The faith once for all delivered
The letter's charge is stated once and it governs the rest: 'contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints' (1:3). Three words do the work. The faith is a body of teaching that was handed over, so it is received before it is held. Once for all translates a term meaning done and not to be done again, so the deposit is closed. And the verb rendered contend earnestly is an athletic word appearing nowhere else in the New Testament, describing a man in a contest who has to strain for it. What is asked for is defense of something handed over, and the letter itself models the method, which is to name the error, show its ancestors in the record of judgment, and then tell the readers what to build and how to pray.
Jude 1:3 · Jude 1:4
Grace turned into a permit, and the only Master and Lord
The error is named in one clause: these men are 'turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ' (1:4). The two halves belong together. Making grace into permission for appetite is itself the denial, and the letter says so by putting them in one breath. The title given to Christ in that same clause is as high as language goes. The word rendered Master is the word for an owner with absolute right over his household, the word 2 Peter uses of 'the Master that bought them' (2 Peter 2:1), and it stands here with Lord and with the word only, so that one person holds both titles. A man who belongs to an owner does not hold a permit.
Jude 1:4
Three judgments already on the record
Before Jude describes the intruders he shows that God has dealt with this before, in three cases the readers already know. Israel first: 'the Lord, having saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not' (1:5), which is the wilderness generation whose bodies fell in the desert (Numbers 14:29). Then the angels, 'And angels that kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day' (1:6). Then the cities: 'Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them, having in like manner with these given themselves over to fornication and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire' (1:7). The order is the order of the record, and the first case is the sharpest, since those judged had been rescued first. A second triad follows at verse 11 with three men: Cain, who killed his brother; Balaam, who sold his gift; and Korah, who challenged Moses and went down alive into Sheol (Numbers 16:33).
Jude 1:5 · Jude 1:6 · Jude 1:7 · Jude 1:11
What an archangel would not say
'But Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing judgment, but said, The Lord rebuke thee' (1:9). The verse is in the letter to make one comparison. The intruders 'set at nought dominion, and rail at dignities' (1:8), talking freely about powers they know nothing of, and Michael, who does know, refused to. The words he uses are not his own either. They are the words the angel of the Lord speaks to Satan in Zechariah, 'Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan' (Zechariah 3:2), so even the archangel answers by referring the matter upward. What the passage teaches is a posture toward the unseen powers: they are real, they are dangerous, and the creature who has actual authority in the matter does not trade insults with them.
Jude 1:8 · Jude 1:9 · Jude 1:10
Build, pray, keep, look, and go in after people
After nineteen verses of warning the letter turns and gives four participles and a command. 'But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life' (1:20-21). Building and praying are how the keeping is done, and the looking is what it is done for. Praying in the Holy Spirit is given here as ordinary Christian practice for people under pressure from false teachers, stated without qualification and without a date attached. Then the letter sends them toward the people the false teachers have reached: 'And on some have mercy, who are in doubt' (1:22), 'and some save, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh' (1:23). The three responses are graded to three conditions, and rescue rather than avoidance is the point of all three.
Jude 1:20 · Jude 1:21 · Jude 1:22 · Jude 1:23
Able to guard you from stumbling
The letter that opened with people 'kept for Jesus Christ' (1:1) closes by naming who does the keeping: 'Now unto him that is able to guard you from stumbling, and to set you before the presence of his glory without blemish in exceeding joy' (1:24), 'to the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and power, before all time, and now, and for evermore' (1:25). The doxology answers the whole letter. Twenty-three verses have described men falling, and the last two say who holds those who do not. The word behind guard is a military one for a garrison, and the words rendered without blemish come from the sacrificial law, where they describe an animal fit to be offered. A congregation that has just been told to snatch people out of a fire is told at the end that the guarding is God's work.
Jude 1:1 · Jude 1:24 · Jude 1:25
