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Jude

Judechapter 1

25 verses · BSBJude book hub →

Speaks with:2 Peter 2×111 Peter 1×2Ephesians 6×2Romans 1×22 Peter 3×21 John 4×2

Summary

Chapter summary

Twenty-five verses of alarm from the Lord's own half-brother. Jude meant to write of the common salvation, but necessity changed the letter: 'contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints' (v3), for certain men crept in privily, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness. Three judgments are recited: the people saved out of Egypt and afterward destroyed; 'angels that kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation,' kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day (v6), the Genesis 6 Watchers, and the next sentence seals the reading, for Sodom and Gomorrah 'in like manner with these' went after strange flesh. Then the way of Cain, the error of Balaam, the gainsaying of Korah (clouds without water, wandering stars) yet on some have mercy, 'snatching them out of the fire.'

Context

Epistle · Jude — Jude overview

  • A. 1–4 Contend for the Faith: Certain Men Crept In
  • B. 5–11 Egypt, Angels, Sodom — Three Judgments Remembered
  • C. 12–16 Clouds Without Water, and the Prophecy of Enoch
  • D. 17–23 Build Yourselves Up; Snatch Others From the Fire
  • E. 24–25 To Him Who Is Able to Keep You From Falling

The outline

  1. A.Contend for the Faith: Certain Men Crept Invv. 1 to 4

    Read vv. 1 to 4 →

  2. B.Egypt, Angels, Sodom — Three Judgments Rememberedvv. 5 to 11

    Read vv. 5 to 11 →

  3. C.Clouds Without Water, and the Prophecy of Enochvv. 12 to 16

    Read vv. 12 to 16 →

  4. D.Build Yourselves Up; Snatch Others From the Firevv. 17 to 23

    Read vv. 17 to 23 →

  5. E.To Him Who Is Able to Keep You From Fallingvv. 24 to 25

    Read vv. 24 to 25 →

Threads

Each of these runs on past this chapter. The passage you have just read is marked.

Kept by the power of God

Pattern

Three letters end the canon on one verb: God keeps. Paul's deposit is kept against that day, Peter's scattered strangers are kept for a reserved inheritance, and Jude opens on the preserved and closes on him that is able to keep you from falling.

The keeping runs one direction: in every beat the keeper is God and the kept are his people. Each letter can command endurance because safety rests on the keeper, and Jude turns the doctrine into worship before the letter ends.

  1. 2 Timothy 1:12

    Able to keep my deposit

    I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.

  2. 1 Peter 1:4-5

    Kept for the inheritance

    The inheritance is reserved in heaven for the heirs, and the heirs are kept by the power of God through faith for it.

  3. Jude 1:1 you are here

    Preserved in Jesus Christ

    Jude's first word to the called is that they are sanctified and preserved.

  4. Jude 1:24 you are here

    Able to keep you from falling

    The letter that exposes the apostates closes on the God who presents his own faultless before the presence of his glory.

The world behind this chapter

Jude 1
When
The generation of the apostles, as the first false teachers spread · c. AD 65–80
Where
A short, fierce letter from Jude, a brother of James and of the Lord, to congregations that had let dangerous men in
Who first heard it
Believers sharing meals with teachers who used grace as a license

The history

The men Jude describes had slipped in unnoticed and were eating at the love feasts — the shared meals where the congregation ate together and celebrated the Lord's Supper. Bringing a full meal for everyone, hosted in a home, meant these teachers were being fed and honored by the very people they were exploiting.

Jude reaches for angels who did not keep their proper dwelling but abandoned their own home, and says they are kept in chains under darkness. The house reading takes this as Genesis 6 — the Watchers who left heaven, took human wives, and were imprisoned for it — and Jude's placement of Sodom immediately afterward, with its own pursuit of strange flesh, supports the parallel. The competing reading, that these are the angels who fell with Satan before creation, is named rather than dismissed.

Jude quotes 1 Enoch by name and alludes to a dispute between Michael and the devil over the body of Moses, which comes from another Jewish writing of the period. MannaFest treats both as labeled study resources rather than Scripture; Jude uses them the way Paul quotes a Greek poet — a true saying from a source that is not itself the Word of God.

The three villains named — Cain, Balaam, Korah — were shorthand every Jewish hearer could unpack: the man who killed his brother over worship, the prophet who sold his gift, and the man who challenged God's appointed leadership. The nature pictures that follow are all things that promise and fail: waterless clouds, fruitless autumn trees, wild waves, wandering stars.

What it meant to them

The first hearers were being told that hospitality had let in the very thing that had destroyed earlier generations, and that the pattern is old — angels, Egypt's unbelieving generation, Sodom, all in three verses.

But the letter does not end in fire. It ends with them building each other up, praying, keeping themselves in the love of God, and pulling some out of the fire — and then with the promise that God is able to keep them from stumbling and present them before his glory without fault.

Sources cited

  • 1 Enoch (R. H. Charles translation), read as a labeled study resource
  • Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm

Every work MannaFest builds on →

The text of this chapter

This page carries no textual note on Jude 1. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →

Connections from this chapter

v. 22 · Written to them

On some have compassion, making a difference

topics/doubt→

MannaFest topical index

This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.

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