Writing about ungodly people who had infiltrated the people of God, Jude declared the following:
Jude 1:11 Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.
In this statement, Jude pronounced a divine woe on these evil men for their sinfulness, including their having gone in the way of Cain. Clearly, this part of his statement thus makes known an aspect of their wickedness for which they had incurred this declaration of God’s judgment on them.
We must also not fail to notice that the Spirit inspired Jude to issue this condemnation of these people without defining in any way what comprises “the way of Cain.” In fact, we are not given any information in Scripture by which we can know what this sinfulness of these wicked people actually was that resulted in this inspired statement that explicitly associated them with the wickedness of Cain.
God clearly condemned these people for being wicked, and He did so by associating them with one or more unspecified aspects of the wickedness of Cain. This passage therefore certainly shows that Scripture does “use” guilt by association to speak about the wickedness of people without explaining or showing how their wickedness was the same or similar to the wickedness of another sinful person with which they were associated!
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