Jude

Summary of the Book of Jude

Written: c. AD 65-80

Jude meant to write a different letter. Identifying himself as a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, which by early tradition makes him a brother of Jesus, he says he was eager to write about the salvation they shared, but found it necessary instead to urge his readers to contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Certain men had crept in unnoticed, turning the grace of God into a license for immorality and denying the Master.

What follows is a compact, ferocious prosecution built on threes. Three precedents of judgment: the unbelieving generation destroyed after the exodus, the angels who left their proper dwelling, and Sodom and Gomorrah. Three archetypes of rebellion: the way of Cain, the error of Balaam for profit, and the destruction of Korah. Jude piles on images, hidden rocks at the love feasts, clouds without water, autumn trees without fruit, wild waves foaming out their own shame, wandering stars. He cites Enoch's prophecy of the Lord coming with ten thousands of his holy ones, and recalls the archangel Michael's restraint in disputing over the body of Moses. The letter shares much material with 2 Peter 2, and most scholars see a literary relationship between the two.

Yet the commands to the faithful are strikingly gentle: build yourselves up in your most holy faith, pray in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God's love, and show mercy to doubters, snatching some from the fire. The book closes with one of Scripture's great doxologies, to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and present you faultless before his glory with exceeding joy, a fitting doorstep to Revelation's finished story.

To rally believers to defend the delivered faith against infiltrators who twisted grace into immorality, while keeping themselves in God's love and showing mercy to the wavering.