ban the unfortunate who might touch them. There appears to have been also an independent plague, peculiarly affecting raiment. Now God commanded His priests to destroy those leprous garments (Leviticus 13:47-52). Do we, then, arrive at an understanding of the apostle's figure? Does it not suggest a Christian precept of a like significance, but written in plain, unfigurative language? To hate "the garment spotted by the flesh" is to keep sin at the farthest distance; to avoid those things into which it can by subtilty infuse its fatal poison; things which, though lawful and innocent, may prove by remote possibility the occasion of falling to ourselves and to others. It is to keep far within the border-line which separates holiness from sin; not to venture out among the outposts, lest there be a sudden surprise, but to remain entrenched within the citadel, within which is safety. (R. L. Joyce, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. |
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