Jude’s epistle is an impassioned plea for the believers to engage in battle. This letter exhorts the believers to be built up and stand up firm in the faith, but troublers of the church were persuasive in their appeal and some in the church were being swayed by them. In versus 3 and 4 Jude said, “Dear friends, although I have been eager to write to you about our common salvation, I now feel compelled instead to write to encourage you to contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the holy ones, for certain men secretly slipped in among you, men who were marked out for the condemnation I’m about to describe. Ungodly people and who have turned the grace of our God into a license for evil and who deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.” Jude is speaking prophetically of this group of people that would come later and calls the church to action.
One thing Jude deals with here are apostates within the church, those who just won’t leave and they’re causing a lot of trouble. They promote both theological and moral teachings, transforming the teaching on grace into an excuse for licentious or indecent behavior and in doing that they were effectively denying the only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Jude also gives cautionary instruction to those who would help snatch them to become entangled in the same corrupt practices.
These false teaches participate in the love feast that is associated with the Lord’s table in the church. In versus 12, Jude’s coming up with metaphors and analogies for the characterization of these false teachers, he says these are hidden reefs at your love feasts as they feast with you. Fear shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees and laid on them twice dead and uprooted. Jude is saying these people are going to reap what they sow and the predestination idea is not self-evident in this. Jude’s thinking about a type of people that his audience have been forewarned about and pointing to the way their doom was prophetically predicted.
One thing Jude deals with here are apostates within the church, those who just won’t leave and they’re causing a lot of trouble. They promote both theological and moral teachings, transforming the teaching on grace into an excuse for licentious or indecent behavior and in doing that they were effectively denying the only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Jude also gives cautionary instruction to those who would help snatch them to become entangled in the same corrupt practices.
These false teaches participate in the love feast that is associated with the Lord’s table in the church. In versus 12, Jude’s coming up with metaphors and analogies for the characterization of these false teachers, he says these are hidden reefs at your love feasts as they feast with you. Fear shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees and laid on them twice dead and uprooted. Jude is saying these people are going to reap what they sow and the predestination idea is not self-evident in this. Jude’s thinking about a type of people that his audience have been forewarned about and pointing to the way their doom was prophetically predicted.
