THOUGH YOU ALREADY know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. 6And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. 7In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.
8In the very same way, these dreamers pollute their own bodies, reject authority and slander celestial beings. 9But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” 10Yet these men speak abusively against whatever they do not understand; and what things they do understand by instinct, like unreasoning animals—these are the very things that destroy them.
Original Meaning
IN VERSE 3, Jude tells us what he is writing—urging believers to cling tenaciously to the truth about Christ that has been handed down to them from the apostles. In verse 4, he tells us why he is writing—because false teachers have infiltrated the church and are putting the truth of Christ at risk. Jude returns to the positive thrust that he announced in verse 3 at the end of the letter (vv. 17–23). But in verses 5–16, he elaborates verse 4, describing and condemning the false teachers. These verses fall into three major sections, in each of which Jude cites Old Testament or Jewish traditional material and then applies it to the false teachers. And in each of these sections Jude also uses the word “these” (houtoi) to move from his examples to his application.
Section of Jude | Old Testament/Traditional Material | Application |
vv. 5–10 | vv. 5–7 (9) | vv. 8 (“these”) and 10 |
vv. 11–13 | v. 11 | vv. 12–13 (“these”) |
vv. 14–16 | vv. 14–15 | v. 16 (“these”) |
Jude’s strategy is obvious: By identifying the false teachers with traditional examples of notorious sinners, he moves his readers to reject these infiltrators and, indeed, to regard them with horror.
Many English versions (such as the NIV) and commentators divide verses 5–10 into two separate paragraphs. But the rhetorical pattern just outlined suggests that we should keep together the Old Testament examples of verses 5–7 with their application in verses 8–10. To be sure, this application is complicated by an interruption: Jude’s reference to the apocryphal tradition about Michael fighting with Satan for the body of Moses (v. 9). But this allusion seems to be a secondary illustration rather than a new example deserving its own paragraph. Jude’s fondness for triads is evident here again. He mentions three Old Testament examples of judgment (vv. 5–7) and three specific sins committed by the false teachers (vv. 8–10).
Three Old Testament Examples of Sin and Judgment (vv. 5–7)
ANCIENT WRITERS OFTEN made their transition from the opening of a letter to its body with what is called a “disclosure formula.” It frequently took the form of, “But I want you to know,” or, “But let me remind you.” Jude’s “Though you already know all this, I want to remind you” (v. 5) is a variation on this formula. It introduces verses 5–16 as a whole. “All this” may refer back to what Jude has just said in verse 3: “although you well understand ‘the faith once for all entrusted to the saints.’ ”1 But the word translated “this” is actually a plural (panta, “all these things”), and, that being the case, it more naturally refers to what follows: “although you are already acquainted with the Old Testament and traditional material I am about to share….”2
Jude’s first example is the desert generation of Israel. Jude reminds his readers that “the Lord delivered his people out of Egypt.” We encounter in this statement an interesting textual variant. As noted in the footnote to this verse in the NIV, a number of Greek manuscripts, in place of the word translated “Lord,” have the Greek word for “Jesus.” Some commentators think that this reading is original and that Jude here thinks of the preexistent Jesus as the one who delivered the people out of Egypt. They point to 1 Corinthians 10:4, where Paul identifies the “rock” that followed the Israelites in the desert with Christ.3 Others think that “the Lord” is the best reading, but identify this Lord as Christ.4 But the flow of the passage shows that whoever delivered and destroyed the people (v. 5) also kept the disobedient angels in darkness (see “he” in v. 6). It is unlikely that Jude identifies Jesus as the one who did all these things. Probably, then, we should read “the Lord” and identify him as “Jehovah” God.5
What Jude reminds his readers, then, is that God “delivered his people out of Egypt.” He refers, of course, to the Exodus (Ex. 6–14), the event that defined and brought into being the people of Israel. Through the plagues he brought on Egypt through Moses, God forced Pharaoh to “let his people go”; and God then destroyed the armies of Egypt in the “Sea of Reeds” when they tried to follow the escaping Israelites.
However, as Jude’s readers and most Christians know, the people whom God delivered from Egypt never got to experience the delights of the Promised Land. Dismayed at the strength of the people already in the land of Canaan, they failed to trust God to give them victory. God therefore sentenced that entire generation of Israelites (with the exception of Joshua and Caleb) to wander in the desert until they had all died off (see Num. 14). Jude emphasizes the tragedy of this rejection by qualifying “delivered” with the word “once for all” (hapax, not translated in the NIV) and “destroyed” with the word “afterwards” (deuteran).6 God’s deliverance of his people seemed to be decisive and final, yet God still “destroyed” them because of their lack of faith. Jude intends this as a warning to his readers: Don’t think, because God has decisively rescued you from your sins, that you can presume on his grace and mercy.
Jude’s first (the Exodus generation) and third (Sodom and Gomorrah) examples of God’s judgment are well known from the Old Testament. But not so his second (v. 6): “angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home.” Many older commentators thought that Jude is referring to the fall of angels that apparently occurred when Satan rebelled against God. A few Old Testament passages may refer to this event, and it has become enshrined in western Christian tradition through the splendid elaboration given the event by John Milton in Paradise Lost.7
But in Jude’s day, a far more popular tradition about angels who sinned was associated with the enigmatic reference in Genesis 6:1–4 to “sons of God” who came down to earth and cohabited with “the daughters of men.” Jewish interpreters had built an elaborate story on the basis of this text, identifying the “sons of God” with angels and attributing much (or even all) evil in the world to their pernicious influence. These stories find their greatest elaboration in the intertestamental book 1 Enoch, and since Jude quotes from this very book in verses 14–15, we are almost certainly correct in identifying this story as the one he has in mind in verse 6.8
These angels, Jude notes, had been entrusted by God with “positions of authority” (archen), that is, heavenly spheres of influence and ministry. But they abandoned their “homes,” their “proper dwelling places” (REB), by rebelling against God. God therefore judged them; they are being “kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.” The “great Day” is a variation of the common biblical “Day of the Lord,” the time when the Lord intervenes at the end of history to bring final salvation to his people and eternal judgment to his enemies. These rebellious angels are destined for that judgment.
But God does not wait for that Day to deal with them. Even now, Jude notes, their punishment has begun. “Darkness” is a common way of describing divine punishment in the ancient world; the Greeks used the same word Jude uses here to depict the “underworld,” the place of departed spirits. This language is also picked up in 1 Enoch, as is the reference to “chains.” Note the parallels between what Jude says here of the punishment of the angels and 1 Enoch 10:4–6, which depicts the judgment of one of the chief of the angels:
And secondly the Lord said to Raphael, “Bind Azazel hand and foot (and) throw him into the darkness!” And he made a hole in the desert which was in Dudael and cast him there; he threw on top of him rugged and sharp rocks. And he covered his face in order that he might not see the light; and in order that he might be sent into the fire on the great day of judgment.9
Jude probably has this passage in mind as he writes Jude 6. We can guess he knew that his readers were familiar with these traditions and that a reference to them would therefore be persuasive for them. Before we leave this verse, we should note the way in which Jude suggests the equivalence of the angels’ sin and their judgment: It was because they did not “keep” their assigned position that God is “keeping” them in darkness. Here we find a negative counterpart to the situation of the righteous, whom God “keeps” (v. 2) and who are therefore to “keep” themselves in God’s love (v. 21).
Verse 7 introduces the third of Jude’s warning examples: Sodom and Gomorrah, along with “the surrounding towns” (e.g., Admah, Zeboim, and Zoar; cf. Gen. 19:20–22). The striking story of God’s judgment of these cities had become almost proverbial; they are mentioned often in Jewish tradition and in the New Testament (see, e.g., Luke 17:26–29). But Jude not only mentions God’s judgment; he also tells us why God judged the cities: because, as the NIV translates, they “gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion.”
The charge of “sexual immorality” is clear and understandable, for according to Genesis 19, the men of Sodom sought to have sexual relationships with the angels who had come to visit Lot. But the second charge that Jude mentions, “perversion,” is not so clear. “Perversion” is the NIV rendering of a Greek phrase that, literally translated, is “going after other flesh” (cf. NASB). Most commentators have thought that Jude is condemning the men of Sodom for seeking to have sex with “flesh other than” the flesh of women. That is, the “perversion” they were guilty of was homosexuality. They “abandoned natural relationships with women” (Rom. 1:27) and were hankering after flesh “other” than that which God had commanded them to use.10 But other commentators think that the “perversion” here is the sin of having sex with angels.11
There is some evidence that Jewish tradition associated in this way the sin of the angels (v. 6) and that of the men of Sodom (v. 7). And it would make a neat transition here: As angels are condemned for sex with humans, so the people of Sodom are condemned for seeking to have sex with angels. But Genesis 19 does not imply that the men of Sodom knew that it was angels they were seeking to have sex with. Nor is “flesh” a natural word to apply to angels. Probably, then, the usual interpretation is correct: Jude associates God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah with the homosexual practices of their inhabitants.
Jude concludes, then, that these sinful cities on the plain “serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.” Indeed, God’s judgment was spectacular and final. According to Genesis 19:24, “the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens.” Writers contemporary to Jude saw in the topography of the area, with its sulfurous odors, smoke, and terribly desolate appearance, continuing evidence of this awful judgment of God on sin.12 This is one of the reasons why Jude uses the present tense here at the end of verse, for the cities “serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.” This may also be the reason why Jude does not follow the canonical order in the three examples he lists. Had he done so, we would have expected the angels’ sin to come first (Gen. 6), Sodom and Gomorrah second (Gen. 19), and the desert generation third (Num. 14). But by following the order he does, Jude achieves a crescendo in punishment—from physical death (v. 5) to binding in darkness (v. 6) to the “punishment of eternal fire.”13
Application of the Examples to the False Teachers (vv. 8–10)
JUDE LEAVES US in no doubt about the application of his biblical examples. Though he does not clearly identify who “these dreamers” are, it is clear from the context that he is referring to the “men … [who] have secretly slipped in among you” (v. 4). What is significant is that Jude does not focus in his application on the judgment of the false teachers, but on their sin. “In the very same way” suggests that the false teachers are committing the same kinds of sins as did the Israelites (v. 5), the angels (v. 6), and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah (v. 7). Jude does not necessarily mean that the sins are identical. The NIV rendering of the transitional phrase at the beginning of verse 8 is a bit strong; all that Jude implies is that there is a general similarity between the sins.
Jude lists three different sins the false teachers are committing. We give here a literal translation as a basis for our comments. They “dreaming, pollute flesh,” “reject authority,” and “blaspheme glories.” The parallels between these three sins and those of the Old Testament sinners Jude has listed are generally clear. The angels and the Sodomites “polluted flesh” by their sexual perversions; the desert generation, the angels, and the Sodomites all “rejected authority” by refusing to follow the Lord’s directives; and the Sodomites “blasphemed glories” by treating with disrespect the angels who had come to visit Lot.14 But if the general picture seems clear, a number of the details is not. Each phrase requires further investigation.
(1) “Dreaming, they pollute flesh.” “Dreaming” seems like an odd word here. A few commentators think it means that the false teachers are living in an unreal world; they were “dreamers” (NIV) in the sense that they imagined God was not displeased with them for their behavior.15 But most commentators agree that Jude is referring to visionary experiences. The verb he uses here (enypniazomai) often refers to the visions that prophets receive, as it does in its only other New Testament occurrence: “Your old men will dream dreams” (Acts 2:17, quoting Joel 2:28). The same verb is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to refer to the visions that false prophets claimed to receive (e.g., Deut. 13:2, 4, 6). Apparently, then, the false teachers based their immoral behavior on revelatory visions that they claimed to have received.
By using the phrase “pollute flesh” (NIV, “pollute their own bodies”) for the false teachers’ immorality, Jude associates them closely with the Sodomites, who went after “other flesh.” Whether this means that the false teachers were guilty, as were the Sodomites, of homosexuality is not, however, clear. Jude may mean simply that the false teachers, like the Sodomites, were guilty of sexual immorality.
(2) “They reject authority.” Calvin and Luther thought that this meant that the false teachers were rejecting human authority, displaying an arrogant disregard for government and for the leaders of the Christian church. But we can see no good reason to restrict the idea in this way. The word “authority” here (kyriotes) comes from the same root as the word “Lord” (kyrios), and Jude has already told us that the false teachers “deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord [kyrios]” (v. 4). Almost certainly, then, Jude means that the false teachers throw off the Lordship of Christ and/or of God.16
(3) “They blaspheme glories.” As the NIV rendering rightly suggests, “glories” here are “celestial beings,” in a word, angels (cf. also REB; note NASB, “angelic majesties”).17 And since Jude calls them “glories” and views the false teachers’ blasphemy of them as sinful, we may naturally think that he has good angels in mind. If this is so, just how were they “blaspheming” them? The word “blaspheme” can also be translated “revile,” “belittle.” It suggests a disparaging attitude and is often applied to speech or behavior that fails to give God or his representatives their due. One can thus “blaspheme” the Holy Spirit by attributing Christ’s miraculous signs to the devil (Luke 12:10); “blaspheme” the gospel by claiming that it endorses sin (Rom. 3:8); or “blaspheme” God by failing to live up to his law (Rom. 2:24).
The false teachers may, then, be “blaspheming” angels by speaking against them, as did certain Gnostic heretics by claiming that angels served an inferior god. But, although some scholars associate the false teachers in Jude with Gnostics, there is little basis for the identification. Since the Old Testament and Jewish tradition gave angels an important role in the judgment, it may be that the false teachers, by downplaying judgment to come, were, in effect, disparaging the angels.18 Or the false teachers, by rejecting the authority of God and his law, may have indirectly been attacking angels as well, who were thought to be the mediators and guardians of the law (see Acts 7:38; Gal. 3:19–20).19
Either of these last two interpretations makes good sense of verse 8. But I must question whether they make equally good sense in the context. Verse 9 is not an easy verse to interpret, but the most natural explanation for its presence in this context is to serve as a contrast to the behavior of the false teachers. Michael the archangel, Jude notes, did not “bring a slanderous [or blasphemous] accusation” against Satan. This suggests that the false teachers were guilty of slandering Satan. If so, then it makes best sense to identify the “glories” in verse 8 with evil angels instead of with good angels.20 As we have argued on 2 Peter 2:10b, this seems to be what Peter means in a similar passage. And, as I pointed out there, the idea of calling evil angels “glories” or condemning people for blaspheming them is not all that strange. For, though fallen, the evil angels still bear the impress of their glorious creation and original status, and they should not be treated lightly.
Perhaps, then, the false teachers were disparaging the evil angels by presuming, apart from the power of the Lord, to dismiss their significance on their own behavior. Perhaps the experience of the Jewish exorcists in Acts 19:13–16 is something of a parallel:
Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” … One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?” Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.
I am not suggesting that Jude’s false teachers were trying to exorcise demons on their own. But they may have been guilty in a general way of the mistake made by these Jewish exorcists: dismissing the power and influence of evil angels without the authority of Jesus to back it up.
As noted above, verse 9 is a notoriously difficult verse. We face two problems: the source for the story Jude refers to, and the application of the story to the false teachers.
(1) The word “archangel,” used only one other time in the New Testament (1 Thess. 4:16), refers to the highest rank of angel, as Jews developed these ranks in the intertestamental period.21 Michael, mentioned three times in the Old Testament (Dan. 10:13, 21; 12:1) and once elsewhere in the New (Rev. 12:7), is always included in this group and often made the most important within this highest rank. The problem is that we do not find anywhere in the Old Testament or in extant Jewish literature the story that Jude refers to here. However, several early Christian fathers tell us about a book that they were familiar with that contained the story. It is variously called The Assumption of Moses or The Testament of Moses.22 One of the bases of the story Jude quotes is apparently the vision of Zechariah in Zechariah 3, in which “the angel of the LORD” and Satan dispute over Joshua the high priest:
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. The LORD said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, Satan! The LORD, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?” (vv. 1–2)
We can recognize how the tradition that Jude quotes puts the words of rebuke from this vision on the lips of Michael. We, of course, have no way of knowing exactly what Jude thought about this story. He certainly gives no indication that the book from which he quotes had canonical status. But did he think that the story about Michael and Satan was true, that it really happened? Or was he simply quoting a story well known to his readers to illustrate a point? We have no way of telling (for further details, see the “Bridging Contexts” section).
(2) More important for our immediate purposes is the significance of the story for Jude. According to most English translations (including the NIV), the main point is that Michael, archangel though he was, “did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him [Satan].” The connection with verse 8, through the idea of “slander,” is clear. Presumably, Jude’s point is that the false teachers are so presumptuous as to do what even Michael, the archangel, refused to do: rebuke, without the Lord’s authority and backing, Satan or his associates. For Michael did not himself rebuke Satan; he called on the Lord to do so. The false teachers, however, disparage evil angels on their own authority.
With the “these” at the beginning of verse 10, Jude returns to his characterization of the false teachers. We should view verse 9, then, as a quick illustrative interruption in his criticism of these heretics. The NIV unfortunately disrupts the verbal continuity from verses 8 and 9—the verb translated “speak abusively against” is again the verb “blaspheme” or “slander.” Thus the first part of verse 10 wraps up Jude’s criticism of the false teachers for slandering evil angels: What they do not even understand, they slander.
Oh, yes, Jude goes on, there are some things they do “understand.”23 But they understand them “by instinct, like unreasoning animals.” As the parallel in 2 Peter 2:12 suggests, Jude is here describing the false teachers’ sexual excesses. Rather than following the “reason” of God’s word, they act at the level of pure instinct—like animals, with no moral compass or sense of right and wrong. No wonder that they are “destroyed” by these things. Thus Jude ends his paragraph on the note that has been so important throughout: the eschatological judgment that will strike the false teachers in Jude’s churches, just as it struck the desert generation, the angels who sinned, and Sodom and Gomorrah.
Bridging Contexts
AS WE BEGIN to think further about the significance of these verses for the Christian church, two issues in these verses cry out for further exploration: Jude’s use of traditional material and his reference to homosexuality at Sodom and Gomorrah.
Use of traditional material. At several points in this commentary, I have looked in some detail at the authors’ use of traditional material. This is because 2 Peter and Jude depend heavily on both the Old Testament and on Jewish traditions. And, as I have argued, appreciating the traditions they are using enhances our understanding of what it is they are trying to communicate to their readers. Jude 5–10 is another passage deeply indebted to traditional material. A closer look at the background and significance of some of these traditions will help us to apply these verses more effectively.
(1) We should observe that Jude is not the first to gather together the examples of sin and judgment that he features in verse 5–7. Jewish writers before him had used the same combination of examples. Note the following texts:
Sirach 16:7–10 | Damascus Document 2:17–3:12 | 3 Maccabees 2:4–7 |
“ancient giants [= angels of Gen. 6] who revolted in their might. He [God] did not spare the neighbors of Lot…. He showed no pity for a nation devoted to destruction ….” | “the Watchers of the heavens [= angels of Gen. 6] fell…. | “You destroyed … the giants…. You consumed with fire and sulphur the men of Sodom ….” |
He showed no pity for a nation devoted to destruction ….” | their males [of God’s people] were cut off in the desert” |
Testament of Naphtali 3:4–5 | Mishnah Tractate Sanhedrin 10:3 |
“… so that you do not become like Sodom, which departed from the order of nature. Likewise the Watchers departed from nature’s order.” | “The men of Sodom have no share in the world to come…. The generation of the desert have no share in the world to come.” |
To be sure, only Sirach has all three references, and the other texts allude to other examples besides these three. But these texts still demonstrate the general pattern of reference that we find also in Jude 5–7.
What do we gain by observing this pattern? (a) It confirms our conclusion that Jude is referring to the story of Genesis 6 when he mentions “angels who did not keep their positions” (v. 6). Four of the five texts cited above refer to this story, calling these fallen angels “Watchers,” as was typical in intertestamental Judaism, or referring to their offspring as the “giants.” Since Jews were accustomed to including the “sons of God” story from Genesis 6 along with allusions to Sodom and Gomorrah and the desert generation, we are safe in thinking that Jude does too.
(b) We can guess that the pattern was already known to Jude’s readers. They would have been familiar with the tradition that singled out these (and similar) incidents as warning examples about the dangers of sin. They would have known that the people who committed these sins suffered condemnation, that they had “no share in the world to come” (cf. the Mishnah). Jude’s putting of the false teachers into this same paradigm would therefore have considerable rhetorical effect. By associating them with established groups of notorious sinners, Jude adds emotional strength to his condemnation. It is similar to our labeling a political opponent as a “Benedict Arnold” or accusing a particularly dictatorial boss of being a “little Hitler.”
(c) Another byproduct of our recognition of this tradition behind Jude 5–7 is a certain caution in the application of the details of these examples to the false teachers. Jude may mention one or more of these groups of sinners because they were part of the tradition rather than because they displayed characteristics exactly similar to the false teachers. True, he finds a general similarity, but the likeness need not extend to the details. We cannot necessarily conclude, for example, that the false teachers were guilty of homosexuality just because the men of Sodom and Gomorrah were. The parallel between the two groups may involve no more than the flaunting of biblical mandates about sexuality.
(2) Jude’s use of traditional material in these verses raises a second issue: How much of the tradition that he cites does he intend to take over? The question comes up, first, in his use of the Jewish tradition about the “sons of God” based on Genesis 6:1–4. As we have noted, this tradition assumed that the “sons of God” were angels who came down to earth and had sexual relationships with human women. The problem with Jude’s use of this tradition is that many, perhaps most, evangelical scholars would argue that this is not the meaning of Genesis 6:1–4. In the “Bridging Contexts” section on 2 Peter 2:4–10a, I explore this whole problem. Suffice to say here that a good case for identifying the “sons of God” with angels can be made, and that we must at least ask whether the biblical author is endorsing the truth of the story or is simply citing a tradition that he knows to be popular among his readers.
Here in Jude, as in 2 Peter, this last question is not easy to answer. But we must admit it is difficult to think that Jude viewed the story of the angels in verse 6 any differently than he did the story of the desert generation in verse 5 and the history of Sodom and Gomorrah in verse 7. J. Daryl Charles, however, has argued that, while agreeing with the tradition to the extent of associating a fall of angels with the time of Noah’s flood, Jude does not clearly take over the sexual nature of the sin that they committed.24 Charles makes a good point; biblical authors do not always take over all the details of the Jewish traditions that they use, and we should note that Jude makes no explicit mention of the angels’ sexual sin. To be sure, many commentators think that it is implied because of the parallel with the men of Sodom and Gomorrah. But the connection remains implicit, and we should be careful not to make Jude say more than he does.
But the issue of Jude’s use of traditional material surfaces as an even greater problem in verse 9. For here Jude does not even refer to a canonical book, but to a story that appears in a book—The Assumption of Moses or The Testament of Moses—that no religious group has ever considered canonical. We have here, I think, two options.
(a) Jude may have viewed this story as a popular “legend” with which both he and his readers were familiar and which he could use to illustrate his point. To use an analogy, he may be doing what the modern preacher does when he says, to illustrate the new world in which Christians live, “as Dorothy said to Toto, ‘I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore!’ ” The preacher is not assuming that The Wizard of Oz is an authoritative source or even that the story it tells is true. It is a fictional work that serves, at this point, to illustrate a truth.
Could Jude regard the story about Michael and the devil in a similar way? It is entirely possible. His readers evidently held apocalyptic literature like The Assumption/The Testament of Moses in high regard, and it would be entirely natural for him to appeal to a story that they knew well.25 We cannot be sure of this, however; and some would argue that it would have been difficult for Jude’s readers to see the difference between this story and the other (Old Testament) examples in this section.
(b) A second option, then, is to assume that Jude believes that this incident really did take place. This does not mean, however, that Jude thinks that the book from which the story is taken is canonical or even totally accurate. It would mean only that Jude believes that this story is true. How would he know that? We must, I think, at this point, fall back on our belief in the inspiration of the Bible. Jude wrote under the direction of the Spirit of God, who led him to this particular passage—and kept him from citing other texts that did not contain true stories.
The issue of homosexuality. Finally, the contentious issue of homosexuality requires some comment. In the next section, we will talk about the contemporary significance of allusions such as we find in Jude 7. Here, we want to sketch briefly the biblical context for the discussion.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 never explicitly identifies the sin of homosexuality as the reason why God destroyed the cities. The Lord tells Abraham before the destruction that “the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me” (18:20–21). The angels sent to investigate the situation say much the same thing just before the destruction comes (19:13). But, since the story of the angels’ visit focuses on the attempt of the men of Sodom to have sex with the angels, it seems obvious that it is because of this sin, in particular, that God destroys the cities. To be sure, the prophet Ezekiel lists other sins of which “Sodom” was guilty: arrogance, a luxurious lifestyle, and unconcern about the poor. But in Genesis 19 itself, it is homosexuality, called by Lot “a wicked thing” (19:7), that receives the attention. That homosexuality was the sin that led to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is, of course, the traditional understanding; it led to the use of the words “sodomy” and “sodomite” to denote homosexual activity.
Genesis 19, however, is by no means the only Old Testament text that condemns homosexuality. It is clearly prohibited in God’s law to the Israelites:
Leviticus 18:22: “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.”
Leviticus 20:13: “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”
During the later stages of the intertestamental period, Jews came more and more into contact with the Greek world, where homosexual relationships were common. Indeed, many Greeks valued a loving sexual relationship between males more highly than heterosexual sex. Confrontation with this world led Jewish writers to assert even more strongly the biblical ban on homosexuality. As J. D. G. Dunn accurately summarizes the situation, “antipathy to homosexuality remains a consistent and distinctive feature of Jewish understanding of what man’s createdness involves and requires.”26
We must keep this background in mind when we come to assess the significance of such references as we have in Jude 7 for the practice of homosexuality in our day. We now turn to that matter.
Contemporary Significance
THE ISSUE OF homosexuality. In the latest stage in the modern “sexual revolution,” tolerance for homosexuality has become accepted in an astonishingly short period of time. Attitudes have changed so rapidly that what would have been assumed without argument only fifteen years ago—that, let us say, an avowed homosexual should not be a school teacher—now has to be strenuously argued and may not, when all is said and done, be agreed to by most people.
Christians, of course, are not immune to these changes. Admit it or not, our attitudes are deeply influenced by movements in the culture of which we are inescapably a part. Thus, Christians are reevaluating their understanding of homosexuality, and some insist we need to revise our view. The church has been wrong, they claim, to brand homosexuality as a sin. The idea that homosexuality is sinful is a misunderstanding of what the New Testament teaches on the matter. To apply Jude 7, therefore, we need briefly to evaluate the larger issue of homosexuality in the New Testament.
In addition to the allusion to homosexuality in Jude 7, we find three other passages in the New Testament that condemn homosexuality:
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. (Rom. 1:26–27)
Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. 6:9–10)
We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine. (1 Tim. 1:9–10)
Christians in the past have almost universally thought that these passages condemned all forms of homosexuality as sinful and deserving of God’s judgment. But some scholars are now persuaded that these texts teach no such thing. They generally pursue two, sometimes overlapping, lines of argument.
(1) Some suggest that key words Paul uses in these verses have a restricted meaning. For instance, J. Boswell argues that the word translated in the NIV of 1 Corinthians 6:10 as “homosexual offenders” (arsenokoitai) refers to male prostitutes who have sex with either men or women (this same word appears in 1 Tim. 1:10 [NIV, “perverts”]). In other words, if the word refers to male prostitutes only, neither text condemns homosexual practice generally.27 But the meaning of the word that Boswell argues for is unlikely. The term picks up in Greek the language about homosexuality used in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13; and, as we noted above, both texts speak simply of homosexuality.28
(2) Revisionists suggest that while some texts in Paul may seem to condemn homosexuality, this does not represent Paul’s real attitude. Paul is simply picking up his Jewish tradition without endorsing it.29 But this will not do. How are we to know when Paul agrees with a tradition he cites or not? Virtually anything Paul says can be dismissed by such a procedure.
The bottom line in the New Testament seems to be this. As is the case with many issues, we can expect that the New Testament writers agree with the Old Testament teaching except when they explicitly indicate their disagreement. The Old Testament is clear about the nature of homosexuality: It is a sin. Nowhere does the New Testament disagree; in at least four texts, we have argued, it endorses the Old Testament viewpoint. When we add to this that Jewish teaching was unanimous in condemning homosexuality, then trying to argue any other viewpoint in the New Testament is a clear case of wishful thinking.
The fact that we have so few references does not mean that homosexuality was no big deal to the New Testament writers; it means that they simply assumed the view that was endemic in Jewish culture. As D. F. Wright comments about Paul, “he saw same-sex activity as so self-evidently contrary to God’s creative purpose as to allow of such brief—but eloquent—mention.”30 We find on this matter simply another instance in which people are trying to read current societal mores into the Bible rather than letting the Bible determine those mores.
We must recognize in this regard the incredibly strong temptation for people to find a value system that will endorse the kind of behavior they have chosen. In his last novel, Resurrection, Leo Tolstoy describes just such a situation. The novel focuses on the efforts of a nobleman named Nekhlyudov to redeem a woman, Maslova, whom he had seduced and thus led into a life of prostitution. Nekhlyudov is surprised when Maslova rebuffs his attempts to reform her and when she expresses no shame for the kind of life she was leading. Tolstoy comments:
And yet it could not be otherwise. Everybody, in order to be able to act, has to consider his occupation important and good. Therefore, in whatever position a person is, he is certain to form such a view of the life of men in general as will make his occupation seem important and good.
It is usually acknowledged that a thief, a murderer, a spy, a prostitute, acknowledging his or her profession to be evil, is ashamed of it. But the contrary is true. People whom fate and their sin-mistakes have placed in a certain position, however false that position may be, form a view of life in general which makes their position seem good and admissible. In order to keep up their view of life, these people instinctively keep to the circle of those who share their views of life and of their own place in it. This surprises us where the persons concerned are thieves bragging about their dexterity, prostitutes vaunting their depravity, or murderers boasting of their cruelty. But it surprises us only because the circle, the atmosphere, in which these people live, is limited, and chiefly because we are outside it.31
In other words, we must understand that people caught in the sin of homosexuality will seek to justify their sin; attempts to make the Bible condone such behavior should not be surprising. (We should add that Tolstoy goes on to condemn people generally for such a self-asserting value system. Perhaps we need also to ask whether each of us has not similarly learned to tolerate certain sins by living in a restricted “circle.”)
Christians committed to the authority of the Bible must therefore bring to bear the teaching of the Bible on this matter. We must resolutely refuse to allow the culture to shift our values or to compromise on our application of them. Homosexual behavior is sinful, a form of behavior that can exclude people from the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9–10). As stewards of the gospel, we are entrusted with this message.
But we must proclaim this message in the right spirit. The accusation of “homophobia” is being used to criticize anybody who calls into question homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle. And this, of course, is both ridiculous and dangerous—it implies that anyone who speaks against homosexuality is motivated by irrational fear. But we must recognize that genuine homophobia does exist in the church—that some Christians speak out strongly and even harshly against homosexuality for the wrong reasons. We need to speak out, but we need to speak because we are concerned to defend scriptural values and because we love those who are homosexual. For the “loving” act in such a situation is not to keep quiet, mind our own business, and let homosexuals pursue their chosen lifestyle right to the gates of hell. The loving act is to reach out with the gospel to homosexuals.
It is, of course, only the power of God unleashed in the gospel that can break through the circle of approval that Tolstoy describes and transform the homosexual. Current secular theory about homosexuality is placing more and more emphasis on nature, rather than “nurture,” as the cause of homosexual behavior. Homosexuals, we are now being told, are genetically predisposed to the sin. But even if this is so—and the jury is still out on the scientific data—homosexual behavior is not unchangeable. Many people are predisposed, for all kinds of reasons, to certain sins—this is no excuse in God’s eyes. The important point is that the gospel offers people the power to turn from their sin. Note what Paul remarks about the Corinthians, after describing all kinds of sinful people (including homosexuals): “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:11).
The abuse of visions. One other point from this section in Jude deserves brief mention before we leave it: the abuse of “visions.” Jude’s disparaging reference to the false teachers as “these dreamers” (v. 8) suggests that they were justifying their conduct on the basis of visions that they had received. The Bible, of course, emphasizes the value of visions; God often communicated his word to Old Testament prophets in visions, and practically the entire book of Revelation is the record of John’s visions. But the Bible also recognizes that people abuse this method of revelation by making fraudulent claims to have received visions from God. There are “false prophets” as well as true prophets (see 2 Peter 2:1).
Our own day has seen a renewed interest in visions and prophecies. The Vineyard movement, in particular, has placed considerable emphasis on prophetic “words” that encourage and direct the church. Some of the spokespersons for the movement have sought to curb abuses by laying down careful and generally biblical guidelines for the exercise of the prophetic gift. But one still finds considerable abuse of the gift, as people seek to justify dubious or even sinful behavior on the basis of a vision, or try to get their own way on a contentious matter by claiming to have received direction from God.
We cannot simply dismiss visions altogether: God may still choose to communicate to his people by this means. But we must insist that any claimed visionary or prophetic message must conform to the truth of God revealed in Scripture and must be subject to scrutiny by other Christians. Paul himself insists that the messages received by Christian prophets be evaluated by other prophets (or other Christians; cf. 1 Cor. 14:29).