There is a museum by the Dachau Concentration Camp that serves to remind its visitors of the horrors suffered under Hitler and the Nazi party. There is a sign posted for all visitors to see as they leave with a quote by Winston Churchill that reads: “Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat its mistakes.”[1] Jude’s little epistle serves to remind us of a history, that if ignored, we too might be doomed to repeat.
The people Jude warns us of remind me of the morning my brother and I were late to the bus stop for school, I believe we missed the bus that day. On our way to the bus stop, a nice stranger invited us to get into the car so that he could take us to wherever we needed to go. My brother was tempted, and I was afraid to get into the car, so when it became apparent that we would not get into the car, the stranger drove off. False teachers are like the nice stranger who offers a child candy to get that child to get into the car, to take that child to a place that will forever impact that child’s future. The candy often comes in the form of something that sounds good, such as the offer to gain a better understanding of the Bible, to grow closer to the true God through some hidden secret knowledge, or the offer of some key to unlocking the secrets of the Bible and reality.
Permit me to push the stranger illustration a bit further. The reason my brother and I were able to sense danger when we were offered a ride from the person in the car was because our parents warned us of such people and informed us of a history involving such people, and the best way to resist them. The reason Jude saturated his little letter with examples from Israel’s past is because there is nothing new under the sun; the only thing that has changed is the dress. Since the birth of the Church, many have snuck into churches to introduce false doctrines that are labeled in the Bible as, “doctrines of demons.” Listen to the warning the apostle Paul gave to a young pastor named Timothy: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons…” (1 Tim. 4:1–2).
The reason Jude emphasizes the need to “…contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (v. 3), and that the Christians everywhere must build on the, “…most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life” (v. 21) is because the Devil is really good at using the ignorance of God’s people to harm them. John Wycliff said it best when he wrote the following warning: “To be ignorant of the Scripture is the same thing as to be ignorant of Christ.”[2] Listen, if you are ignorant of the Great Shepherd, you will be gullible enough to buy into the lies of a stranger who seeks your harm and not your good. These are the people we are warned about in Jude: “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions” (v. 18). Daniel Akin wrote concerning false teachers: “Disciples of Jesus must never let their spiritual guard down. They must be spiritually discerning, testing every teaching by the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Word of God. Eloquent speech is not the issue. Faithfulness to the Bible is.”[3]
The Scoffers
When will the scoffers come? Jude says, “In the last time.” What is the last time? It is the time between Jesus’ ascension into heaven and his return to earth; the “last time” is the time we find ourselves in today and it is the time Christians have found themselves in since the birth of the Church that we read about in the book of Acts during the first century. The “scoffers” are the same people who have crept into the church, but not only those who snuck in. To “scoff” is to mock, but it can also include an attitude that is dismissive due to a “self-assured arrogance”[4] that following their, “own ungodly passions” is the best way to walk. In fact, it is their arrogance and ungodly passions that serve as their moral and theological compass. In 2 Peter 3:4, these scoffers question the legitimacy of Jesus’ promised return to judge the living and the dead. In Jude, these scoffers do not revere or respect the holiness of God.
In the wake of their “walking” these scoffers are divisive, worldly, and “devoid of the Spirit” (v. 19). Jude informs us that the reason these people teach the things that they teach and live the way that they live is because they are, “devoid of the Spirit.” What this means is that these scoffers are spiritually lost even though they say that they know Jesus, they really do not know Him. Paul wrote in Romans 8:9, “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” In Titus 1:16, we are told that such people, “profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work.” Jesus said of such people: “…every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:15–20).
One of the many false teachings the Church encountered in the past confronted head on during the Protestant Reformation is what is known as Antinomianism. Antinomianism, which still exists today under a different dress, teaches that Christians are freed from all obligation to obey God’s Moral Law. There are dozens of examples from the Bible that such teaching does not represent the teachings of the Bible; what Jesus said in Matthew 7 and what Jude wrote in verse 19 is proof enough that true genuine faith in the resurrected Jesus as Master and Lord over your life does not give you a license to sin, but instead will affect you in such a way that you will want to live a life that falls in line with God’s Moral Law. The lifestyle of the false teachers, according to Jude, is proof enough that although they say that they belong to Jesus, they really do not and are in fact, “devoid of the Spirit.”
What is possible to notice in these verses, is the way Jude contrasts the scoffers with the beloved.
The Beloved
So, who is the beloved? You remember from the very first verse in Jude that the “beloved” is the person who has been called by God, unconditionally loved by the Father, and kept for and by Jesus. According to the second verse in Jude, the one who is kept for Jesus because he is loved by the Father, will only know the “mercy, peace, and love” of the One who called him.
Yet, in the first two verses, Jude gives us the reason why we must avoid the false teachers who deny Jesus as Master and Lord (v. 4), Jude offers us a strategy to not only avoid the trap of the scoffers, but a formula that will only deepen our relationship with the God who saved us. There is an imperative (command) that Jude anchors three participles to. The imperative is the word, “keep.” The three participles are found in verses 20-21 (the participles are italicized):
- “Building yourselves in your most holy faith…”
- “Praying in the Holy Spirit…”
- “Waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus…”
The way the NIV translates the Greek I believe is helpful in seeing how these three participles are connected to the word, “kept”: “But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying 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” (Jude 20–21). How does one remain in God’s love? You do so by building your life upon His word, praying in the Holy Spirit, and waiting for Jesus Christ.
Build yourselves upon the Word of God
Another way you can say this is, “Grow in your understanding and knowledge of the Scriptures.” What he means by this is what he already admonished his readers to do in verse 3, “…contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” The apostle Paul said the same thing in Ephesians 2:20, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone…” (Eph. 2:19–20).
The Cornerstone of our faith is Jesus and the gospel, as it is fleshed out from Genesis through Revelation, is our foundation. Our understanding of Jesus, as our Cornerstone, will shape our understanding of who God is. If we get Jesus wrong, we will get God wrong; if we get Jesus right, we will get God right. This is why Jesus said to anyone who would follow Him:
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (Matt. 7:24–27)
In their commentary on Jude, Jim Shaddix and D.L. Akin observe: “As we learn the Bible and understand its truth, we are strengthened, we grow, we mature, we are built up. Without the Scriptures there is no growth. Without the Word there is no maturity. Without the gospel nothing of eternal good will last. Like the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, it is vital that we daily ingest and digest God’s Word and its truth.”[5]
Pray in the Holy Spirit
Praying in the Holy Spirit is the second participle anchored to the word “kept.” What Jude means here is not that we pray in some angelic or heavenly language, but that we depend upon the Holy Spirit. What kind of praying does Jude have in mind? It is the kind of praying described in Ephesians 6:18, where we are, “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” It is the kind of praying that seeks God’s will for our lives above our own desires and dreams for life.
The Holy Spirit is not some force or a type of impersonal power, the Holy Spirit is a He, and that “He” is a Person, and that Person is the Helper and Counselor promised to the Christian (see John 16:4-15), and the Helper is God the Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who seals and secures all who belong to God: “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (Eph. 1:13–14). It is the Holy Spirit that the false teachers are devoid of, and it is what sets the true Christian apart from those who do not have eternal life, so we depend upon Him in knowing and that helps us in our weakness: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26).
Wait for the Savior
As we build our lives in obedience upon the Word of God with Jesus as our Cornerstone, while we depend upon God’s Holy Spirit to help, lead, and direct… we wait and long for our Redeemer: God the Son. Waiting is another way of saying, “watching.” Why are we waiting and watching for Jesus? Because we know that because the tomb is empty, his promise to return is imminently sure!
It is Jesus who the Psalmist promised in Psalm 24:7-8, “Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle” (Psalm 24:7–8)! The mercy Jude says the true Christian is watching is the, “blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13) that every Christian anticipates. Or as Jim Shaddix so eloquently describes:
The Christian’s heart and eyes are fixed heavenward, looking for a rider on a white horse whose name is Faithful and True, whose eyes are like a fiery flame, and on his head are many crowns. We are looking for one whose robe is dipped in blood, and on his thigh he has a name written: King of kings and Lord of lords (cf. Rev 19:11–16). Until then we will grow in his Word, pray by his Spirit, and watch for his coming.[6]
Oh, don’t you see what Jude is doing in these verses? He is showing us that the key to keeping in the Love of God is found in a relationship with a God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! We are to set our eyes heavenward on the God who called us. We are to watch for Jesus out of a longing for our Groom as His Bride. We are to desperately depend upon the Holy Spirit who has sealed us for the Day of our redemption and powerfully Helps us to persevere until the end. This is what the false teachers want to deconstruct and pervert, but it is the key to remaining in the love of God that is foreign to anyone who has not been called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ (v. 3).
Conclusion (vv. 22-23)
As men and women with our eyes set on God, our hearts fixed on Jesus, and our dependance resting in the Holy Spirit, how are we to respond to the those who have crept in? What is our posture to be towards those who deny Jesus as Master and Lord with their words and with their lives? Well, in verse 22, we are introduced to next the imperative, and that is: “have mercy.” We are to exercise the same mercy we have received in three different ways:
- We are to have mercy on those who doubt.
- We are to show mercy by seeking to rescue those caught up into false teaching from hell.
- We are to exercise mercy with the utmost caution and fear.
We are to have mercy on those who doubt.
The Christian is a conduit of God’s mercy and grace. We must have mercy on those caught up in false teaching and responsible for the false teaching because the God who called the Christian is merciful (Psalm 116:5). There is no sin so great that God’s mercy and His grace cannot overcome; we Christians ought to be very aware of this because we have experienced it ourselves.
We are to seek to rescue those caught up in false teaching from hell.
God uses those He has redeemed through the blood of His Son to tell unredeemed sinners where to find redemption. As one commentator wrote: “Too much is at stake for believers not to take decisive action to rescue others from the destruction awaiting the false teachers.”[7] One of my favorite quotes is from a missionary by the name of C.T. Studd who said, “Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop, within a yard of hell.”
We are to exercise mercy with the utmost caution and fear.
We are to show the scoffers who deny Jesus as Master and Lord mercy, but a mercy laced with a fear of being drawn into the same kind of sinful deception. What is true of the one who has been called, beloved, and kept by God is a hatred of sin. This does not mean that we are free from sinning, but it does mean that our affections have changed and continue to change where we long more and more to please the One who rescued us from hell. We are a walking example of the kind of change God can bring upon a person; what is true of the Christian is offered even to the false teacher: “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (Isaiah 1:18).
[1] Helm, D. R. (2008). 1 & 2 Peter and Jude: sharing christ’s sufferings (p. 323). Crossway Books.
[2] John Wycliffe (Source unknown)
[3] Akin, Daniel L. (2019). Christ-Centered Exposition: The Sermon on the Mount (pp. 141-42). Holman Reference.
[4] Matthew S. Harmon, ESV Expository Commentary: Jude (Wheaton, IL: Crossway; 2018); p. 519.
[5] Shaddix, J., & Akin, D. L. (2018). Exalting jesus in 2 peter, jude (Jud 20). Holman Reference.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Matthew S. Harmon. ESV Expository Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway; 2018), P. 520
