BUT, DEAR FRIENDS, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. 18They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” 19These are the men who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.
20But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit. 21Keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
22Be merciful to those who doubt; 23snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.
Original Meaning
JUDE IS KNOWN for his denunciation of false teachers. Because of this, many students of the Bible immediately think of this letter as bearing an essentially negative message—and one not very applicable to any Christian who is not engaged in false teaching. We can certainly understand why people have such an impression, for in verses 5–16, Jude does nothing but criticize and condemn people who are teaching wrong doctrine and leading ungodly lives.
But Jude does much more than this. We should not forget that his letter was not written to the false teachers; it was written to faithful Christians. These believers, faced with an onslaught of false teaching in their churches, needed reassurance and instruction. This Jude provides in his letter. Thus, the long central, negative section of the letter (vv. 5–16) must be seen as serving the larger purpose he talks about in verses 3–4 and 17–23.
These two passages have much in common. Both begin with the address “dear friends” (lit., “beloved,” agapetoi). Both talk about “godless men” (cf. v. 4 with vv. 18–19). Both appeal to past teaching to make their points: The condemnation of the false teachers was “written about long ago” (v. 4); the coming of false teachers was “foretold” by the apostles (v. 17). And, just as Jude urged believers in verse 3 to contend for “the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints,” so he now exhorts believers to “build yourselves up in your most holy faith” (v. 20). By these means, Jude shows that he is now resuming the topic of the beginning of the letter: the way Christians should respond to false teaching.
Specifically, Jude tells the believers to do three things. (1) They are to remember that the apostles themselves had predicted the kind of false teaching they are now experiencing (vv. 17–19). From a human standpoint, these false teachers have “secretly slipped in” (v. 4). But God knew all along that they were coming. Thus this reminder reassures Jude’s readers that God knows what is happening in their midst. He is still in control. (2) Jude’s readers are to devote themselves to their own spiritual growth (vv. 20–21). They must not allow the false teachers to deflect them from their own development in the faith. (3) Jude’s readers are to reach out to those affected by the false teaching (vv. 22–23). Withdrawal into their own private spirituality is not enough; Jude’s readers must do what they can to reclaim these people before it is too late.
A Reminder of Apostolic Teaching (vv. 17–19)
JUDE’S ADDRESS OF his readers as “dear friends” signals a major transition in the letter, as it did also in verse 3. In the former text, this affectionate address introduced the body of the letter after the brief introduction (vv. 1–2). Here, it signals a shift from denunciation of false teachers (vv. 5–16) to exhortation of the faithful.
The construction Jude uses here is a strong one, emphasizing the contrast with what he has just been saying. The false teachers, ungodly and haughty, will be judged; “but as for you, beloved….”1 As Jude now turns to the faithful Christians, he begins by reminding them of something. Here we find another parallel with the earlier part of the letter, though this time not with verses 1–4 but with verse 5, where Jude “reminds” his readers of the judgment God brought on false teachers in the past. In other words, while contrasted in their address and content, verses 5–16 and verses 17–19 are parallel in “form”: Both bring a reminder to Jude’s readers about false teachers.2
When Jude asks his readers to “remember” what the apostles said, he is not just asking them to perform a mental exercise. As we noted in our comments on 2 Peter 1:12–15, “remembering” in the Bible includes the will and not just the mind. In recalling what God has done or said in the past, we are to take it to heart in a way that affects our thinking and behaving. Consequently, Jude wants his readers, by recalling what “the apostles of our Lord Jesus foretold,” to learn how better to respond to the false teachers.
Many commentators think that the expression Jude uses here signals that the letter was written late in the first or early in the second century. They argue that “the apostles of our Lord Jesus” sounds like the description of a well-known and fixed group (or “college”) of apostles and that Jude’s way of speaking about their prophecy suggests that it was far in the past.3 But neither point is clear. “The apostles” need not include all twelve apostles; Jude may simply be referring to those particular apostles who helped found the churches to whom he writes. Note how Jude personalizes their testimony in verse 18: “They said to you.”
Moreover, their prophecy, while obviously in the past, need not have come in the far distant past. As Bauckham notes, Paul could write to his churches in almost exactly these same terms within a few years, or even months, after they were founded; see, for instance, 2 Thessalonians 2:5: “Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things?”4 We find nothing here that Jude, the brother of the Lord, could not have written any time during the middle or late apostolic age (c. A.D. 50–90).
In verse 18, Jude provides the “text” of the apostolic prophecy that he wants his readers to remember: “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” We have no prophecy from an apostle using just these words. The closest is 2 Peter 3:3: “In the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desire.” The connection is close indeed; for instance, the Greek word in both texts for “scoffers” (empaiktai) occurs in only these two verses in the New Testament.
Most scholars, in keeping with their general theory about the relationship between the two letters, think that Peter is paraphrasing Jude at this point. But it is at least equally likely that dependence goes the other direction. After all, Peter is an apostle and Jude is not; it would make perfect sense for him to quote 2 Peter 3:3 as an apostolic prophecy. To be sure, Jude speaks of “apostles” in the plural. By this he plainly indicates that more than one apostle made this kind of prediction (for some other examples, see Acts 20:29–30; 1 Tim. 4:1–3; 2 Tim. 3:1–5). But there is still evidence, as we have seen, that Jude derives the wording of this prophecy from 2 Peter.
Many scholars think that Jude’s use of a prophecy about “the last times” shows that he expected history to end shortly. But the New Testament writers regularly use this expression, or similar ones, to describe the entire period from the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection onward (e.g., Acts 2:17–19; Heb. 1:2; 1 John 2:18). Once the Messiah had come, they believed, the last and climactic period of salvation history had begun. What the apostles predicted, then, was that this period of time would be marked by the periodic appearance of “scoffers.”
When Peter referred to “scoffers,” the context shows that he was thinking of people who scoffed at the idea of the return of Christ in glory (see 2 Peter 3:4). This eschatological skepticism never comes to the surface in Jude. The similarity between Jude 18 and 2 Peter 3:3 might suggest that Jude refers to the same kind of scoffing as does Peter. But this is not a necessary conclusion. Jude’s depiction of the false teachers focuses on their licentious lifestyle and haughty attitude toward God. And the last expression in the prophecy Jude quotes, “who will follow their own ungodly desires,” suggests this same idea. Probably, then, Jude portrays the false teachers as generally mocking God and his moral requirements. They are so intent on satisfying their selfish and fleshly desires that they have no place for God. By labeling their desires as “ungodly,” Jude reminds us of his key accusation against them (see vv. 4, 15).5
Jude wraps up this brief section as he has several others (see vv. 5–10, 11–13, 14–16), by identifying the people or examples he has been talking about with “these men,” the false teachers who had infiltrated his readers’ churches. We again detect a note of accusation and derision in the address: “These men, coming to you with their grandiose claims.”
Jude’s first description in verse 19 of their ungodliness here is not easy to understand, because he uses a very rare Greek word (apodiorizo). Based on its use in Aristotle, some commentators think that the word must mean “make a (logical) distinction.” They therefore think that the false teachers were erecting theoretical distinctions between two kinds of Christians. As a specific example, appeal is made to the Gnostics, who divided believers up into two categories: those who were tied to this life and could never rise above it, and those who could come into possession of true “knowledge” and so appreciate spiritual matters.6 It may well be, of course, that the false teachers were making some such distinction. For, although full-blown Gnosticism was not yet in existence (and would not be until the second century), Gnostic-like ideas certainly were floating around in the first century.
But this may be reading more into the term than is justified. The word can also have the meaning “make separations,” in the sense of “create divisions.”7 We know that one of the almost inevitable byproducts of false teaching is division within the church. There are always some who are ready to listen to anything new and different, who are ready to be swept away by whatever new wind of teaching might be blowing. Others, however, better anchored in the faith, resist. As a result, divisiveness follows (cf. NIV).
The NIV’s “who follow mere natural instincts” translates a single Greek word, psychikoi (lit., “soulish people”). We usually think of the word “soul” in a positive spiritual sense. But Paul uses the word in a negative sense, as a contrast with “spiritual” (1 Cor. 2:14; 15:44; cf. also James 3:15). Since the “soul” is what all persons have by virtue of their physical birth, the word can connote the idea of what is “natural,” in the sense of what is natural to this world. It can therefore suggest a narrow perspective or behavior that focuses solely on this world and its values. Clearly, Jude uses the word with this sense, and the NIV rendering is not therefore bad.
Just in case we may have missed the point, Jude removes all doubt by adding that these false teachers “do not have the Spirit.” As possessing a “soul” is the invariable mark of a living person, so possessing the Spirit of God is the invariable mark of being a redeemed person (see Rom. 8:8–10). The language Jude uses here may be chosen as an ironic twist on the false teachers’ own claims. It may have been they who were bragging about being “spiritual” (note Jude’s reference to their visionary experiences in v. 8). On the contrary, Jude responds, far from being especially advanced in the things of the Spirit, they do not have the Spirit at all.
A Call to Stand Fast (vv. 20–21)
“DEAR FRIENDS” (SEE v. 17) again signals a transition as Jude now turns his attention to the believers and begins to tell them specifically what they are to do in response to the false teachers. He begins with injunctions focusing on the need to maintain their own faith. Here is the first requirement when false teaching arises: to secure one’s own spiritual position. Only then is one ready to reach out and confront those who are disturbed by it (vv. 22–23).
Although the NIV does not make this entirely clear, we have in verses 20–21 four separate commands:
(1) “build yourselves up in your most holy faith”;
(2) “pray in the Holy Spirit”;
(3) “keep yourselves in God’s love”;
(4) “wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.”
Two characteristic early Christian triads are observable here: faith, love, and hope (1, 3, and 4); and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (3, 4, and 2).
(1) The frequent New Testament use of the imagery of “building” to describe the spiritual development of the community probably comes from the idea that the Christian church forms God’s new temple (1 Cor. 3:9–15; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:19–22; 1 Peter 2:4–10). New covenant believers no longer need a literal temple, for they themselves are now the place where God, in Christ, resides. “Build yourselves up,” then, is a command that Christians together encourage one another in holding fast to the truth of Christ and in maintaining a lifestyle that reflects that truth (for a similar idea, see Col. 2:7).
As in the similar phrase in verse 3, “faith” here means what Christians believe—the doctrinal and ethical core of Christian identity. This is what the false teachers were threatening; therefore, true believers must devote themselves to the faith with renewed dedication. It is possible to translate “build yourselves up by means of your most holy faith.”8 But the building imagery suggests that the NIV is on the right track, taking “the most holy faith” to be the foundation on which we are to build (see REB: “you … must make your most sacred faith the foundation of your lives”).9
The New Testament elsewhere puts Christ in the role of the foundation of the church (1 Cor. 3:7–17), or even “the apostles and prophets” (Eph. 2:20–22). These are not, of course, competing, but complementary images. For it is Christ who accredits apostles and prophets, who, in turn, set forth and guard the “faith once for all entrusted to the saints.” Christ is the “ultimate foundation,” for we rest on him alone for salvation. But the apostles and the teaching they have given are subsidiary, but necessary foundations. They reveal to us the meaning of Christ and guard against any attempt to diminish who he is or what he has done.
(2) The form of the word in the Greek text may be suggesting that the second injunction is a means by which the first can be carried out—that is, by “praying in the Holy Spirit” we can build one another up in the faith.10 Many commentators think that Jude is enjoining believers here to engage in distinctly “charismatic” praying, including, though not limited to, speaking in tongues. They suggest that this praying is a praying in which the Spirit himself supplies the words.11 Without diminishing the importance and value of this kind of praying, I doubt whether Jude intends to be so specific. All praying that is worthy of the name will be praying that is done “in the Spirit”—that is, stimulated by, guided by, and infused by the Holy Spirit.12 Note Ephesians 6:18a: “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”
(3) Jude’s third exhortation combines with his description of believers in verse 1 to form an interesting and instructive pairing of ideas. Christians, Jude has said, are “kept by Jesus Christ”; now he urges them to “keep yourselves in God’s love.” Here we find the typical two sides of the New Testament approach to the Christian life. God has done all in Christ that we need to be saved; yet we must respond to God if we are to secure our salvation. God “keeps” us; we are to “keep ourselves.” Both are true, and neither can be sacrificed without missing something essential to the Christian pursuit of godliness.
Jude may be thinking as he writes these words of Jesus’ command in John 15:9: “Now remain in my love.” Christ loves us, unconditionally; yet we have the obligation to remain within his love for us. And this reminiscence is particularly appropriate because Jesus goes on in the next verse to note that it is by obeying his commands that we are able to remain in his love. It is precisely in this matter of obedience that the false teachers are so significantly failing to keep themselves in the love of God.
(4) Jude’s last exhortation, fittingly, directs attention to the future. God’s mercy is always present, but the Scriptures often associate his mercy with deliverance on the last day (see, e.g., Matt. 5:7; 2 Tim. 1:18). Here, therefore, “the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ” is something that we are urged to “wait for.” The verb translated “wait for” often occurs in such eschatological contexts. It connotes eager yet patient expectation and the kind of lifestyle that should accompany such hope for deliverance (see the use of the word in 2 Peter 3:12–14).
The connection between “eternal life” and the rest of the verse is not immediately clear. The NIV paraphrases the Greek here, taking the phrase with the word “mercy” (cf. also NRSV: “the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life”).13 But the phrase can also go with the command “keep” at the beginning of the verse: “keep yourselves in God’s love … so that you may experience eternal life,” though the distance of “eternal life” from the command “keep” makes this option less likely. Thus Jude is urging his readers to look beyond the disruptions created by the false teachers to that ultimate expression of Christ’s mercy on the day he comes back in glory to bring his people to their eternal enjoyment of the life he provides.
A Call to Reach Out (vv. 22–23)
JUDE HAS URGED his readers to make sure that their own faith is securely established (vv. 20–21). With their own spiritual condition secure, they can now reach out to others whose position is not so certain. Thus he exhorts his readers to engage in ministry to those in the community who are being attracted, to one extent or another, by the false teachers.
But exactly what Jude is urging them to do is not clear, primarily because we are not completely certain what he wrote in verses 22–23. The manuscripts containing the letter of Jude offer a bewildering variety of different readings; at least six different forms of text exist. The difficulty of deciding which of these Jude himself wrote is indicated by the fact that four of these can be found in the text of major English translations, and a fifth commands support from some influential commentaries. We list these textual options below, dividing them into those that have two separate injunctions and those that have three:
The two-clause option | ||
Snatch some from the fire; but on those who dispute have mercy with fear.14 | And of some have compassion, making a difference: and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire. (KJV)15 | Show mercy toward those who have doubts; save them, by snatching them out of the fire. Show mercy also, mixed with fear, to others as well. (TEV; cf. also NEB)16 |
Be merciful to those who doubt; snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy. (NIV; cf. also NRSV; NASB; REB; NJB)17 | And convince some, who doubt; save some, by snatching them out of the fire; on some have mercy with fear. (RSV; cf. also JB)18 |
A quick glance at these options reveals a preference among recent translations for the first of the three-clause options. Note, for instance, that three of the major translations have changed from a two-clause text to this three-clause text in their latest editions (NRSV/RSV; NJB/JB; REB/NEB). I think his preference is justified. While the situation is so complicated that we cannot be sure about the original text, this text seems a bit superior to the others. We cannot enter here into the details of the arguments pro and con. But two factors tilt the scales slightly in favor of this text: It follows Jude’s well-established pattern of using triads, and it seems to be the reading that best explains all the other readings.19
Assuming, then, that the text printed in the NIV represents what Jude originally wrote, we find that he urges the faithful believers in his audience to reach out to three different groups of people.
(1) The believers are to “be merciful to those who doubt” (v. 22). The verb translated “doubt” (the root form is diakrino) can also be translated “dispute,” which is the meaning of the verb in Jude’s only other use of it (v. 9: “the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil”).20 But “doubt” is the more usual meaning of the word in the New Testament, and it makes better sense to think that believers are to “be merciful” to doubters than to people who are disputing. These “doubters,” we can surmise, are Christians within the church who are being somewhat swayed by the false teaching. They are wavering in their commitment to the “faith once for all entrusted to the saints.”
It would be easy for the faithful to shun such people or lambaste them for their doubts. But Jude wants the faithful to show mercy to them. Christians themselves have received God’s unmerited mercy (see v. 2); they should display a similar mercy to people who are wavering. For mercy is far more likely than harsh rebuke to keep them within the fold of the orthodox faith.
(2) The second group to whom the faithful need to reach out are those who have gone further down the road blazed by the false teachers. In fact, they have gone so far as to be in danger of suffering eternal damnation. This is almost certainly what the word “fire” refers to here; as we have seen, fire is a standard biblical metaphor for hell (see v. 8 and the “Bridging Contexts” section on vv. 11–13). Some Christians in Jude’s audience have been tempted to such a degree by the false teachers that they are teetering on the brink of hell. The faithful Christians in the community need to “snatch” them from it and save them before it is too late.
Jude’s imagery probably reflects Zechariah 3:1–4:
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?”
Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, “Take off his filthy clothes.”
Then he said to Joshua, “See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put rich garments on you.”
This passage plays an important role in Jude. The words “The Lord rebuke you” in verse 9, while taken originally from The Testament/The Assumption of Moses, clearly reflect this Zechariah text. And Jude will soon pick up the imagery of filthy clothes from this passage.
(3) Jude turns his attention to yet a third group of people: “To others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.” The strength of the language at the end of the verse suggests that he is now thinking of the false teachers themselves, or at least of church members who have given their allegiance to them. The “mercy” that Jude commands here may, then, be pity and sorrow for their dreadful condition (as Luther thought). But it is more likely that the mercy is to be exhibited in prayers for them. Even those who have abandoned themselves to the false teaching are not beyond redemption, and Jude wants believers to continue to intercede for them.
But their mercy must be tempered by “fear.” “Fear” in the Bible often denotes that reverential awe with which believers should view the holy and majestic God. And this may be what Jude means here: As they show mercy on sinners, believers should fear the God who demands absolute holiness and who will judge all people on the last Day.21 But the words that follow “with fear” suggest a different interpretation, that believers are to fear the subtle influence of the false teachers. As they “show mercy” to them, they must at the same time be cautious in their contact with them, fearing that they too might catch the contagion of false teaching.22
The last phrase in the verse expands, then, on this point. Jude’s language is graphic. The word “stained” seems to reflect Jude’s rendering of the Hebrew word for “filthy” in Zechariah 3:3 (see the text above). This word refers to human excrement. And the word for “clothing” that Jude uses here (chiton) refers to the garment worn closest to the body. In other words, Jude pictures the sinful teaching and practices of these people as underclothes fouled by feces.
What has caused this filthy condition? “Corrupted flesh.” The Greek here has simply the word “flesh” (sarx). But the NIV addition of “corrupted” brings out the sense accurately enough, for Jude is using the word “flesh” here in its common New Testament (and especially Pauline) negative sense, referring to the sinful impulse. The false teachers and their disciples are following their own “natural instincts” and paying no attention to the Spirit (v. 19). They are producing teaching and behavior that is offensive to God. And, Jude is saying here, it should be equally offensive to believers. They should naturally “hate” such conduct. Even, then, as they act in mercy toward these who have fallen, praying that the Lord may bring them back, they must not overlook in any way the terrible and destructive behavior these people are engaged in.
Bridging Contexts
IF WE ARE to bring the message of Jude 17–23 into our own era, we need first, as the most basic step, to determine just what these verses are. To some readers, this may sound foolish; isn’t it obvious that Jude 17–23 is just what my English Bible says it is? But it is precisely here that the problem arises. Most people know that an English translation like the NIV is based on a Greek text. But fewer people realize that this Greek text is something that scholars have created, for we do not possess any of the “original” manuscripts of any New Testament book.
In other words, we do not have the copy of the letter that Jude actually wrote. What we have are many, many manuscripts that are copies of what he wrote. A few of these may conceivably have been copied directly from the papyrus sheet on which Jude actually wrote his letter. But almost all of these manuscripts will be further down the chain of copies—for instance, a copy of a copy of a copy of the original letter. In the case of Jude 22–23, as we have seen, the Greek New Testament manuscripts we possess offer at least six different forms of text. Which is the one Jude wrote? The question is of vital importance. For how can we apply the text unless we know what it is? What good does it do to talk about an inerrant and authoritative text if we don’t even know what it is? I want to address these questions briefly in what follows.
Let me illustrate with a contemporary situation. Let us say that I am lecturing on a cold, snowy day. Let us also assume that most of my students, despite their best efforts to come and hear my words of wisdom, are not able to make it to class. Only three students, out of a class of thirty-five, actually show up—let’s call them Nancy, Tom, and Richard. They naturally take notes of the lecture, and the thirty-two students who missed class need to copy these notes. Several students, among them Susan, copy their notes directly from Nancy’s set. Others, however, wait until just before the final exam. One student, Aaron, copies Susan’s notes. Another, Melinda, gets the notes from Sam, who copied Christy’s notes, who in turn copied Richard’s.
Now imagine a person doing archival research who, for some strange reason, wants to know exactly what I said in that lecture. None of the students is available to interview. All that the researcher has to go on are the thirty-five copies of my lecture, and no two of these copies are identical—not even the earliest copies of Nancy, Tom, and Richard. For students do not listen perfectly, nor do they copy notes perfectly. Mistakes of all kinds get introduced. How is the researcher to know which copy, or copies, preserves my “original” words?
Such, in essence, is the task that faces the New Testament textual critic. We possess over five thousand manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. To be sure, many of these manuscripts contain only several verses; only a few of them contain the whole New Testament. But many of them contain substantial chunks of the New Testament—for instance, the Pauline letters or the Gospels. Nor do we have the same number of manuscripts for all New Testament books. Two of the most valuable, because they are earliest, kinds of manuscripts we have are “papyri” (so-called because they are written on papyrus material) and “uncials” (which take their name from the capital Greek letters [uncials] that they are written in). The Gospel of Matthew, or portions of it, is found in eighteen papyri and seventy-six uncials; but the comparable figures for Jude are three and twelve.
What makes the textual critic’s job difficult is the fact that no two manuscripts are identical. They differ from one another—sometimes only in minor ways, other times in more substantial ways. For the scribes who copied the Greek New Testament were not perfect; they made mistakes, just as the students who copied my lecture made mistakes. Some of these mistakes are easily detected. How often, for instance, have I read a student paper that ended on one page with a “the” only to begin the next page with a “the”? Obviously, the student inadvertently wrote the word twice. We find these kinds of errors in our Greek New Testament manuscripts.
But some of the mistakes are more substantial and difficult to detect. Suppose, for instance, that Nancy and Tom, as they heard me lecture on the meaning of Romans 3:25, wrote down that I claimed it referred to Jesus Christ as our “mercy seat.” But Richard had it in his notes that I said it referred to Jesus Christ as our “expiation.” Students copy from all three sets of notes; but, because Richard is popular and lives in the dorm on campus, more students copy from him than from Nancy and Tom together. As a result, our hypothetical researcher is faced with twenty copies of my lecture that read “expiation” and fifteen that read “mercy seat.” How is he to decide which I actually taught?
He, and the New Testament textual critics like him, would pursue two basic lines of evidence. First is what we might call “external” evidence—the evidence from the thirty-five copies themselves. At first sight, he may be tempted simply to go with the majority; for, after all, it is more likely, all things being equal, that the original word will be preserved in the most manuscripts. And this, in fact, is exactly the procedure that advocates of what is called the “Majority Text” follow today in reconstructing the Greek New Testament text. Usually, though not always, this procedure results in a text that is similar to the one used for the King James Version. In Jude 22–23, for instance, we noted that the KJV has adopted a two-line form of the text. This text has more manuscripts supporting it than any of the other texts.
But modern textual critics generally agree that, in the case of the New Testament text, “all things are not equal.” For the manuscripts fall into recognizable groups, based on similar readings. We call these groups “families.” In the example we are using, for instance, we might find that twenty of the copies of my lecture shared certain distinctive “readings”—Richard’s notes and the nineteen copied from his. In a similar way, we might detect that ten others belonged in Tom’s family and five in Nancy’s. The point, then, is that we do not really have thirty-five independent, equally important, records of my lecture: we have three. If a vote were to be taken, then, it would not be twenty to fifteen in favor of “expiation”; it would be two to one in favor of “mercy seat.”
Most textual critics think that something like this is true for the New Testament. A large group of manuscripts reflect a type of text that is generally later and inferior to others. It would be as if Richard were a poor note-taker. That is why modern Bibles, based on the latest Greek texts, differ in the text that they print from the KJV. And that is why it is unlikely that the text of Jude 22–23 lying behind the KJV is the original one.
But there is a second line of evidence to pursue in investigating these textual issues: “internal” evidence. Here the researcher asks: What did the original author most likely write? Take my lecture again. A researcher trying to reconstruct that lecture would look carefully at the context of the disputed word, and perhaps he would conclude that that context made it more likely that I said “mercy seat” rather than “expiation.” He might also check to see if I had written anything else on the subject. Perhaps he would stumble across my Romans commentary, where he would also find evidence that I would more likely have said “mercy seat” than “expiation.”
The textual critic working on Jude does not, of course, have any other writings of Jude for comparison purposes. But he can look carefully at the context of Jude. Here, as we noted above, Jude’s penchant for grouping what he says into threes comes into play. The textual critic may then conclude that it is more likely that Jude wrote three commands here rather than two.
The task of the New Testament textual critic is, of course, much more complicated than the analogy I am using suggests. (Suppose, for example, that Richard and Tom compared notes and came up with a composite copy.) Textual criticism is a fine art that requires a lot of training, hard work, and ultimately, sound instincts. But it is important that we understand a little of the situation so that we can have at least some idea as to why English translations of Jude 22–23 differ so radically from one another.
I want to end with a word of reassurance. Christians who learn about the kind of textual difficulties I have just described may be inclined to conclude that the New Testament text is a mess—that it has all kinds of contradictory readings and that we don’t have a very good idea what the biblical authors actually wrote. This is emphatically not the case, for several reasons. (1) We have far more evidence for the text of the New Testament than for any other ancient book. Many of the plays of the great Greek dramatists, for example, have been completely lost; many others are found in only a handful of manuscripts. Comparatively, we have an abundance of evidence for every New Testament book.
(2) The vast majority of differences among the manuscripts involve spelling or grammatical differences that do not affect the meaning, or minor differences that do not materially affect the sense of the text.
(3) Virtually any defensible Greek New Testament text that we might put together would teach the same things about every important point of Christian doctrine and ethics. For example, we sometimes harp on the big differences between the text of the KJV and, let us say, the NRSV. We think of texts like the ending of Mark’s Gospel (16:9–20) or the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11). What is remarkable, however, is the amazing degree of similarity between the two versions. The KJV reflects about fifty manuscripts, the earliest dating from about the fifth century. The NRSV is based on over five thousand manuscripts, some of which go back to the early second century. The fact that both Bibles agree on 99 percent of the New Testament text is evidence of God’s providential hand in preserving for us the text that he inspired.23
Contemporary Significance
VERSES 17–23 ARE the most important in the letter of Jude. It is here that Jude spells out just how he wants his readers to pursue the purpose for which he has written the letter: that they “contend for the faith once for all entrusted to the saints” (v. 3). Jude specifies three things that his readers need to do: Remember the apostolic warning about heretics (vv. 17–19); secure their own faith (vv. 20–21); and reach out to rescue people in spiritual danger (vv. 22–23). Each exhortation is as relevant today as it was two thousand years ago.
“To be forewarned is to be forearmed.” This aphorism is as true in the spiritual realm as it is in warfare. Jude wants us to be ready to meet the danger of false teachers and heretics of every kind. Jesus warned of such people, calling them “ferocious wolves” dressed in sheep’s clothing (Matt. 7:15). Paul warned the church at Ephesus of the same danger: “From your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them” (Acts 20:30). John too pointed to the coming of “many antichrists” (1 John 2:18). Jude is thoroughly justified, then, to identify this warning about heretics with the apostles generally.
And their predictions have certainly proven true. The New Testament letters themselves reveal that the truth of the gospel had hardly been proclaimed when people began twisting it to their own notions and preconceived ideas. Much of our New Testament, in fact, is a response to such challenges. And the history of the church is littered with similar examples: from the Gnostics and Montanists of the second and third centuries to the Socinians of the sixteenth to the Universalists and New-Agers of our own day.
We should not be surprised, therefore, to find in the midst of our churches today people who “deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord” (v. 4)—either by their teaching or by their behavior, or, most often, by both. But Jude, as we have seen, focuses attention on a specific kind of false teacher: the “scoffer,” the one who mocks at God and his requirements for holy living. We find such mockers in abundance outside the church in our day. I am reading just now, for instance, a book by a radical environmentalist. The book is laced with glee at the passing away of the ridiculous “Christian superstition” and the new freedom its passing brings to humankind.
But Jude is thinking of people who claim to be within the Christian church. And, sadly, we find such “scoffers” here also. Sometimes the scoffing is verbal. I think, for instance, of a “Christian” theologian who mocked in his writings at the idea that Jesus might have walked on water or multiplied loaves and fishes to feed five thousand men. But I think we more often face people who may speak quite piously about God and their faith but who mock him with their behavior. For people who consistently pursue a lifestyle marked by sin are, in effect, mocking God. They are willfully ignoring his requirements to be holy as he is holy, and they are treating lightly his threat of judgment for such behavior.
Jude wants us to be on our guard. We should not be surprised when we find people in our churches who teach or live lies. Being on our guard does not, of course, mean that we are to become critical and suspicious, probing everyone’s life and immediately pouncing on anything someone says that we think is a bit off-center theologically. But neither are we to be naive, assuming that because people have made a profession of faith, attend church regularly, or are even in a position of leadership, they must be above reproach.
Consider, for instance, the direction taken by some Christian denominations in our century. Some were entirely orthodox just sixty years ago, true to “the faith once for all entrusted to the saints” and effective in evangelism and missions. But over the decades they have drifted to the point that their leaders deny many of the cardinal truths of the faith—including the need to evangelize! Yet their churches are still filled with many dedicated, orthodox Christians. I will sometimes ask these people about what their denominational leaders are teaching. Usually they don’t know. If I mention some heretical idea that their seminary is propagating, they will simply not believe me. Here, I think, we have Christian people who are not taking to heart the New Testament warnings about false teachers who infiltrate the church of Jesus Christ.
In other words, without being judgmental, we must not be naive either. Part of our problem, as I have suggested elsewhere in this commentary, is that we live in an age in which truth is not very important. We are interested in whether something works; truth, even if we could find it, does not have enough “bottom-line” value for us. As Michael Green says, “We have largely lost any sense of the diabolical nature of false teaching, and have become as dulled to the distinction between truth and falsehood in ideas as we have to the distinction between right and wrong in behavior.”24
“Contending for the faith” does not mean only fighting against heretics to preserve Christian truth. It also means fighting against our own weakness and temptation so that we can maintain our own faith. Jude knows that you can never take a person’s spiritual condition for granted. Thus, before he tells his readers how to confront those affected by the false teaching, he reminds them that they must take a good look at their own condition (vv. 20–21).
Jude’s exhortations to believers in these verses reflect common early Christian teaching about Christian growth. Note, for instance, the parallels with Colossians 2:6–7: “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” Both Jude and Paul urge believers to look back to the origins of their Christian experience (“the faith as you were taught”/“your most holy faith”), to be “built up” in that faith, and to pray.
Three points particularly significant for current Christian experience emerge from these verses in Jude.
(1) Moving ahead in the Christian life often involves looking to the past. The growth that Jude calls for is growth in “your most holy faith”—that “faith once for all entrusted to the saints” (v. 3). The foundation must be secure before the building can go up. We can never grow away from our roots; we can only grow through them. In the church today, there is an increasing flirtation with what is new. We want to hear what Christianity has to say about the latest fad or issue; we want to learn new things. But in our (legitimate) eagerness to push ahead, to stretch our understanding, to make the church relevant to a new age, we must always be careful to “secure our rear,” as a general would put it. Solid understanding of Christian doctrine, the kind of understanding that changes heart and mind—this is something we never grow away from.
(2) Jude’s use of building language is, as we have seen, drawn from the metaphor of the church as the new temple. This means that Jude is urging us to be engaged in a corporate experience. We in the West have a hard time with corporate ideas. Our traditions lionize the “rugged individualist,” and we inevitably tend to think of spiritual experience as a basically private matter. Protestant Christians have further stimulus to such individualist thinking. For against the Roman Catholic tendency to make the church the locus of salvation, Protestants have traditionally seen the individual as central.
In many ways, of course, this is justified: Every person must make a decision for himself or herself about Jesus Christ, and we will all have to give an account of our lives to the Lord. But spiritual experience, the Bible makes clear, is never a purely individual matter. God always works within and through a people (see, e.g., Eph. 4:1–16). “Build yourselves up,” then, calls on us not just to see that our own experience with Christ is growing and strengthening, but to make sure that the church, the body of Christ as a whole, is growing and becoming stronger. And it is ultimately only by fully participating in the life of the church that we ourselves will be able to grow as we should. For none of us can mature in our faith without the encouragement, advice, and admonition of fellow believers.
I can see encouraging signs in the church today of a concern for this kind of biblical corporate experience. The day of the television preacher seems to be passing, as believers recognize that they cannot get what they need spiritually by sitting home by themselves in front of the TV set. Surely one of the most encouraging movements fostering such community is “Promise Keepers,” which is getting men, who are often more private and individualistic than women, to worship, pray, and serve together.
But it is ultimately the local church in which we need to see this genuine community worked out. Here again, we see positive signs. Many believers decry the passing, over the last decade, of the Sunday night worship service and the Wednesday night prayer meeting. And there is genuine loss here. But if replaced, as they are in many churches, with small group gatherings for fellowship, prayer, and study, I am not sure that the movement is such a bad one. The New Testament local church, after all, was probably about the size of many of our small groups. Once a church grows beyond two hundred or so, the kinds of experiences that foster genuine growth—mutual accountability, for instance—become harder and harder to find. In other words, if done well, with a focus on the Word and prayer, small groups can, and should, play a major role in this “building up in the faith” that Jude talks about here.
(3) Finally, we should note Jude’s command that believers “keep yourselves in God’s love.” Such a command raises a question in our minds: If God’s love is unconditional, why do I have to do anything to “keep” myself in it? Or, to put it another way: If I am being “kept by Jesus Christ” (or “kept by God for Jesus Christ,” v. 1), why do I have to exert effort to “keep” myself in God’s love?
We mentioned in passing in the “Original Meaning” section that Jude here reflects in a nutshell the typical New Testament combination of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. The tension between these two poles is resolved in several different ways at the theological level. The Arminian, for instance, insists that God’s keeping power, while fully effective, is not ultimately irresistible. The believer who deliberately fails to “keep” himself or herself in God’s love may fall away from that love forever. The Calvinist, on the other hand, will argue that nothing—even the believer—can thwart God’s keeping power.
Rather that deal with the theological issue, I want here to focus more on the practical issue and on ground that both Calvinist and Arminian can agree on. God in his grace is exerting his power and influence daily to “keep” us, his children, in his love. The world throws at us trials and temptations without number; our own flesh is a constant drag back to the old way of life. But God provides all that we need to resist these forces and to retain our commitment to the Lord. But believers must not simply presume on this power either; we are responsible to take advantage of what he offers us. This is the point Jude makes here in verse 21.
The latter part of Jude’s summary exhortations takes up the believer’s responsibility for those who are wavering in their faith. As we have argued, Jude focuses on three different kinds of people. First are those who are wavering a bit in their commitment. These, Jude says, we are to show mercy toward (v. 22). Next are those who are more deeply influenced by false teaching and who are close to leaving altogether the faith they have espoused. These we are to reach out and grab, seeking to save them from the damnation that they are courting (v. 23a). Third are those who are fully committed to the false teachers’ program. To these people too we are to “show mercy.”
We may find in these three injunctions a helpful guideline for our own confrontation with false teachers. Although Jude commands us to “show mercy” to both the first and the third group, the context suggests that he means something different by them. The people in the first group are wavering, still not committed to the false teachers’ program but not solidly rooted in the orthodox faith either. “Showing mercy” to these kind of people will probably take an active form, as we spend time with them, trying to understand the struggles they are having and at the same time urging them to recommit themselves fully to the faith as taught by the Lord and his apostles. We can identify such people as those who are young in the faith, not certain what to make of claims that Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses are making. Or they may be people further along in the faith who are strongly tempted to get involved in sex outside the marriage relationship. As long as these people are still questioning, Jude suggests, we are not to react to them with horror or shun them but treat them with compassion.
To those who have begun seriously to flirt with false teaching, however, Jude urges a more direct approach. As his imagery makes clear, Jude considers people who have strayed into heretical ideas or who are pursuing an unbiblical lifestyle as being genuinely in danger of hell. They are poised on the brink of the abyss, and believers are to “snatch” them away from the edge before it is too late. The kind of person Jude has in mind here might be one who has just told us that she has decided to embrace “New Age” theology, or to convert to Islam, or to renounce biblical morals in favor of a sinful lifestyle. Her commitment to these false “faiths” is not yet solid; she is teetering on the brink. Our job is urgently to plead with such a person not to take this step, to rehearse the truth of the gospel, to pray earnestly that the Spirit intervene before it is too late.
We have, then, finally, the hard-core devotees of the false teaching. Yet, somewhat surprisingly, Jude says we are to “have mercy” on them also. Luther, as we noted, thought that this meant simply to pity them, for they were already lost forever. But this would be a most unusual application of the idea of “showing mercy.” Probably Jude means that we are to pray for these people, though it is doubtful whether mercy here takes any more of an active form than that. For the rest of the verse, with its warning that we “fear” the teaching and “hate” the sin that they are engaged in suggests that we are to separate ourselves from them.
The New Testament regularly requires believers to pursue such a drastic course of action when they face people who claim to be Christians but who are obdurately committed to an unbiblical belief or lifestyle. Paul commanded the church at Corinth to “hand over to Satan” such a sinner (1 Cor. 5:5). John warned believers not to take false teachers into “your house”—by which he probably meant not one’s private home, but the “house-church” (2 John 10–11). Such drastic action is necessary, the New Testament makes clear, both for the sake of the sinner, that he may come to realize the seriousness of his situation and repent, and for the sake of the church, so that it will not be contaminated by the false teaching and sin (cf. esp. 1 Cor. 5:5–8).
This latter point is obviously Jude’s main concern. He does not want believers to become so involved in trying to rescue people committed to the false teaching that they themselves succumb to it. We must always be aware of the danger that we ourselves are in and not presume that we will be immune from the false teaching or the sin we are trying to rebuke.
An obvious practical question arises at this point: How are to determine which of these categories a particular person is in? When do we “give up” on them, sever relationships, and exclude them from our fellowship? These questions have no easy answers. But two points are helpful. (1) The decision to “excommunicate” a person should always be made by the church, or the leaders of the church, together. Paul made this clear in his advice to the Corinthian church (1 Cor. 5:1–5), and it follows, of course, the admonitions of Jesus on this same point (Matt. 18:15–17). (2) People should be excommunicated only for serious violations of biblical mandates and only when they have refused to repent of their error after repeated warnings.