Jude

Purpose & theme

Jude is a short, fiery letter, a single urgent chapter, written to call the church to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (v. 3). Jude had intended to write a warm letter about “our common salvation,” but a crisis compelled him to change course: false teachers had crept unnoticed into the churches, ungodly men who “pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (v. 4). So instead of a general encouragement, Jude fires off a passionate warning, exposing these intruders, pronouncing their certain judgment, and rousing believers to defend the true gospel and to keep themselves in the love of God. The letter’s theme is the defense of the faith against those who would corrupt it from within, combined with a tender concern to keep believers standing firm.

Much of the letter is a vivid catalog of judgment, as Jude piles up example after example from the Old Testament and Jewish tradition to show that God will surely judge the ungodly: the unbelieving Israelites destroyed in the wilderness, the fallen angels kept in chains, Sodom and Gomorrah reduced to ashes, Cain, Balaam, and Korah. The false teachers are described in scorching images: “hidden reefs” at the love feasts, “waterless clouds,” “fruitless trees,” “wild waves of the sea,” “wandering stars” for whom “the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever” (vv. 12-13). Yet Jude does not leave his readers merely warned; he turns to build them up. He calls them to remember the apostles’ predictions, to “build yourselves up in your most holy faith,” to “pray in the Holy Spirit,” to “keep yourselves in the love of God,” and to show mercy toward those wavering, even snatching some “out of the fire” (vv. 20-23). And he closes with one of the most magnificent doxologies in all of Scripture, to the God “who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” (vv. 24-25). Jude thus arms the church to guard the gospel while resting in the God who keeps His people.