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Jude 1:1–7 (NKJV)
1 Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ:
2 Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.
3 Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.
4 For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.
5 But I want to remind you, though you once knew this, that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
6 And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day;
7 as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
When we read this passage, some of us sincere believers might get the impression at first glance that Jude was warning and “threatening” authentic believers that if they didn’t keep the faith by behaving morally until the end of their lives and if they let themselves be influenced by those ungodly people infiltrated among them, they would lose their salvation and suffer the vengeance of eternal fire. Jude even provides two examples that imply this kind of thinking. The first example is about those people in Israel who were saved by the Lord out of Egypt at one time and then were destroyed due to their unbelief. The second example describes the angels who were once holy angels but then rebelled against God’s authority by deserting the realm God had established for them to abide in. They ended up in everlasting chains under darkness, waiting for the great day of judgment. These are thought to be the sons of God from Genesis 6:1–4 who came down to earth and married the daughters of men, giving birth to giants. Let’s see if this interpretation of Jude 1:1–7 is valid.
We Christians often have a significant disadvantage in interpreting accurately difficult passages because we have to rely only on what is written and even translated from other languages like Greek and Hebrew. Plus, the audience the Bible addressed belonged to cultures with certain customs, assumptions, and issues, many of which are foreign to us today. The fact that we were not present there to hear the tone and the attitude with which some things were said, as well as the cultural context and what was going on that required certain things to be said, should make us even more diligent and careful in our interpretation. When it comes to assurance of salvation, the epistle of Jude falls into this category of passages that require revelation from the Holy Spirit and increased attention to detail.
Jude says in Verse 3 that while he wanted to share with them things about the common salvation and about the blessings of salvation, he felt compelled to encourage them, to exhort and inspire them to contend for faith. Jude’s purpose was to encourage these believers and give them hope, not discourage them with threats and fear. As a general principle of interpretation, any Holy Spirit-inspired Word of Scripture will never bring fear to the heart of the believer, but faith, hope, and comfort. Romans 10:17 says hearing of the Word of God produces faith, and 1 Corinthians 14:3 tells us any word of prophecy, which is like the Word of God and inspired by the Holy Spirit, brings edification, exhortation, and comfort to men. If the reading of this passage from Jude left us with more fear than faith and hope, if it created fear of losing our salvation, something must not be entirely right with our interpretation. This is one clue that Jude might not have referred here to the possibility of genuine believers losing their eternal salvation.
Coming back to Verse 3, let’s notice that Jude doesn’t encourage believers to keep the faith or to watch in it in the sense of holy living, or even of the good fight of faith. Instead, he uses a different expression: to contend earnestly for the faith. Which faith? The one that was once and for all delivered to the saints. Here we have a hint that Jude doesn’t refer to holy living or trust in God, but specifically, to the body of faith, the accurate doctrines of it and of grace that were initially spoken to them by the apostles. Jude wants to encourage believers to contend for their Gospel beliefs and convictions and guard them from ungodly people and any other possible heresies, but not “contend” with themselves to not lose their faith. Why did Jude need to encourage them in this area? Because certain ungodly people crept into the church unnoticed, and they were changing the grace into licentiousness. They were denying Jesus Christ as God. From Jude’s description, these people were unbelievers who consciously joined the church, trying to convince believers through arguments that maybe Jesus was not the only way to salvation, that perhaps they should be more tolerant with all people since God loves them, and that physical lusts are normal and cannot be denied.
The book of Jude seems a very appropriate book for the times we live in as well, and it’s probably not by coincidence that is it located at the end of the Bible before Revelation. If we read it carefully, we cannot but notice that it describes in detail what is happening right now in the world with the LGBTQ propaganda, with science and technological development rising above God and trying to exclude Him altogether, and with an increasing number of influential people advocating that Jesus is not the only way of salvation and that salvation can be found in any religion of the world. For example, I don’t know if you have ever heard of it, but there is a book called The Secret which talks about getting whatever you want in life through the Law of Attraction and places all religions in the same category. This book calls God one immense energy field, one supreme mind, one consciousness, or one creative source of which all people are part, and every religion has its own name for it. Oprah Winfrey, a very influential person in the United States of America, who is supposedly a Christian, said publicly she didn’t think Jesus Christ was the only way to salvation. She even presented seemingly solid arguments for the hearts and minds that are not anchored in the Word of God. Moreover, most of the movies done by Hollywood or Netflix lately promote the LGBTQ agenda in one way or another, in the name of love and tolerance. Not only that, but many of the movies intentionally put Christians in a bad light in contrast with science, as if these are very narrow, short-sighted, and always denying science. And this is not true. Influential people, and even church pastors, are beginning to promote the idea that adultery, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage are approved by God and not condemned by the Bible.
When we are bombarded left and right with such ungodly philosophies, especially from people who crept into the church, on one hand, we can begin to be discouraged as Christians and feel hopeless and overwhelmed. On the other hand, we might become silent, either because of fear that we might come across as too rigid, old-fashioned, or exclusive or because we want to avoid the ridicule and persecution. This is the kind of situation Jude has in mind. He attempts to encourage believers by telling them these ungodly people will have their share of punishment for what they are doing in the same way some of the people of Israel were punished for their unbelief after they were saved from Egypt, the same way the angels that left their realm were put in everlasting chains, and the same way the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were punished by fire for their sexual immorality. In each of these cases, the emphasis is on the punishment for specific sins, and we should not try to assign a meaning to every part of the illustration. In the case of the unbelieving people of Israel who were destroyed, if we consider the promised land to symbolize the new earth and the new heaven, which is the final stage of believers’ salvation, then it looks like believers can at one point be genuinely saved the same way all the people of Israel were saved from Egypt and crossed the Red Sea, then lose their salvation on the way, before they die and get to heaven. However, the promised land of Canaan cannot symbolize the new heaven and the new earth because there will no longer be giants of sinful behaviors, sickness, and poverty to fight with, and it will no longer be a fight of faith. The promised land of Canaan is a typology of the supernatural life of Christ manifested in believers here on earth through the Holy Spirit, where believers live in holiness, health, prosperity, peace, joy, and righteousness. God destroyed physically the unbelieving people of Israel, but He never sent them back to Egypt, which would mean a loss of salvation. Many believers die physically before they get to fully live in the promised land of Christ here on earth, maybe because they put their faith in the Word only for the afterlife and don’t believe in the whole Gospel of grace for the life here too.
Moreover, in the case of Israel’s people, those who didn’t believe in God and died in the desert didn’t have faith in the promised land even before they crossed the Red Sea. Their unbelief was only revealed in the desert, but it was in their hearts from the beginning. Eventually, that whole generation, except two people, died in the wilderness because of unbelief. Then in the example of rebelled angels, those beings were immortal spirits that, once fallen, could not be redeemed any more. Adam would have been in the same category after the fall if he didn’t have a physical body that could die or if he had eaten from the tree of life after he sinned. The fall of those angels cannot be likened to the loss of salvation in believers. Furthermore, Jesus Christ didn’t die for the sins of angels. All the examples Jude provides are from the Old Testament, where salvation through the blood of Jesus was not even available. His primary focus is to clarify that sins are still considered sins, even though we are under grace, and it affects us negatively, not that we can lose our salvation because of them.
Jude doesn’t tell believers: “Be careful not to sin too much because otherwise, you will be punished by losing your salvation.” Instead, he tells them: “Don’t be discouraged, because these people will have their share of punishment if they don’t repent both here on earth and after death.” Jude encourages those believers to speak up and get involved in defending the integrity of the Gospel by condemning the sinful behaviors and the ungodly ideas of those people. Moreover, Jude helps the Christians recognize such people with evil intentions by describing their characteristics very clearly: they defile the flesh with sexual immorality, reject authority, and blaspheme majestic beings (Verse 8); they are hidden reefs at their love feasts, they care only for themselves, they are waterless clouds carried away by winds, and trees without fruits (Verses 12–13); they are grumblers, discontented, walking according to their lusts, and flatter people to get an advantage (Verse 16); they cause divisions, are worldly, and don’t have the Spirit (Verse 19). Up to Verse 20, Jude explains everything those evil people do, but, from Verse 21 onward, he says: “But you, beloved, do what you have to do, don’t mind them, remember what the apostles told you that in the last times there will be mockers who would walk according to their ungodly lusts (Verse 17), build yourselves on your most holy faith (Verse 20), and have compassion on those that doubt (Verse 22).”
There is one last indication that this passage is not about the believers’ loss of salvation. Jude describes believers as being called, loved by God the Father, and KEPT or PRESERVED for Jesus Christ (Verse 1), beloved (Verse 3), and as those that God CAN PROTECT FROM STUMBLING and make stand blameless before His glory with exceeding joy (Verse 24). So, Jude doesn’t think these people will ever lose their salvation, only that they might be discouraged, have certain temporary doubts, or lose the boldness to proclaim Christ.
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Session 11 – The Post-Salvation Unbelief (Saved for Eternity) – June 19th, 2024
