Affecting the plan of redemption by our behavior. As we have seen in Jude, it is entirely possible to turn God's grace into lawlessness and immorality. We can abuse the grace of God by our bodily behavior until God's grace no longer saves us.

The ungodly people described by Jude fellowshiped with the believers, partaking of the grace of God. But they did not bring their physical bodies into subjection to the Holy Spirit.

Paul spoke of the fact that the resurrection from the dead already dwells in the Christian.

But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken [make alive] your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. (Romans 8:11)

Then Paul reveals that if we, the elect of God, chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, choose to live in the appetites of our flesh we will kill the resurrection life in us. The Divine Seed will be choked out, as in the parable of the sower. We will succeed in slaying our own resurrection.

For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify [put to death] the deeds of the body, ye shall live. (Romans 8:13)

Jude teaches that while God brings us out of Egypt on eagles' wings we must persevere in faith and patience throughout the distresses and deprivations of the wilderness. If we do not, the plan of redemption is brought to a halt. We are not permitted to continue on to the rest of God, to Canaan, to the goal God has ordained for us.

I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. (Jude 1:5)

It is commonly taught in evangelical churches that once the Lord saves us out of Egypt, so to speak, we never can be destroyed. If such is the case, why did Jude make this statement?

Christian teachers sometimes seem to ignore the warnings of the New Testament concerning the need to fight the fight of faith.

The Kingdom of God is an actual Kingdom and will be located on an actual earth. It is not a mystical position in God in the spirit realm. A royal priesthood is being created that will judge and bless the nations of saved peoples of the earth.

The holy city, the new Jerusalem, does not consist of untransformed believers who are "saved by grace," as we ordinarily employ the term. If that were the case, the new Jerusalem would be filled with sinning people who are righteous only in the sense that God has declared them righteous. They would not be righteous except by the Lord's declaration. They would still lie, steal, use profanity, seek their own gain, gossip, criticize, break laws, and practice every other ungodly behavior.

The holy city is the holy city. Every member of the new Jerusalem began in sin and then was made alive and brought up to the Throne of God. After that, each member patiently followed the Holy Spirit through a painful wilderness experience until the image of God had been formed in his or her personality.

To be continued.