To Correct or Encourage?
Do I just keep encouraging my child, servant or follower, or must I instruct them with words of exhortation? Every parent, master, or leader must judge between the value of correction versus positive reinforcement.
Jude, a leader of the church no less loving of the recipients of his letter than the Apostles, faces this familiar dilemma of the parent. I want to encourage you, my beloved children, by acknowledging all of the good things you do. BUT, (Oh, oh, here it comes…) I have this against you.
If this approach of dealing with the church and individual wayward relationships to the Lord and each other sounds familiar, it should. In the Revelation of Jesus Christ to the Apostle John exhortation to the seven churches also takes this form.
Like John, Peter, Paul and others, Jude has a close relationship with many individual saints of the church. As a father encourages a son or daughter, so the words of Jude touch the hearts of the hearers of his letter.
They will hear Jude’s letter as words from a beloved mentor. Many know Jude, Servant of Jesus Christ as the brother of James or know of him.
Jude’s greeting:
Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.
Jude 1:2 KJV
ἔλεος Mercy to you, Jude writes.
It means kindness or good will towards the miserable and the afflicted, joined with a desire to help them. Jude not only knows them but cares about their struggles and community.
When Jesus tells the parable of the good Samaritan, our Lord convicts us that we often fail to show mercy to our fellow man. We too tend to qualify which neighbor we choose for our mercy. Yet like those who questioned the Lord we know which one acted as Christ would act.
“The one who showed mercy to him,” he said.
Luke 10:37 CSB
Then Jesus told him, “Go and do the same.”
Jude shows the church compassion and mercy, also greeting them with peace and love multiplied. If you are one of those called by the Father you will recognize the same peace of Jesus Christ regardless of what exhortation will follow.
“Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.
The words of Jesus Christ, the Good News of John 14:27 NASB
ἀγάπη – Love
Love is much misaligned and misdirected in and by the church. Jude speaks here of agapē [ah-gah’-pay], the love by which all hearers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be known.
ἀγάπη – Agape is affection, good will, love, benevolence, brotherly love; that visible relationship between Christians. One key reason Jude and others must exhort individuals to such love is so that others will always recognize us as beloved children of our loving Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus warns us in the Gospel of Matthew:
“Many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. Because lawlessness will multiply, the love of many will grow cold.
Did our Lord not describe this familiar brokenness of the church in these last days? Jude must warn the saints faithful to the Lord.
Jesus added an encouragement to this caution about our potential loss of agape love:
“But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
Jude will exhort believers to keep in Jesus’ love, abide in His love or live as Jesus taught us by His example.
“Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.
If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
Encouragement of Jesus – Gospel of John 15:9-10 NASB
Occasion of Jude’s Letter
Jude – NRSV
Jude clearly states the reason for his exhortation replacing unsalted positive encouragement.
3 Beloved, while eagerly preparing to write to you about the salvation we share, I find it necessary to write and appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. 4 For certain intruders have stolen in among you, people who long ago were designated for this condemnation as ungodly, who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
His indictment is clear, a warning to the saints to watch out for those ungodly ‘christians’ who have stolen their way into the trust of the church. They pervert grace into licentiousness.
Because now we rarely hear such pointed exhortation, let’s look just a bit closer into the problem outlined in verse 4.
- Certain intruders pervert God’s grace.
- It’s not everybody or even the majority of the saints.
- These sinners were marked out beforehand for condemnation, pointing to their same sins from the Old Testament. Jude’s following verses point to these OT examples.
- This is Jude’s and the church’s general condemnation of ungodly persons who turn from the grace of God, as opposed to the repentance possible for those God allows to return to righteousness.
- They pervert the grace of God into licencentious.
- one of Jude’s two serious indictments
- and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
How can ANY man or woman identified as a ‘christian’ deny Jesus as the Messiah (Christ), Lord God & ONLY lord and master of your mortal and eternal life?
Jude, bondservant of Jesus, would have us ask this question of every hearer of his letter. Who truly serves Jesus Christ as your Master and Lord?
Other Description of Jude’s purpose
The Geneva Bible of 1599 states:
3 He warneth the godly to take heed of such men, 4 that make the grace of God a cloak for their wantonness:
Like licentiousness, wantonness leaves us thinking of an archaic approach to sin rarely mentioned in this day and translated gently for contemporary readers of Jude’s exhortation.
All will agree that Jude urges the saints (all Christians) to contend earnestly or defend the true faith handed down to the church by Christ and through the faithful word of God in the the Old Testament. From there we easily stray when called upon to confront a false claimant of Christ.
Who are these?
Jude writes, ‘certain men have crept in unnoticed,’ or ‘by stealth’ some versions translate.
Let’s examine Jude’s two-part accusation.
ἀσέλγεια – Licentiousness
Defined: unbridled lust, excess, licentiousness, lasciviousness, wantonness, outrageousness, shamelessness, insolence
We tend to think of the sin of these men Jude describes as sexual sin, a sin which may accurately describe just part of their specific acts against God. Yet other sinful behaviors men and women would hide from the saints with whom they worship certainly apply to Jude’s warning.
Jude’s exhortation describes a general conduct thought to be private which would cause a public disgust. These shameless excesses could include gluttony, tyrannical demeanor, greediness and other excesses of the fleshly senses, which include hunting for victims prone to your sins.
You may notice the similarity of the Greek word translated as licentiousness, ἀσέλγεια, and it’s Hebrew root, ἄλφα.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
Revelation of Jesus Christ to John 22:13 KJV
This Greek description as a compound negative participle of Alpha, the word of God and Christ, indicates an antichrist, a description other New Testament writers use of those opposed to the Gospel.
ἀρνέομαι Ἰησοῦς Χριστός – Deny Jesus Christ
This is the most serious of Jude’s two accusations against these antichrists who have found their way into the church, men and women against whom he must warn other followers of the Lord.
Ungodly persons [ἀσεβής] καὶ τὸν μόνον δεσπότην καὶ κύριον ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν ἀρνούμενοι, that is: “only Master and Lord our Jesus Christ deny.”
- Jesus is our Lord, the LORD God
- The LORD IS our only Master
- Jesus IS the Messiah, the Christ
- We serve ONLY Him.
Many deny the Lord, our personal Master whom we serve as Christians. Ungodly persons may claim Jesus or claim God, yet not serve Him. Many more will claim a god or antichrist because they oppose the LORD.
Jude is not alone in his exhortation for believers. The Apostle John also warns of such antichrists:
… so now many antichrists have come. …They went out from us, but they did not belong to us… I write these things to you concerning those who would deceive you.
First Letter of John, excerpts from 2:18-19 & 26 NKJV
Biblical warnings from the Old Testament
Next we will continue in Jude’s letter to saints of the first century church with his Old Testament examples. Remember, the Old Testament was the only Bible for Jesus, Jude, James and the Apostles. But feel free to preview these few verses as if you knew only this Bible, still applicable today.
To be continued...
