How To Survive With Your Faith Intact

Jude 17—23

With the exception of one more brief warning, Jude is finished with the issue of false teachers or apostates. The remaining verses of this brief and powerful letter contain a series of exhortations designed to encourage the believers to remain faithful and Jude even gives them some practical advice, which we would do well to take to heart.

But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” These are the men who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit. But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. Keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life. Be merciful to those who doubt; snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.

1. Remember the Gospel, verses 17, 18

Like Ezekiel, Jude sees himself a watchman on the walls of Zion; times are dangerous for the House of God, and so he tells his readers to remember. The words “but” and “but you” in these verses are in the emphatic position, showing what Jude thought of his readers. He holds them in high esteem, especially in contrast to the false teachers. Jude expects much from them.

Jude again addresses his readers as agapetoi, “my beloved.” Because he loved his friends so much, Jude has spent considerable time on this issue. They face struggles, and in the face of what is to come, the first piece of advice given is to remember the teachings of the apostles. The Twelves, as they were known, and Paul, had a far reaching ministry, most of which we know nothing of. Edwin Blum makes a wonderful comment:

[T]heir preaching was part of the oral deposit of faith for the early churches.

The readers must be able to recall the message of the Gospel so that they can defend themselves against the pernicious attacks of the apostates. This is a powerful bit of advice for it places the emphasis of defense on the Word of God, not on the words of man. False teachers can be beaten, but not by clever arguments based on man’s doctrines, but on the plain teachings of the Word.

The teaching that Jude quotes is not found anywhere in the New Testament in those exact words; this has led most scholars to conclude that Jude paraphrased the overall teaching of the apostles. For example, Paul wrote this in Acts 20:29,

I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock.

The Greek suggests that the idea of this teaching, that there would be selfish scoffers in the last days, was something taught repeatedly by the apostles. Through their sermons, they drilled this into the hearts and heads of the congregations of the early church. The term “last days” as used throughout the New Testament refers to their present time and a time in the future. The apostles never relaxed their vigilance, even during relative good times they were conscious that the believer is an enemy to the world in which he lives. This is surely a message for today, as we see the Church compromising itself time and time again, making friends with the world instead of fighting against it.

And so, Jude advises his friends that the best defense against false teaching is to know the Word of God. Believers have been warned of perilous times, they should not be surprised when they come, but they should know how to defend and contend for the faith.

2. Avoid false teachers, verse 19

For just a moment, Jude returns to the subject of false teachers. He merely reminds them that they:

• “divide you.” The Greek word is extremely rare and may be “they make distinctions” between believers. Rather than accepting a brother or sister as a brother or sister, these false teachers put people into classes.
• “follow mere natural instincts.” The Greek is psychikoi, from which we get our word “psychic,” but really means “soulish” or “unspiritual.” The church today seems plagued by teachers and preachers who claim special knowledge or “revelation” based on some kind of mystical experience, yet their lives don’t stand up under scrutiny.
• “do not have the Spirit.” Despite their grand words, they are void of the Holy Spirit.

These kind of people do not have a place in the Church. Believers are not even to associate with heretics like this. Jesus spoke of not casting our peals before swine; in other words, some people are best avoided because of the damage they can cause to the Body of Christ.

3. Persevere and pray, verses 20, 21

The repetition of agapetoi serves to personalize the remaining few verses and points back to Jude’s friends. He gives his readers a series of four admonitions dealing with faith, prayer, love, and hope.

• Believers should “build themselves up” in their “most holy faith.” The Greek suggests this “building up” is a continuous process that never ends. The “most holy faith” refers to the objective faith that came through the apostles; it includes all their teachings and practices. Today, we would say that believers need to study the Word of God, apply its teachings to the practices of everyday life and in that way, we are built up, fortified. Christians are also built up by fellowshipping together and worshiping together.
• Believers are to be praying in the Holy Spirit. Once again, the Greek indicates a continuous, never ending activity. Praying in the Holy Spirit is not “praying in tongues” as some teach. Since all believers are filled with the Holy Spirit, all believers should pray according to His will. That will is made known through the Word of God, through inner promptings and through the preaching of the gospel. Paul wrote a similar things in Ephesians 6:8. The wonderful thing about being filled with the Holy Spirit is that the Holy Spirit takes our feeble prayers and prefects and presents them to God the Father (Kistemaker). See also Romans 8:26. This is in sharp contrast to the apostates, who don’t have the Holy Spirit in them.
• Believers are to keep themselves in the love of God. The Greek for “keep” is teresate, an aorist imperative, stressing urgency. Robert Shank succinctly observed, The burden of Jude is that his readers continue to fight the good fight of faith. Charles Spurgeon is known to have placed a plaque over the doorway to his London Pastor’s College that read: Holding I am held. What an amazing truth! Neither clause can stand alone, they are both necessary for together they summarize the essence of Christ’s words, “Remain in me, and I in you.”
• Finally, believers are to be focused on the “mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ” because that is what gives them “eternal life.” Literally, the last half of verse 20 reads, “As you are waiting with expectation.” Elsewhere in the NT, believers are live their lives in anticipation of: the resurrection (Acts 24:15); their eternal glory (Titus 2:13); and the return of Christ (Luke 12:36). We can see that the life of the believer should be lived in expectation of great and positive things! In the context of Jude, believers are to eagerly anticipate the day of judgment for they will be acquitted as all believers experience the fullness of the mercy of Christ, but the wicked will be punished.

4. Show mercy, verses 22, 23

These verses contain some minor textual problems, which serve only as distractions because they don’t add or take away from anything Jude is trying to say. Basically, Jude is telling believers that there are three groups of people who need to shown mercy: those who are hesitating in questioning their faith, those who need to be saved from the fire, and those who need pity because they have been contaminated by the false teachers.

In view of the mercy we have been shown in Christ, we ought to show as much to those who need it. Stephen Grellet is thought to have said:

I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to my fellow-creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

1. The first command to show mercy to those who are doubting (hesitating). The NEB has a translated this phrase in a striking way: “There are some doubting souls who need your pity.” Perhaps these false teachers have caused some to question their faith, these folk need to be reassured, not criticized. They need to shown patience, love, and mercy.
2. The second group to whom mercy must be shown involves those who have been scotched by the flames of sin. Jude likely has in mind Amos 4:11, where God says to Israel, “You were like a burning stick snatched from the fire.” Those who are so influenced by sin are in danger of losing their very souls and time is short for them. To these who are on the verse of perishing, we are the instruments of their salvation. Calvin comments, “The word ‘save’ is transferred to men, not that they are the authors, but they are the ministers of salvation.”
3. The final group needing mercy is a group tainted or corrupted by sin. These have likely been involved in the immorality of the false teachers. But the imagery is powerful. The picture Jude paints is of undergarments soiled by discharges from the body. Jude wants his readers to feel intense repulsion at that thought. Those who are covered in such filth desperately need help. What a marvelous picture of the length and breadth of God’s mercy and grace: He is able to exchange the excrement-covered garments for festive garments of righteousness. There is not one sinner—even the most defiled sinner—who is beyond salvation through faith in Jesus Christ’s redemptive work.

5. Concluding words of praise, verses 24, 25

In a stunning ascription of adoration, Jude turns to God. Interestingly, he has come full circle. He opened his letter attributing love and protection to God the Father and Jesus Christ. He concludes it by praising God and His Son for their protection.

First, after reading about these false teachers, one gets the impression that just getting to heaven is almost impossible. In the face of the constant struggles to maintain our faith, how can we do it? The answer lies in the keeping power of God the Father. This doxology, the most powerful in the NT, reminds us of God’s ability to bring every one of His own safely to Himself. God is able to guard His own as “the apple of His eye” (Deut. 32:10), for we are His precious possession.

Second, not only does God protect us, He will present us to God His Father. We are utterly unable to enter into heaven on our own merit. But glory be to God, through the effort of His Son, we are protected from falling away and made able to enter Heaven’s gate. Not only that, we are presented to the Father without fault! That is a statement made even more stunning by the fact that the singular Greek word, amomos, is used here of believers and in 1 Peter 1:19 of Jesus Christ!

Finally, and I think most remarkably, the phrase “with great joy.” To whom does this apply? To believer most assuredly. The final completion of our great salvation will fill us with unbelievable joy. But imagine the joy that will fill heaven when believers stand complete before their heavenly Father will be shared with all the saints of glory and with the Father and the Son.

Exposing the False Teachers

Likewise also, these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities. Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil and disputing about the body of Moses, dared not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, “The Lord rebuke thee!”
But these speak evil of those things which they know not; but what they come to know naturally as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. Woe unto them! For they have gone in the way of Cain and have run greedily after the error of Balaam for their reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah.

These are spots on your feasts of charity when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear. Clouds they are without water, carried about by winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever. (Jude 8—13, 21st Century KJV)

After giving three examples of rebellion against the will of God and the subsequent descriptions of God’s judgment, Jude continues to describe the godless false teachers of his day. He has already given the reader a brief description of them in verse 4:

They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord. (NIV)

1. Perversions of the Apostates, verse 8

Now, Jude expands on this description using three powerful verbs: pollute, reject, and slander.

• Pollute. By using the phrase “In the very same way,” Jude links the behavior of these false teachers to the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah. This sin of polluting matches the homosexual acts of verse 7. Whether Jude limits their sin to just that or other sexual sins is unknown, but we get the idea that these false teachers engaged in sexual excess.
• Reject: Jude observes that these men reject authority. There is a difference of opinion as to what “authority” Jude has in mind. Calvin suggests Jude is referring to civil magistrates, while other expositors think he was referring to church leaders. Perhaps Jude had all kinds of authority in mind, especially their rejection of Christ’s authority over them.
• Slander: Finally, these godless men “slander celestial beings.” Jude doesn’t say how or why they do this. Given when we know of them so far, perhaps in their materialistic and worldly lifestyle they deny the very existence of all spiritual beings, both good and evil.

2. Pattern of Michael, verse 9

Michael is one of only two angels named in all of Scripture. The other one is Gabriel. “Michael,” literally translated means “one who is like God” is portrayed by Daniel as the guardian angel of the Jews (Dan. 12:1). In Revelation, Michael is seen as a “warrior angel” who does battle against the devil (Rev. 12:7—9). This verse has caused some great debates in theological circles from the days of the early church. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Didymus of Alexandria, early church fathers all, have written that Jude is quoting from something called “The Assumption of Moses,” an apocryphal book, of which only a few fragments remain.

The fact that Jude freely quotes from not one but two apocryphal books led some in the early church to question the inspiration of Jude. However, Jude merely quotes from the books, he doesn’t claim they are authoritative or inspired. His point in quoting from these sources seems pretty obvious; his readers would doubtless have been familiar with them, inspired, folklore or not, and the false teachers should have learned from the example of the archangel Michael. In the “Assumption of Moses,” the Devil claimed the right to the body of Moses because of Moses’ sin of murder. In spite of Michael’s high position, power and dignity, he refused to argue with or slander the Devil, but rather referred their dispute to God, the Highest Authority.

The point, as Barclay said is:

If the greatest of the good angels refused to speak evil of the greatest of the evil angels, even in circumstances like that, the surely no human may speak evil of any angel.

3. Practices of the Apostates, verse 10

“Yet these men” is statement of extreme contempt and shows how Jude felt about them. They, unlike Michael, presume to speak evil about things they don’t know anything about. These “dreamers” have some knowledge, but mock at things they know nothing of. As Jude says elsewhere, in verse 19,

These are the men who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.

They may have some knowledge, but they are completely devoid of Divine knowledge. This reminds us of the words of Paul:

The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

From the Scottish Psalter Hymnal, we read this version of David’s psalm, 14:

The God who sits enthroned on high,
The foolish in the heart deny;
Not one does good: corrupt in thought,
Unrighteous works their hands have wrought.

Without God’s guidance and spiritual discernment, people are abysmally ignorant of reality and can rely only instinct; only on what they see. The Teacher in Ecclesiastes came to the same conclusion. He called it “folly” or “vanity.”

4. Past Judgments Upon the Apostates, verse 11

This verse begins with Jude imitating Jesus as He pronounced His series of “Woes” in the Gospels. No other New Testament writer did this. If we break this verse down, the trio of rebellious religious rebels looks like this:

• Cain: the worshiper who gave too little;
• Balaam: the prophet who prayed too often (about the same thing)
• Korah: the minister who professed to much (claiming equal authority with Moses and Aaron)

Note the progression here, their sinful rebellion goes from the relatively minor (improper worship) to more serious (improper praying), finally to overestimating their own importance. Jude says there is no hope for people like this. Each verb, “have taken,” “have rushed,” and “have been destroyed” are all in the aorist tense, indicating a complete action. Arndt and Gingrich, masters of Greek, have said this indicates that Jude is saying because their sin is so certain, their punishment is so certain, that he regards it as having come upon them already. These false teacher, in Jude’s estimation, are the walking dead.

5. Predicted end of the Perverts, verses 12-13

With striking eloquence, Jude piles figure upon figure to describe the apostate teachers in detail, ending in their end.

• Blemishes at your love feasts. There are two ways to translate spilas (blemishes, NIV). It can be rendered “rocks” or “hidden rock,” as the NASB reads, or “spots” or “blemishes,” as the NIV and KJV, among others, have translated it. Either translation puts the apostates in a bad light: if they are likened to “hidden rocks,” Jude has mind the “shipwreck of faith,” so they are dangerous to genuine believers. If “blemishes,” Jude indicates a “defilement.” The Love Feast” was a big meal that accompanied the Communion service in the early church. The idea Jude is putting forward is that merely fellowshipping with such persons can jeopardize the stability of genuine faith by corrupting all who come in contact with them.
• Shepherds who feed only themselves. What a way to describe a person; selfish and self-centered, caring only for their own needs and wants. False shepherds who care nothing for the flock.
• Clouds blown by wind without rain. Literally, these false teachers are “waterless clouds,” promising rain but delivering nothing.
• Twice dead trees. Jude compares the apostate teachers fruitless trees, long past harvest. Not only have these trees not born fruit, they have been uprooted—twice dead.
• Restless sea. For us today, the sea is a vision of beauty, but to ancient man, the sea was a place of terror and fear. The prophet Isaiah also compared the sinner to the sea: But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud. (Isa. 57:20). The false teachers are restless, moving from place to place, leaving behind what the restless sea leaves behind on the seashore: foam and scum.
• Wandering stars. This is the final metaphor to describe the apostate teachers. Stars can be helpful because the illuminate the darkness, All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by, but in the case of the false teachers, they are so erratic, they illuminated nothing. The emphasis, however, is not on the word “stars,” but on the concept of “wandering.” It’s root is the same root for the word “error.” J.B. Moffatt calls these men “erratic comets or shooting meteors, who have deserted their proper orbit and broken away from the regulations of the Lord.”

These false teachers, because they are out of orbit, have to moral center, and are burning themselves out is sin, heading for a place of complete blackness forever.