Who was Jude? The half-brother of Jesus. He refers to himself as the “brother of James” whom we know to be Christ’s half-brother and as a “slave of Jesus Christ”. This implies that he didn’t want any reader of his letter to listen to him simply because of his blood-ties to Jesus. As Jude (or Judas) was a common name, he needed to identify himself, but he seems to want the reader to listen to the message and forget who the messenger is.

Despite his family ties, Jude was not initially a disciple of Jesus:

For not even his own brothers believed in him.
John 7:5

“Now Jesus went home, and a crowd gathered so that they were not able to eat. When his family heard this they went out to restrain him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”
Mark 20-21

Jude is dated between 60-80AD. There is a close link between Jude and 2 Peter, but there is still debate about whether Peter quoted Jude or Jude quoted Peter.

“For certain men have secretly slipped in among you — men who long ago were marked out for the condemnation I am about to — ungodly men who have turned the grace of our God into a license for evil and who deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Jude 1:4

Jude uses non-canonical sources, quoting 1 Enoch which should not cause any problems – his readers were obviously well-versed in these writings and the moral lessons they presented.

Jude admits that the letter he wrote wasn’t the one he intended to write. So what made him change his mind? Well, the letter was written in response to a crisis. One of the early churches had been infiltrated by a group who pretended to be Christians but had some rather strange and dangerous ideas which they were teaching to this particular Christian community (According to David Payne and Bruce Chilton, the false teachers were corrupting Christ’s teachings with Antinomianism – a manifestation of Gnostic thought which viewed all matter (“flesh”) as evil and everything of a spiritual nature as “good”. They felt that they could develop their spiritual lives while allowing their “flesh” to do as it pleased, claiming that they had no responsibility for its offences). The community is never named, so we’ll never know which it was (although H.A Guy suggests that it is the church at Colossae, based on Paul’s letter to the Colossians which also speaks of “false teaching”). They are simply called “Those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ”. When Jude talks of faith, he is referring to the doctrine embraced by believers rather than the simple act of believing, he assumes a well-grounded knowledge of the faith – implying that the church in question was well established and not a “new” congregation trying to “brainstorm” its way through scripture – it was written for a specific church to meet a specific crisis at a specific point of time. According to verse 3, Jude originally intended to write about salvation. However, he changed the topic to contending for the faith, as embodied by the Christian doctrine taught by Christ and passed onto the apostles.

A group of Christians were being misled. They were being lied to. They were ALLOWING themselves to be lied to because they really wanted to believe what they were hearing. Life would be so much simpler if it were true - they were unhappy with the reality of Jesus because they didn’t really know Him – they wanted a shortcut to God, without all the study and faith that went into it. They didn’t want to do as He’d said. His teachings were easy to understand but difficult to carry out.

We see it today. Cults springing up. Offering “something different”. Every day, vulnerable people (usually the young) are approached by people offering “answers”. “Join us”, they say, “Live our alternative lifestyle and be happy”. If somebody offered you a cigarette in the playground and said, “Go on, smoke it! It won’t really kill you”, would you believe them? No? Why is that? Because lots of people have gone out of their way to give you the correct information. You’ll throw it back at them, I hope, because you KNOW they’re lying to you. They want you to believe the lie because they’ve got their own reasons for wanting you to smoke. You might not know what those reasons are, but they’re there all the same. It’s the same with drugs. The people who tell you they’re harmless are usually the people who want to get you hooked so they can sell the stuff to you day after day. They want your money. They don’t really care about you.

These particular false teachers that Jude was warning people about believed that there was a difference between body and spirit. They were teaching that the physical body was evil whilst the spirit was godly. If this were true, it meant that they could do whatever they wanted with their bodies as long as they kept their spirits clean. As long as they worshipped God, then what they did in the rest of their lives was irrelevant. I suppose they were playing on our natural desire to please ourselves; to live life as we want and not as we should.

Yes, I said WE. Because the lesson is just as relevant today as it always has. Possibly more so, as we live in a society which seems to be crumbling before our eyes. How many of us delude ourselves that our physical and spiritual life are separate? How many of us pick Jesus up and drape Him over ourselves like a cloak as we enter church and then put Him back on the peg as we leave – duty done for another week?

If we believe these false teachers, then it becomes OK to steal, cheat, lie. It becomes OK to chase after a work colleague. It becomes OK to bully that little kid at school because he’s different. Suddenly, we’re not responsible for anything we do anymore – our bodies are evil, wicked and we can’t help ourselves.

Of course, when anybody else does something to us, then that’s different. When we are cheated, when somebody talks about us behind our backs, when somebody bullies us – THEN, they know exactly what they’re doing. When somebody does back to us what we did to them, we bridle and complain. We complain about our “Godless society” whilst only spending an hour with Him on Sunday morning.

How did Jude answer these questions? How did Jude fight this particular fight? He says:

“But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith, by praying in the Holy Spirit, maintain yourselves in the love of God, while anticipating the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that brings eternal life. And have mercy on those who waver; save others by snatching them out of the fire; have mercy on others, coupled with a fear of God, hating even the clothes stained by the flesh”

In other words - he tells us to work at our faith, to live our WHOLE lives as followers of Jesus. We are to live our lives as Jesus intended. In effect, everything we do should be an act of worship. Like the particular group of Christians that Jude was so concerned about, we probably don’t like the idea much. We’d much rather do as we please, because that’s EASY and makes us happy – at least as long as we don’t think about God to much. It’s much more difficult to live life as a tribute to God, of course. It requires thought. It requires us to know what He wants. And “Yes”, it requires us to read the Bible and learn what it teaches.

And, I suppose, that’s the bit that those “False Teachers” didn’t understand. And that’s the reason why Jude was so worried about these Christians. When Jesus was asked by an expert in religious law what he had to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus asked the man to interpret the law as he saw it. The man’s answer proves rather upsetting to those who believe they can sin all they like because they’ve already been saved by believing in Jesus.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself.”

By giving in to temptation; by denying responsibility for the bad things we do; we cannot possibly hope to obey either of these. If we don’t allow our faith to control our actions, if we don’t act out our beliefs in our normal, everyday lives, then we are no better than those who decided to take the easy path and follow the false teachers.

But Jude tells us not to lose hope! He tells us that Jesus had predicted the arrival of these false teachers and that they were, in some way, necessary. We do not know why they were necessary, but perhaps it’s so we can understand why their dishonest words sound so appealing.

Moreover, he tells us to “save others” who are in danger of falling for false promises and deceit. We are not to judge them, we are to have mercy. As Christians, we become the safety net, not only for ourselves, but for everybody. WE are the ones chosen to guide the world away from wickedness and self-deceit. And we CAN do it – but only if we rely on Jesus. He is the one who will keep us from falling and He is the one who will act as OUR safety net. How can we fail if Jesus is with us?

I can think of no better way to finish that by stealing Jude’s parting words to a faltering church:

“Now to the one who is able to keep you from falling, and to cause you to stand, rejoicing, without blemish before his glorious presence, to the only God our Saviour through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time, and now, and for all eternity".

Amen

Conx
Copyright (c)2006 Conway Billington

Bibliography

A Bible Commentary For Today
G C D Howley
Pickering & Inglis Ltd
ISBN 0-7208-0440-X
1980 Reprint

An Introduction To The Bible
Stanley Cook
1954 Reprint
Penguin Books

Beginning New Testament Study
Bruce Chilton
SPCK
ISBN 0-281-04210-1

The Church In The New Testament
H A Guy
MacMillan Education

Notes On The Book Of Jude
Andy Cheung
Sermon 20th November 2005
Open Door Fellowship, Guildford

• Topic: Bible Study

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