Jude 1

Jude 1:1

I. SALUTATION (Vv. 1, 2) V. 1 God used a righteous Jude to unmask the apostates, of whom another Jude, Judas Iscariot, was a prime example. All that we know for certain about the good Jude is that he was a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James. In addressing the Letter, Jude gives three designations that are true of all believers. They are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ. God has called these out of the world by the gospel to belong to Himself. They are set apart by God to be God’s special and pure people. And they are marvelously preserved from danger, damage, defilement, and damnation until at last they are ushered in to see the King in His beauty. V. 2 Jude wishes for his readers mercy, peace, and love. The greeting is peculiarly suited to those who were facing the onslaught of those whose aim was to subvert the faith. Mercy means God’s compassionate comfort and care for His beleaguered saints in times of conflict and stress. Peace is the serenity and confidence that come from reliance on God’s word and from looking above circumstances to the One who overrules all circumstances for the accomplishment of His own purposes. Love is the undeserved embrace of God for His dear peoplea super-affection that should then be shared with others. He wishes that these three blessings be multiplied. Not measured out by mere addition, but by multiplication!

Jude 1:3

II. THE APOSTATES UNMASKED (Vv. 3-16) V. 3 Jude had originally intended to write about the glorious salvation that is the common possession of all believers. But God’s Spirit so influenced this yielded scribe that he sensed a change of direction. A simple doctrinal essay would no longer do; it must be a fervent appeal that would strengthen the readers. They must be stirred up to contend earnestly for the faith. Attacks were being made on the sacred deposit of Christian truth, and efforts were already launched to whittle away the great fundamental doctrines. God’s people must stand uncompromisingly for the inspiration, inerrancy, authority, and sufficiency of God’s Holy Word. Yet in contending for the faith, the believer must speak and act as a Christian. As Paul wrote: A servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient (2Ti_2:24). He must contend without being contentious, and testify without ruining his testimony. What we contend earnestly for is the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. Notice that! Not once upon a time but once for all. The body of doctrine is complete. The canon is finished. Nothing more can be added. If it’s new it’s not true, and if it’s true it’s not new. When some teacher claims to have a revelation which is above and beyond what is found in the Bible, we reject it out of hand. The faith has been delivered and we neither need nor heed anything else. This is our answer to the leaders of false cults with their books that claim equal authority with the Scriptures. V. 4 The nature of the threat is unveiled in verse 4. The Christian fellowship was being invaded by subversive elements. Certain men had wormed in unnoticed. It was an underground movement of stealth and deceit. These fifth-columnists long ago were marked out for this condemnation. This seems to say that God selected these particular individuals to be doomed. But that is not the meaning. The Bible never teaches that some are chosen to be damned. When men are saved, it is through the sovereign grace of God. But when they are finally lost, it is because of their own sin and disobedience. This expression teaches that the condemnation of apostates has been determined long beforehand. If men choose to fall away from the Christian Faith, then their condemnation is the same as that of the unbelieving Israelites in the wilderness, the rebel angels, and the Sodomites. They are not foreordained to fall away, but once they do apostatize by their own choice, they face the punishment predetermined for all apostates. Two prominent features of these ungodly persons are their depraved conduct and their corrupt doctrine. In their behavior, they turn the grace of God into lewdness. They twist Christian liberty into license, and pervert freedom to serve into freedom to sin. In their doctrine, they deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. They deny His absolute right to rule, His deity, His vicarious death, His resurrectionin fact, they deny every essential doctrine of His Person and work. While professing an expansive liberality in the spiritual realm, they are dogmatically and viciously opposed to the gospel, to the value of the precious blood of Christ, and to His being the only way of salvation. Who are these men? They are supposed ministers of the gospel. They hold positions of leadership in Christendom. Some are bishops or church council members or seminary professors. But they all have this in commonthey are against the Christ of the Bible and have invented for themselves a liberal or Neo-Orthodox Christ, stripped of glory, majesty, dominion, and authority. V. 5 There is no question about God’s attitude toward these apostates. He has revealed it in the OT on more than one occasion. Jude now wants to remind his readers of three such examplethe unbelieving Israelites, the angels that sinned, and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. The first example is Israel in the wilderness: The Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe (see Num. 13, 14; 1Co_10:5-10). God had promised the land of Canaan to the people. In that promise was all the enablement they needed. But they accepted the evil report of the spies at Kadesh and rebelled against the Lord. As a result, all those men who were twenty or over when they left Egypt perished in the wilderness, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua (see Heb_3:16-19). V. 6 The second example of rebellion and apostasy is the angels who sinned. All we know about them for certain is that they did not keep the domain that was assigned to them, they abandoned their own abode, and they are now restrained in everlasting chains under darkness for their final judgment. It seems from Scripture that there have been at least two apostasies of angels. One was when Lucifer fell and presumably involved a host of other angelic beings in his rebellion. These fallen angels are not bound at the present time. The devil and his demons are actively promoting war against the Lord and His people. The other apostasy of angels is the one referred to by Jude and also by Peter (2Pe_2:4). There is considerable difference of opinion among Bible students as to what event is referred to here. What we suggest is a personal viewpoint, not a dogmatic assertion of fact. We believe that Jude is referring to what is recorded in Gen_6:1-7. The sons of God left their proper estate as angelic beings, came down to the earth in human form, and married the daughters of men. This marital union was contrary to God’s order and an abomination to Him. There may be a suggestion in verse 4 that these unnatural marriages produced offspring of tremendous strength and wickedness. Whether or not this is true, it is clear that God was exceedingly displeased with the wickedness of man at this time and determined to destroy the earth with a flood. There are three objections to this view: (1) The passage in Genesis does not mention angels, but only sons of God. (2) Angels are sexless. (3) Angels do not marry. It is true that angels are not specifically mentioned but it is also true that the term sons of God does refer to angels in Semitic languages (see Job_1:6; Job_2:1). There is no Bible statement that angels are sexless. Angels sometimes appeared on earth in human form, having human parts and appetites (Gen_18:2, Gen_18:22; compare Gen_19:1, Gen_19:3-5. The Bible does not say that angels do not marry but only that in heaven they neither marry nor give in marriage (Mat_22:30). Whatever historical incident may lie behind verse 6, the important point is that these angels abandoned the sphere which God had marked out for them and are now in … chains and in darkness until the time when they will receive their final sentence to perdition. V. 7 The third OT apostasy which Jude mentions is that of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them (Gen. 18:1-19:29). The introductory word as shows that the sin of the Sodomites had features in common with that of the angels. It was gross immorality that was utterly against nature and abhorrent to God. The specific sin of perversion is discussed by Paul in Romans: Their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due (Rom_1:26-27). The men of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim were greatly addicted to homosexuality. The sin is described here as having . . .gone after strange flesh, meaning that it is completely contrary to the natural order which God has ordained. Is it mere coincidence that many modern day apostates are in the vanguard of those who publicly defend homosexuality and campaign for it to be legalized as long as it is done between consenting adults? To all such libertines the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are exhibited as an example in suffering the punishment of eternal fire. That last expression eternal fire cannot mean that the fire which destroyed the wicked cities is eternal, but rather that in the thoroughness and vastness of its consuming power, it pictures the eternal punishment which will fall on all rebels. V. 8 Jude reverts to the subject of present-day apostates, and launches into a description of their sins, their indictment, their counterparts in nature, their doom, and their ungodly words and deeds (vv. 8-16). First of all is the matter of their sins. By dreaming they defile the flesh. Their thought life is polluted. Living in a world of filthy fantasies, they eventually find fulfillment of their dreams in sexual immorality, just like the men of Sodom. They reject authority. They are rebels against God and against governmental institutions. Depend on them to be proponents of lawlessness and anarchy. Their names are on the membership rolls of organizations that are dedicated to the overthrow of government. They speak evil of angelic dignitaries. It means nothing to them that there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God (Rom_13:1 b). They scorn the divine command, You shall not … curse a ruler of your people (Exo_22:28). They speak contemptuously and spitefully against authority, whether it be divine, angelic, or human. V. 9 In this respect they take liberties which even Michael the archangel would reject. When Michael disputed with the devil about the body of Moses, he did not dare rail against him but simply said, The Lord rebuke you! Here Jude shares with us an incident which is found nowhere else in the Bible. The question naturally arises, Where did he get this information?Some say that the information was passed down by tradition. This may or may not be so. The most satisfying explanation is that the information was supernaturally revealed to Jude by the same Holy Spirit who moved him to write the Epistle. We have no definite knowledge why the dispute arose between Michael and Satan about the body of Moses. We do know that Moses was buried by God in a valley of Moab. It is not unlikely that Satan wanted to know the spot so that he could have a shrine built there. Then Israel would turn to the idolatrous worship of Moses’ bones. As the angelic representative of the people of Israel (Dan_10:21), Michael would strive to preserve the people from this form of idolatry by keeping the burial site secret. But the important point is this. Even if Michael is an archangel, the one whom God will use to cast Satan down from heaven (Rev_12:7-9), still he did not presume to speak reproachfully to the one who rules in the realm of demons. He left all such rebuking to God. V. 10 Headstrong and brazen, the apostates speak disrespectfully in areas of which they are ignorant. They do not realize that in any ordered society, there must be authority and there must be subjection to that authority. And so they surge forward and swagger around in arrogant rebellion. The area in which they are most knowledgeable is that of natural instincts, the gratification of sensual appetites. With the mindlessness of unreasoning animals, they abandon themselves to sexual gratification, and in the process they corrupt and destroy themselves. V. 11 A stinging indictment is pronounced upon them. Woe to them! Because of their stubborn and unrepentant heart, they store up wrath for themselves in the Day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God (Rom_2:5). Their career is described as a plummeting fall of ever increasing velocity. First they have gone in the way of Cain. They have run greedily in the error of Balaam. Finally they perished in the rebellion of Korah. Error and apostasy are never static. They lead people pell-mell to the precipice, then over it to destruction. The way of Cain is basically the rejection of salvation through the blood of a sacrificial victim (Gen. 4). It is the attempt to appease God by human efforts. C. H. Mackintosh says, God’s remedy to cleanse is rejected, and man’s effort to improve is put in its place. This is ’the way of Cain.’. But, of course, reliance on human effort leads to a hatred of grace and to the objects of grace. And that hatred eventually leads to persecution and even murder (1Jo_3:15). The error of Balaam is the desire to become personally wealthy by making a business out of the service of God. Balaam professed to be a prophet of God, but he was covetous, and willing to prostitute his prophetic gift for money (Num. 22-24). Five times Balak paid him to curse Israel, and he was more than willing to do it, but he was forcibly restrained by God. Many of the things that he said were true and beautiful, but for all that, he was a hireling prophet. He couldn’t curse the men of Israel, but he eventually succeeded in luring them into sin with the daughters of Moab (Num_25:1-5). Like Balaam, the false teachers of today are suave and convincing. They can speak out of both corners of their mouths at once. They suppress the truth in order to increase their income. The principal point is that they are greedy, seeking to make the house of God a house of merchandise. Christendom today is leavened by the sin of simony. If the profit motive could somehow be removed, much of what passes as Christian work would come to a screeching halt. C. A. Coates warns: Man is so base that he makes gain for himself out of God’s things. The ultimate point of man’s baseness is that he will make gain out of God’s things for himself. The Lord has a definite judgment on it all. We can see how Christendom is full of it, and we have to watch it in ourselves lest that element come in. The third reason for the woe pronounced by Jude is that these false teachers have perished in the rebellion of Korah. Along with Dathan and Abiram, Korah rebelled against the leadership of Moses and Aaron and desired to intrude into the priestly office (Num. 16). In this they were actually spurning the Lord. For their insubordination, they were swallowed alive in a great earthquake. God thus showed His extreme displeasure at rebellion against those whom He has set up as His representatives. V. 12 Next Jude chooses five similes from the world of nature to picture the character and destiny of the apostates. Moffatt says that sky, land and sea are ransacked for illustrations of the character of these men.They are spots in the love feasts which were held by the early Christians in connection with the Lord’s Supper. They fear neither God nor man, and care for themselves rather than for the flock. They lure others to besmirch the faith. They are clouds without water, appearing to hold promise of refreshment to the parched countryside, but then carried along (NKJV margin) by the winds, and leaving disappointment and disillusionment. They are late autumn trees, stripped of leaves and fruit. Twice dead may be an intensive form meaning thoroughly deador it may mean dead in the root as well as the branches. Also they are pulled up by the roots, as if torn out of the ground by a strong wind and leaving no stump as a possible future source of life and growth. V. 13 They are raging waves of the sea, ungovernable, boisterous, and furious. For all their noise and motion, there is nothing to show but the foam of their shame. They glory in what they should be ashamed of and leave nothing of substance and value behind. Finally, they are like wandering stars, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. Wandering stars are celestial bodies that do not move in regular orbit. They are worthless as navigational aids. How appropriate a description of the false teachers! It is impossible to get spiritual direction from these religious meteors, falling stars, and comets who blaze brightly for a moment, then fizzle out into darkness like firework rockets. V. 14 The doom of the apostates was foretold by Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam. It is a prophecy that is found only in Jude’s Epistle. Some think it is taken from the apocryphal Book of Enoch, but there is no proof that that spurious book existed in the time of Jude. Kelly said: It [Enoch] has every mark of having been written subsequent to the destruction of Jerusalem [and therefore after Jude’s Epistle was written], by a Jew who still buoyed himself up with the hope that God would stand by the Jews. While we do not know how Jude learned of this ancient prophecy, a simple and plausible explanation is that the Holy Spirit revealed the words to him just as He guided in all the rest of the Epistle. The prophecy begins: Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints. The prediction will have a preliminary and partial fulfillment when the Lord Jesus returns to earth after the Tribulation to destroy His foes and to reign as King. It will have its complete and final fulfillment at the end of the Millennium when the wicked dead are judged at the Great White Throne. V. 15 Christ comes to execute judgment on all. The rest of the verse shows that the all here means all the ungodly. True believers will not be included. Through faith in Christ, they have been granted immunity from judgment, as promised in Joh_5:24 : Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. As the Son of Man to whom all judgment has been committed, the Lord Jesus will convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him. Four times in this one verse we find the word ungodly occurring.

The people are ungodly, their deeds are ungodly, the manner in which they perform these deeds is ungodly, and they further manifest their ungodliness by their blasphemies against the Lord. He will convict them of the whole ungodly business, not just in the sense of making them feel a deep sense of guilt, but convicting them by pronouncing sentence as a result of their proven guilt. V. 16 Their ungodly words and deeds are now described in more de tail. They are grumblers, complaining against the providences of God instead of being thankful for His mercies. The fact that God hates such griping is abundantly proved by His punishment of Israel in the wilderness. They are always finding fault with the Lord. Why does He permit wars and suffering? Why doesn’t He put an end to all the social injustice? If He is all-powerful, why doesn’t He do something about the mess the world is in? They also find fault with God’s people for being narrow-minded in creed and puritanical in conduct. They live lustfully, indulging the passions of the flesh and being the loudest in advocating permissiveness in the sexual realm. Their arrogant speech proves a real attention-getter. By their shocking espousal of political, economic, and social extremism, they make the headlines. And their bold, shameless repudiation of basic Christian doctrines, such as their assertion that God is dead, give them a certain notoriety among liberal theologians. Finally, they are masters in the art of flattery, thereby gaining a following for themselves and a comfortable income as well. This portrait is true and accurate. It is confirmed almost every day by the news media of the world.

Jude 1:17

III. THE BELIEVER’S ROLE IN THE MIDST OF APOSTASY (Vv. 17-23) V. 17 Jude now turns away from the apostates to the believers’ role in the midst of these hireling shepherds. First he reminds them that they have been forewarned as to the oncoming peril. Then he encourages them to maintain themselves in a strong spiritual condition. Finally, he counsels them to use discernment in ministering to those who have been victimized by the apostates. The apostles had predicted the rise of false teachers. This can be seen in the ministry of Paul (Act_20:29-30; 1Ti_4:1-5; 2Ti_3:1-9); Peter (2Pe_2:1-22; 2Pe_3:1-4); and John (1Jo_2:18-19). 18, 19 The gist of their message was that in the last time, mockers would appear, following their own ungodly lusts. To this testimony Jude now adds the explanation that these scoffers have three prominent characteristics. They are sensual persons, which means that they think and act as natural men. They cause divisions, drawing disciples after themselves and perhaps dividing people into various classes according to their progress in apostasy. They do not have the Spirit. They were never born from above and therefore have a total incapacity to understand the things of God. V. 20 The believer’s resource, of course, is to stay close to the Lord and live in unbroken fellowship with Him. But how is this done? Jude gives four steps. The first is building yourselves up on your most holy faith, that is, the Christian faith. We build up ourselves on it by studying and obeying the Bible. Constant familiarity with the word guides us positively in the way of righteousness, and warns us against the perils along the way. Men may decry doctrine, H. Pickering says, but it is creed that produces character and not character that produces creed.The second step is praying in the Holy Spirit. This means to pray as guided by the Spirit, in accordance with the will of God as revealed in the Bible or as privately revealed by the Spirit in a subjective way to the believer. It is in contrast to prayers which are recited mechanically or spun off without any real spiritual involvement. V. 21 Then again believers are to keep themselves in the love of God. Here the love of God can be compared to the sunshine. The sun is always shining. But when something comes between us and the sun, we are no longer in the sunshine. That’s the way it is with the love of God. It is always beaming down upon us. But if sin comes between us and the Lord, then we are no longer enjoying His love in practice. We can keep ourselves in His love first of all by lives of holiness and godliness. And if sin should come between, then we should confess and forsake that sin immediately. The secret is to let nothing come between us and God. Nothing between my soul and the Savior, Naught of this world’s delusive dream; Nothing preventing the least of His favor, Keep the way clear, let nothing between. Charles A. Tindley Finally, we should be eagerly looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. The mercy of our Lord here refers to His imminent return to take His people home to heaven. In days of darkness and apostasy, we are to keep the light of the blessed hope burning in our hearts. It will prove a comforting and purifying hope (1Th_4:18; 1Jo_3:3). V. 22 A certain measure of spiritual discernment is necessary in dealing with victims of apostasy. The Scriptures make a distinction between the way we should handle those who are active propagandists of false cults and those who have been duped by them. In the case of the leaders and propagandists, the policy is given in 2Jo_1:10-11 : If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him; for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds. But in speaking of those who have been deceived by false teachers, Jude counsels making a distinction and gives two separate courses of action. On some we should have compassion. That is, we should show a compassionate interest in them and try to guide them out of doubts and disputations into a firm conviction of divine truth. V. 23 Then there are those who are on the verge of the precipice, ready to fall over into the flames of apostasy. These we are to save by strong, resolute warning and instruction, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh. In the OT the clothing of a leper was contaminated and had to be burned (Lev_13:47-52). Today in dealing with people who have fallen into sexual sins, we must remember that material objects, such as clothing, for example, often excite the passions. As we see these things or feel them, there is a mental association with certain sins. So in dealing with people who have become defiled, we must be careful to avoid anything which might prove a temptation in our own lives. An unknown author expressed it like this: The clothes that belong to a man have about them the association and infection of sin, the contagion of evil. Whatever is associated with a life of sin should be cast off and renounced, if we are to be safe from the infection and contagion of this soul-destroying disease. J. B. Mayor warns, While it is the duty of the Christian to pity and pray for the sinner, he must view with loathing all that bears traces of the sin.

Jude 1:24

IV. THE BEAUTIFUL BENEDICTION (Vv. 24, 25) V. 24 Jude closes with a beautiful benediction. It is the ascription of praise and worship to Him who is able. He is able to save (Heb_7:25), able to establish (Rom_16:25), able to aid (Heb_2:18), able to subdue (Phi_3:21)and here He is able to keep. He is able to keep us in perfect peace (Isa_26:3), He is able to keep that which we have committed to Him until that Day (2Ti_1:12), He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think (Eph_3:20), and He is able to keep us from stumbling. This latter promise is especially timely for the days of apostasy to which Jude is referring. But the promise doesn’t stop there. He is able to make us stand faultless in the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. This is truly stupendous! When we think of what we weredead through our trespasses and sins; when we think of what we arepoor, weak, failing servants; and then to think that one day we will stand absolutely faultless in the Throne Room of the universe, rejoicing with exceeding joywhat grace is this! V. 25 He is not only our Keeper and PerfecterHe is God our Savior. It is a marvel that God should be so interested in us that He would also become our Savior, in the sense that He devised the plan whereby we are saved and He provided His sinless Son as the sacrificial Lamb. Who alone is wiseultimately all wisdom comes from God (cf. Jam_1:5). Our wisdom is merely derived from the fount of wisdom, the only wise God. If worship (Old English worth-ship) means ascribing to God what He is worthy of, it will be glory, and majesty, dominion, and power. Glorythe superlative honor He deserves for all He is and all He has done for us. Majestythe dignity and splendor He deserves as the Supreme Monarch of the universe. Dominionthe unchallenged sway which is His by sovereign right. And power or authoritythe might and prerogative to rule all that His hands have made. He was worthy of such praise in the past, He is worthy at the present time, and He will be worthy of it throughout eternity. Apostates and false teachers may seek to rob Him of glory, detract from His majesty, grumble against His dominion, and challenge His power. But all true believers find their greatest fulfillment in glorifying and enjoying Him both now and forever.Amen.