Jude now begins to explain just how the false teachers had perverted the original faith.

Just a few short years after the death of Jesus, false teachers were already infiltrating local Christian congregations, many of which were small intimate groups meeting in private houses, and turning the grace (the unmerited mercy and favour) of God into lasciviousness – a "license for immorality" or "moral anarchy".

The problems caused by such men in the Early Church were severe and widespread. The apostle John describes one such clever and charismatic leader, Diotrophes, who had gained control a local church and even refused access to the congregation to messengers sent from the headquarters Church in Jerusalem – and excommunicated any member opposing him (3 John, verses 9-10). John says that there were already many such deceivers (2 John, verse 7).

In an age before television, radio, newspaper, telephone or even an affordable postal system for the average person, the scope for deception was clearly immense – and false teachers attacked the newly-founded Church of God from every possible angle, which is why Paul had to warn of counterfeit epistles being sent in his name (2 Thessalonians 2:2), and even of false teachers masquerading as the very apostles of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). On the island of Crete alone, although the false Christian faith being peddled was a different brand, Paul said that there were already many deceivers at work in the local churches there (Titus 1:10-11).

So serious was the situation in the province of Galatia that Paul was moved to pronounce a fearful curse on the pseudo-Christian teachers saying: "If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be accursed" (Galations 1:9).

A second contributing factor was that the Greek and Roman societies into which the amazing gospel of the Kingdom of God was being preached were characterized by coarse and even cruel debauchery – where brother married sister, where the term Corinthian became a synonym for sexual carousing, and where homosexuality and prostitution were rampant, often as a part of pagan temple worship, and where acts of gross indecency were publicly committed in city streets and market places, and where soldiers would Sodomize captives in order to humiliate them and apparently prove their own manhood.

For many of converts called out from such backgrounds, becoming Christians must have required a radical change in lifestyle, especially in matters sexual – and a painful struggle, perhaps, to conquer deeply ingrained and habitual perversions and unclean compulsions of all kinds. To many such individuals, the permissive new morality of the false teachers must have held a strong appeal.

Quoting the words of Paul, the false teachers, even today, claim that Christians are free to indulge their sexual preferences any way they please, because, Quote: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Jesus Christ" (Romans 8:1). In so doing they are in effect teaching that sin no longer exists -- thereby denying their need for a Saviour, just as Jude says.

But just who are these un-condemned individuals of whom Paul speaks, those who are in Jesus Christ? In quoting Paul’s words, the deceivers conveniently omit the second part of the same verse where he qualifies his comment by adding: ". . . who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit".

Just a few verses later, Paul then warns: "If you live after the flesh you shall die" -- you will be condemned, "but if through the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live" (Romans 8:13). To mortify means to put to death, to resist and render inactive.

To the false teachers, however, Paul’s epistles simply express his personal opinions -- and can safely be ignored.