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relying on errors

Jude 1:7-10

Jude 1:7 Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns committed sexual immorality and perversions and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of permanent fire.
Jude 1:8 In the same way these people — relying on their dreams — defile their flesh, reject authority, and slander glorious ones.
Jude 1:9 Yet when Michael the archangel was disputing with the devil in an argument about Moses’s body, he did not dare utter a slanderous condemnation against him but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”
Jude 1:10 But these people blaspheme anything they do not understand. And what they do understand by instinct — like irrational animals — by these things they are ruined.

relying on errors

Jude’s warning echoes the caution Jesus gave his disciples: the danger is not only external opposition but internal deception. Jesus urged them to stay alert so they would not be misled, and Jude identifies the very people doing that misleading in his own generation. Their error was not merely intellectual; it was a matter of misplaced trust. They relied on their dreams—private impressions, subjective experiences, and self‑generated revelations—rather than on the authoritative word God had already spoken. Their confidence rested on imagination rather than truth.

Jude pairs this with the example of Sodom and Gomorrah. Those cities did not fall because they lacked spiritual experiences or religious awareness. They fell because they trusted their passions. Desire became their guide, and once desire becomes the compass, destruction is the destination. Jude’s point is not simply that these examples sinned, but that they relied on something fundamentally unreliable. Dreams cannot anchor a soul. Passions cannot lead to life. When the foundation is unstable, collapse is inevitable.

The thread running through Jude’s examples is the decisive importance of what a person depends on. Trust shapes destiny. Those who lean on fantasies, impulses, or self‑made spirituality drift into darkness. Those who cling to the word God has spoken find stability, clarity, and life. Jude is not discouraging spiritual sensitivity or the work of the Spirit; he is warning against replacing revelation with imagination, and obedience with indulgence.

The call, then, is simple and searching: rely on what is true. God has spoken with clarity. His word is not fragile, shifting, or uncertain. It exposes error, steadies the heart, and guards the path. Jude’s warning is not meant to produce fear but discernment. It reminds that sincerity is not enough, intensity is not enough, and spiritual language is not enough. What matters is the object of trust.

The prayer that rises from this reflection is straightforward:
Lord, anchor hearts in your truth. Guard your people from the errors that arise from dreams, impulses, and passions that contradict your word. Grant discernment to recognize what is false and courage to hold fast to what you have spoken.