Jude

The Contents of the Epistle of the Holy Apostle Jude The Apostle Jude Thaddaeus writes this epistle to those who had already believed. The occasion for writing was the following. Certain people had appeared and were teaching that sin is indifferent, and they denied Christ. The Apostle needed to write and strengthen the brethren. And he, first of all, urges them to contend for the faith delivered to them and to abide in it; then he refutes the false teachers as deceivers and commands the believers to have no fellowship with them, knowing that it is not sufficient merely to be called, but one must also walk worthily of the calling. For although in ancient times the Lord brought His people out of Egypt, when that people did not remain faithful to Him, He destroyed them. The Lord did not spare even the angels who did not keep their proper rank. Therefore one must keep away from false teachers. For even Michael the Archangel did not tolerate the blasphemy of the devil. For this reason the Apostle teaches that the false teachers will perish like the Sodomites. Then he gives moral precepts, and with a prayer to the Lord for the strengthening of the believers in their faith he concludes the epistle. Jude 1:1. Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ, brother of James, to the called, who are sanctified by God the Father In my opinion, it was sufficient for this apostle, as proof of his dignity, after having called himself a servant of Christ, to also point to his kinship with James. For James was praised by all for his virtue. This circumstance was bound to earn this apostle greater trust from his listeners regarding the teaching of the word, since it is doubtful that one who shared in birth and blood would prove to be very far in character from the one with whom he shared kinship, especially one who serves the same Master Christ and bears the burden of servitude equally with his blood relative. Jude 1:1. and preserved in Jesus Christ: Jude 1:2. May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you. The Lord said: "No one can come to Me unless My Father draws him" (John 6:44). This blessed man shows that now this word has been justified. For he says that those loved by the Father are preserved by Jesus Christ, which is why he also calls them called, since they did not come of their own accord, but were drawn and called by the Father. He desires that mercy, peace, and love be multiplied unto them; "mercy" because we are called by God and received as His servants through the compassion of mercy; "peace" because God the Father Himself also granted it to us, having reconciled us, who had offended Him, to Himself through His Son Jesus Christ; "love" because the Only-begotten Son of God gave Himself over to death for us out of love for us. Thus, the apostle prays that these gifts may abound in the faithful, just as David also cries out to the Lord: "Extend Your mercy to those who know You" (Psalm 36:10). Urged by these saving examples, we too, with sincere disposition toward our neighbor, must live worthily of Him Who called us. Jude 1:3. Beloved! Having all eagerness to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you an exhortation – Here the apostle indicates the motivation for writing the epistle. Namely: he writes the present epistle out of concern for the salvation of the faithful, so that they in their simplicity would not be carried away by the most vile heretics; he writes in order to expose them through a description of the depraved life of the heretics and make them known to those who are unaware. The apostle Peter had already spoken about them, but the apostle Jude writes more extensively. He says that they were "designated beforehand" (v. 4), because the apostles Peter and Paul had already written that in the last times deceivers of this kind would come (2 Pet. 1:1–2, 3:3; 2 Tim. 3:1–8). Even before them, Christ Himself said: "many will come in My name and will deceive many; do not go after them" (Luke 21:8), because by calling themselves Christians, they will deceive many by this name. The apostle speaks of the followers of the most vile Nicholas, Valentinus, and Simon. For being gluttons and intemperate, they gave their teaching a fair-seeming cover in order to gain access to homes and captivate women mired in sins. Having invented certain nocturnal rites, they gave themselves over to debauchery. From this it also follows that they deny our Lord Jesus Christ. For how can those who by their impure life drive away from themselves the Teacher of all chastity not deny Him? For what fellowship has light with darkness? (2 Cor. 6:14). Jude 1:3. To contend for the faith once delivered to the saints. Jude 1:4. For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who were long ago designated (προγεγραμμένους) for this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into an occasion for licentiousness and denying the only Master God and our Lord Jesus Christ. He exhorts those who once acknowledged our Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and believed in Him, to contend for the faith. For if we have accepted the incarnate Word and yet say that He Who is from the Father before the ages is one, and He Who is from the Mother is another, and that He is a separate person, then how do we not deny the one Lord and Master? For the Lord Jesus is one by the union of the economy; because the pre-eternal Word of God and God, having flesh grafted into the glory of the Godhead, which He assumed from the Holy Virgin, from the very conception, is one and the same Master of all. Jude 1:5. I want to remind you, who already know this, that the Lord, having delivered the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe, Jude 1:6. And the angels who did not keep their own dignity, but left their own habitation, He has kept in everlasting chains, under darkness, for the judgment of the great day. Jude 1:7. Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which in like manner to them committed fornication and went after strange flesh, having undergone the punishment of eternal fire, are set forth as an example, – Having spoken about the debauchery of the impious Nicolaitans, Valentinians, and Marcionites, he adds also that the Lord delivered the people from the land of Egypt, and so on. By this he shows that the Founder of the Old and New Testaments is one and the same God, and not as those vile ones say, that one God, wrathful and cruel, gave the Old Testament, and another God, without wrath and loving of mankind, gave the New Testament. By this he also shows that those who now act impiously will not remain unpunished, just as those who came out of Egypt did not remain so. For although God by His surpassing power and by the oath to their fathers freed them from Egyptian slavery, nevertheless, when they transgressed the law, He did not leave them without punishment, but rendered to them the due retribution: neither the favor of God toward their ancestors nor the supernatural power of miracles helped them in the least; and those who at that time crossed the Red Sea on dry land later perished for their departures from the faith. And those who, having received the honor of angelic dignity, through negligence did not remain in their original state, but cast off the heavenly manner of life given to them by grace, God has hidden away in punishment for the judgment, that is, for the condemnation, of the great day; for this is what the word "keeps" means. Therefore the Lord also says: "Depart into the fire prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matt. 25:41). As an example that unquenchable fire will encompass them, the inhabitants of Sodom are also brought forward. "Other flesh" refers to the male nature, as not serving such intercourse as to give birth. For such intercourse the female flesh is capable, according to the saying of the forefather: "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (Gen. 2:23), while the flesh of the male, as I said, is alien to such intercourse. And even female flesh, according to the laws, belongs as one's own and proper flesh to one alone, but that which mingles with many is other and alien flesh, and in defilement falls little short of the male. Jude 1:8. So also will it be with these dreamers, who defile the flesh, reject authorities, and blaspheme the glorious ones. Jude 1:9. Michael the Archangel, when he spoke with the devil, disputing about the body of Moses, did not dare to pronounce a reviling judgment, but said: "The Lord rebuke you." Having set forth the examples just mentioned, the apostle left it to the listener himself to infer the conclusion from them. What conclusion? If God dealt thus with those people, not regarding their former good lot, then will today's impious ones be saved by the fact that the Son of God came into the world for mankind, endured reproach for them, and bore sufferings? No one can say this. For although He is merciful, He is also truly righteous, and in true justice He did not spare those who sinned, while in His mercy He brought harlots and tax collectors into the Kingdom (Matt. 21:31). Such is the conclusion that follows; but the apostle omitted it, and did so either for the reason we stated before, or following the example of holy Peter, when he said: "if God spared not the angels that sinned" (2 Pet. 2:4), and so on. Thus we speak of this. The words "dreamers who defile the flesh" are spoken with remarkable modesty; for by the expression "dreamers" the apostle only hinted at the extremely shameful side of the matter. Let us reveal it in part and insofar as is fitting, borrowing information about this from the work of Saint Epiphanius of Cyprus, which he called the Panarion. He says: these fornicators and defilers, shamefully uniting with women, do not release seed into the womb, but, not completing the defilement, take it into their own hands and immediately place it into the mouths of the women with whom they were debauching themselves, and thus these impure ones withdraw from each other, imagining that they have done something great. It is this unclean handful, on account of the incompleteness of the act, that the apostle calls dreaming, for such defilement occurs during sleep. Defiling their flesh with such vile offering, they also madly rise up against the Divine nature, rejecting Its sovereignty and dominion over all. Saint Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, spoke of this more extensively in his work "Exposure of Falsely-Named Knowledge." Otherwise: the apostle testifies to the depravity of the heretics, saying that they are impure in life and utterly vile in knowledge. They, he says, "reject authorities," that is, they reject the performance of the mystery of Christ — they reject it because instead of angelic mysteries they perform their own abominations. "They speak evil of dignities" (δόξας). By "dignities" one should understand the various opinions of wise men, called among the notable Greeks "theses" (θέσεις), by which they mean lofty opinions, accessible not to everyone, but only to those acquainted with philosophy. A witness to what we have said is the Apostle Paul. When the Athenians brought him to the Areopagus and he preached to them the teaching about God, they considered him a babbler (Acts 17). Thus, just as they called the teaching of the apostles babbling, so also they called the aforementioned "dignities." For this reason, speaking of men gifted by God and inspired by God, the Apostle Jude used the word "dignities," as a common and universally known term. Another explanation: by "dignities" he perhaps means the Old and New Testaments. Or: by "dignities" he means ecclesiastical authorities, whom they spoke evil of, as the beloved John indicates in his third epistle (3 John 1:9–10), where he writes that Diotrephes reviles them with wicked words. Since the apostle mentioned evil speaking, he reproves not only the blasphemers, but also persuades all people not to defile their tongues with such evil, not to employ it even against those who deserve it, and says: "Michael the Archangel," and so on. He speaks as if to say: they hastily and uncontrollably speak evil of everyone, but this ought not to be so. For it is unjust to speak evil even of those who deserve evil speaking, as is evident from the conduct of the Archangel Michael. Contending with the devil about the body of Moses, he could have reproached the devil for his shamelessness, yet he did not do so, but only said to him: The Lord rebuke you, devil! In another sense: if the Archangel acted this way, then we too, in a dispute with a man, our brother and kinsman, ought not to employ evil speaking. The dispute about the body of Moses was as follows. In the apocryphal writings it is said: the Archangel Michael ministered at the burial of the body of Moses; the devil would not allow this, but charged Moses with the guilt of killing the Egyptian, and on account of such guilt declared Moses unworthy of burial. The Apostle Jude recalls this in order not only to teach us not to be quick to speak evil, but also to show us that all people, upon departing from the body, must give an account of everything; that the God of the Old and New Testaments is one and the same; that upon our passage from this world, the devil together with his evil demons rises up against our souls, wishing to cut short their blessed journey: he opposes them, while the good angels fight on their behalf, as the holy Anthony saw. So it could have happened then as well. Only Michael repelled the devil at that time by rebuking him, not by his own authority, but by committing the judgment to the Lord of all, saying: The Lord rebuke you, devil! Jude 1:10. But these ones speak evil of what they do not know; and what they know by nature, like irrational animals, by these things they corrupt themselves. Jude 1:11. Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, and have run greedily in the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. Michael, he says, did not endure the blasphemies of the devil against a man, that is, Moses, yet these compose blasphemous speeches against teachings which they do not know; and what they know by natural inclination, confusedly, like irrational animals, they pursue like horses. Woe to them, because they went in the way of "Cain" through fratricide; for, teaching impious doctrine to brethren, that is, to fellow men, they kill them with their evil teachings, or: by devouring the seed, they kill their brethren in potentiality, that is, those whom the seed, brought to maturity, would have brought into life. They went in the way of "Balaam," because they too do what they do for the sake of gain, like Balaam. They went in the way of "Korah," because, like him, being unworthy, they seized for themselves the dignity of the teaching office. Jude 1:12. These are a stumbling block at your love feasts; feasting with you, they fatten themselves without fear. They are waterless clouds, carried along by the wind; autumn trees, fruitless, twice dead, uprooted; Jude 1:13. Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. At that time, love-feasts were still being celebrated in the churches, as the Apostle Paul says in the Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 11:21–22), called "agapae," or "love-feasts." They, he says, come together at the feasts not for the benefit contained in them, but in order to find an occasion to beguile unstable souls, as the Apostle Peter also says in his second epistle (2 Pet. 2:14). He likens such people to hidden rocks, waterless clouds, autumn trees, and wandering stars; for what happens in these by nature is done by heretics by choice. Just as hidden rocks, encountered unexpectedly by those sailing, prove destructive to them, so too heretics cause unexpected harm to their companions at the feast. Just as waterless clouds do not refresh with rain (for they have none in themselves) the places to which they are carried, driven by the wind, but bring darkness upon them, so too heretics do not irrigate the souls of the people they encounter with saving teaching, but darken them with their most foul narratives, driven by the evil qualities of demons. Autumn trees die twice, losing their fruit and shedding their leaves (for dry trees at this time appear stripped of their adornment, the splendor of fruit and the flourishing comeliness of leaves). And something similar happens with heretics as well. They too die twice, losing their fruit through the consumption of the seed and being stripped of the comeliness of a prudent life. Therefore they are also uprooted from the paradise of the Lord, that is, from the Church, and outside of it are gathered and cast into the eternal fire. For what root will one have whom all turn away from on account of the vileness of his life? He calls them "wandering stars." Heretics are like them not in the sense that they shine in the firmament of our faith and through them passes the Sun of righteousness, Christ, who brings virtues to maturity and gives life to the faithful devoted to them, but in the sense that, appearing to have taken upon themselves the guise of an angel of light, like their originators, the demons (2 Cor. 11:13–14), they rush only against the teachings of the Lord, by which they both darken those who approach them and prepare for themselves eternal darkness. He likens them to "raging waves." They bear resemblance to these as well; for, driven by the spirits of wickedness, they foam madly and uncontrollably in blasphemies against God with their shameful deeds and end the inconstant and easily destroyed shame of their life in the foam of proud blasphemies. For such is also the foam of the waves to which they are likened. The words "without fear" should be referred to the words "feast themselves." They feast themselves "without fear," that is, not fearing the condemnation pronounced by the Lord for their inability to shepherd: blind leaders of the blind, together with those they lead, they themselves also fall into the pit (Matt. 15:14). Jude 1:14. And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them, saying: "Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His holy Angels – Jude 1:15. to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which their ungodliness has produced, and of all the harsh words which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him." Jude 1:16. These are murmurers, discontented with everything, walking according to their own lusts (impiously and lawlessly); their mouths speak swelling words; they show partiality for the sake of gain. Jude 1:17. But you, beloved, remember the predictions of the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jude 1:18. They told you that in the last time there will appear mockers, walking according to their own ungodly lusts. To what was said above he adds that Enoch also prophesied about the punishment awaiting them from God in the last days, that is, on the day of God's righteous judgment. Between the ungodly and the sinner there is this difference: the ungodly one sins in relation to God, while the sinner deviates in the affairs of life from the aim of righteousness. After this, having left off the comparison of the ungodly, he now proceeds to the actual exposure of them, calling them murmurers and fault-finders. A murmurer is one who through clenched teeth and timidly censures what is displeasing to him, while a fault-finder is one who always and at everything laughs. These vile ones are murmurers and fault-finders. They are murmurers, for they do not dare openly to make use of their teaching, on account of its vileness, since it is unsafe to publicize their ungodliness, which is joined with debauchery and blasphemy. They are fault-finders, because they slander everything that belongs to others and truth itself, in order to more firmly establish their own evil and debauchery. What was said above, that the heretics, like Balaam, were carried away by reward, he now explains with the words: they "show partiality" for the sake of "gain." To show partiality means to deal flatteringly with those in authority. Jude 1:19. These are the ones who separate themselves (from the unity of faith), sensual, not having the Spirit. Here is yet another fault of these most vile people. They, he says, not only perish themselves, but also snatch away the nurslings of the Church (this is what "those who separate" means), that is, they lead them beyond the boundaries of the Church, that is, the boundaries of the faith or even of the church enclosure itself. For they have made their assemblies into dens of robbers, and they lead others away from the Church and bring them to themselves. They do this because they are soulish people, that is, people who live according to the manner of the world. For we have already noted that Holy Scripture has the custom of calling the life also "soul." And the Apostle Paul says that soulish people cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:14). So, being soulish, they also employ soulish teaching, of which it is said: "This is not the wisdom that descends from above, but is earthly, soulish, demonic" (James 3:15), not having the Spirit of God. Jude 1:20. But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, Jude 1:21. Keep yourselves in the love of God, awaiting the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, unto eternal life. Jude 1:22. And have mercy on some, with discernment, Jude 1:23. And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, Soulish people, he says, act as we have described. But you, build yourselves up on the Holy Spirit and on your most holy faith, that is, renew yourselves in the Holy Spirit, that is, conduct your assemblies in your houses of prayer according to the teaching of the Holy Spirit. And "keep" yourselves in the love of God, that is, preserve yourselves, awaiting mercy from the Lord, Who on the last day will grant you eternal life. And those, if they are departing from you, rebuke, that is, expose their impiety before all; but if they are disposed toward healing, do not push them away, but receive them by the mercy of your love, saving them from the fire that threatens them. Receive them, however, with mercy and with fear, being careful that receiving them, through your careless disposition toward them, does not become a cause of perdition for yourselves, because they drag even those who are firm in the faith into the flood of their impiety, and evil is easily adopted. Jude 1:23. Rebuke with fear, abhorring even the garment that is defiled by the flesh. Jude 1:24. Now unto Him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before His glory blameless in joy, Jude 1:25. To the only wise God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory and majesty, power and authority before all ages, now and unto all ages. Amen. So then, receive them, but approach them with fear, that is, with caution, and combine mercy toward them with hatred for their vile deeds; even toward the garment defiled by their flesh, have loathing and aversion, because through contact with the flesh it itself becomes defiled. Or: receiving them, by the fear of future punishment prepare them so that they may repent and prove worthy of mercy. The defiled garment is a life defiled by many transgressions as a result of fleshly passion. For every person is known, whether righteous or unrighteous, by their way of life, as if by their clothing. One has clean clothing, a virtuous life; another has defiled clothing, a life with evil deeds. Or, better: the garment defiled by the flesh is such a habit and disposition of conscience that corrupts the soul by the remembrance of the depraved movements and actions of the flesh, constantly looking upon which, as upon its own clothing, the soul is filled with the stench of passions. For just as from the Spirit, through virtues gradually added one to another, a garment of incorruption is formed for the soul, putting on which it becomes beautiful and most glorious, so also from the flesh, through the gradual addition of one passion to another, a certain impure and defiled garment is formed, which of itself reveals the qualities of the soul and gives it a different appearance and image, and not God's. Having said this, the apostle concludes his epistle with a prayer, as with a seal. The end of the epistle of the holy apostle Jude.