Life Project Blog

Jude gives us a typical greeting in the first 2 verses, telling us who is writing and extending his good wishes in love to his recipients.  Then he quickly moves to his purpose for writing:

Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

Jude 3-4

Although he wanted to write to them about the salvation we share in Christ, events have intervened. Notice the words he uses here, he felt “compelled” to write them to “urge” them to “contend” for the faith; words that imply a crisis of some sort. “Contend” comes from a word that would normally be used in either a military or athletic contest.  Yes, there would seem to be a crisis at hand.

That faith he wants them to contend for is the faith that was “once for all” entrusted to “God’s holy people.”

This statement is reminiscent of John’s “as you have heard from the beginning” the message of faith had been given to them by others when they came to believe the gospel; it does not change.  You could say that Jude isn’t going for any of the present-day notions of progressive revelation wherein the message changes or evolves over time. The gospel is the gospel, once and for all time.

There seems to have been certain people who have come within the church who have ideas about changing the message. We can clearly see two things from verse 4: These people wish to abuse the liberty we have in Christ to engage in immoral practices, and to deny Christ.  At this point, they sound quite a bit like “antichrist” in 1 and 2 John, and you will recall that they were Gnostics.

There is always a tension between liberty and going too far.  We have a great freedom in Christ, since the Law is gone and His laws are “written on their hearts.”  Can you have one “law” and I another− scholars have debated this for centuries:  What really is the difference between “liberty” and “license”? In verse 4 it would appear that one field of conflict was that of sexual practices, one that will be repeated in the verses that follow, and one that is very much under discussion in our day.  Where is that line?

In recent centuries within Western culture, that line was well-defined with lists of things you mustn’t do: “Don’t smoke or chew or go with girls who do” is one of the more amusing of these. I prefer another approach: Does an action glorify God? Does it build up His Kingdom, or will it tear the Kingdom apart? Apparently, Jude felt strongly that the Kingdom was in jeopardy.

Jude is a strange little letter, nestled between 3 John and Revelation. It is seldom quoted, and sermons and studies of it are rarer still. It could be that it is neglected because of its size, only 25 verses, or its location, or because it is so similar to 2 Peter 2.  A more likely reason could be that it is just strange.

We don’t know for sure who wrote it, nor can we be certain of when it was written, nor can we quite understand some of its quotations, but we do know why it was written, for it was written to warn against false teachers.  We will consider these unanswered questions as we continue through it, and we’ll begin with author and date right here and now.

Who was Jude?

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James

Jude 1a

Jude and Judas are forms of the name Judah, and we know Judah was one of the sons of Jacob and one of the tribes of Israel.  There are four men mentioned in the New Testament named Jude or Judas who could be the author.

1. He could be Jude, brother of Jesus. Mark 6:3 lists four brothers of Jesus, including Jude and James.

2. Judas son of James is mentioned in Luke 6:16 and Acts 1:13; this guy was an apostle. Some have suggested that the Greek is a little tricky and he could be the brother of James rather than the son of James, but personally, I don’t think so. Even if the Greek was tricky, the author of Jude doesn’t say he is an apostle; in fact he speaks of the apostles in v. 17 as though he weren’t one of them.

3. Judas Barnabas is mentioned in Acts 15:22 and maybe he was a “brother” of James in the sense of a brother in Christ rather than as a literal physical brother. That idea seems unlikely since “brother of” in the Greek appears more of an identification used to identify a literal brother.

4. Judas of Damascus from Acts 9 is the other one, but it would seem that he is way too obscure to have written an authoritative letter to a church, and oh, by the way, was he even a believer?

With these choices, it seems to me that our author must have been a half-brother of Jesus and brother of James. Some have also suggested that “Jude” could be a pen name for someone, but for me that involves way too much speculation to be considered, unless someone can find some evidence somewhere.

When was this written?

Beats me!  If we are right about which Jude wrote it, then it must have been between 55 and 80. Since he identified himself as the brother of James, we might think it would have been within James’ lifetime, so that narrows it down to 62 or before. Some have even suggested it might have been written in the second century by an entirely different Jude.  I doubt that, but the truth is we really can’t be certain.

There then, is a basic introduction to the book that answers, more or less, the standard questions we should ask about any book of Scripture, except for one: Why was the book written in the first place…

We’ll delve into that question as we go through the text next time…

Old Testament Israel lived under the Law of Moses, very much a transactional system of law, violations, punishment and atonement. The great priority of that system was found in avoiding violations to curry God’s favor. Sacrifices were carried out continually to atone for these violations, but there was no permanent forgiveness, only the putting off of punishment; the concept of eternal life was not present in the Law. Then Jesus comes along and changes everything, so much so that the Jewish leaders refused to recognize Him as the Messiah and had Him put to death… and lo and behold, by doing so, He brought a superior sacrifice and established a superior covenant putting the cycle of law and violations to an end. With this, a new era was ushered in with that superior covenant in which sin could be taken away entirely and the gift of eternal life became effective.

Yet even in the early days of the church, there were those who attempted to bring the old system back into the picture, and Paul wrote the whole book of Galatians to combat them; a scathing rebuke is really what Galatians is, against the re-introduction of the Law into Christianity. A few centuries later when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, it became a political necessity to force the Old Covenant into the church in order for Christianity to be a state religion, since the Law was the code of a theocracy and Christianity was not… and the battle began in earnest and is with us to this day between law and violation, and love and our response to it. Several of our Christian traditions are grounded in this legal approach to faith that should never have been there, and they see most things in terms of law and violation, resulting in what we would call today “legalism.”

I have neither the time nor the inclination to write a 50,000 word post to fully explain and document all of this, nor do I suspect you would read such a post if I were to write it, so let’s just cut to the chase: Do you define your identity in Christ in terms of Law or in terms of love and grace?

OK, perfect! Every one of you said love and grace… go ahead and admit it, I’m right.

That being the case, consider this one: Is the will of God for your life a list of do’s or a list of don’ts?

OK, you may not agree with me on much, but you must grant me this: I am the only human being in history who has read every single comment posted on this blog, not to mention a fair number that weren’t posted due to language. Since we agree that our identity in Christ is about love and grace, why do some send me lists of “don’ts”? (Aha, that’s how he can tell!)

The Ways of this World

In the world we live in today, almost every time something happens, somebody proposes a new law. If you turn back the clock 150 years, states were passing laws banning sodomy, now they pass laws to ban opposition to sodomy. Back in the day, they banned abortion, now they ban protesting abortion. They passed laws against civil rights for some people, and then passed laws to help those people. Somebody commits a mass killing and we pass another law that bans murder, as if the 20 already on the books were one short. And each time, somewhere, someone backed one of these stupid laws and claimed they got it from the Bible!

Did Jesus say any of this “legal stuff?”

Not exactly. Here is Jesus teaching:

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:37-40

As Christians, we live to a much higher standard than those living under the Law, for with us, it isn’t simply a matter of avoiding violations, for we respond to His love by loving our neighbor. If we really love our neighbor, nobody needs to tell us not to steal from them; it would be unthinkable! Nobody needs to tell me not to covet my neighbor’s wife, for that would be unthinkable. This is a vastly greater deterrent to ungodly behavior than another law!

James gives us some practical examples of problem areas that we might easily fall into and sends us back to the Master’s feet in prayer, both for ourselves and for one another. He tells us to be patient, to hang in there and take our problems, once identified to our Lord. This isn’t a list of “don’ts” it is the rule of love. If I harm my brother, I harm myself, and even worse I damage my relationship with my Lord whom I love above all else. Who needs a rule book?

Finally, please don’t accuse me of trying to condone sin, for when you do, I’ll know that you (sadly) still don’t get it.

There are some misconceptions surrounding this book, and maybe that is why many modern-day teachers avoid it. Can Jesus be found in James? Well, let’s see… we saw the connection with the Sermon on the Mount a while back; remember the chart? Every verse from James 1:2 through James 5:18 has a direct parallel in the Sermon on the Mount… and commentators say Jesus isn’t in James… that only leaves three verse without a direct parallel!

Does James really stress works over faith?  Now be careful before you say that he does, remember the parallel with the Sermon on the Mount! If you’ve followed these posts you have seen that James teaches that salvation comes by faith, and that as Christians we put that faith into action, which is exactly what Jesus taught. It is true that James hasn’t used the “magic words” of certain teachers who came along centuries later, but the essence is the same, for there is no conflict between faith and works, unless you manufacture one yourself.

Here’s What I Think…

James gives us a whole bunch of moral teachings and then places priority on our relationship with Christ through intercessory prayer for one another: Love in action. Jesus said that the whole Law and prophets were fulfilled in the command to love your neighbor as yourself; James demonstrated this principle in action. If you approach Scripture the way many theologians do, you are looking for proof texts to plug into your systematic theology chart, and you miss this treasure “hidden” in the book of James.

Some commentators have claimed that James is a legalistic book, are they right?

Personally, I don’t think so, but I can see why they say it.  There seems to be an impulse in some traditions to assert rules and even condemnation of others at every opportunity, and James gives these good folks a great deal of highly quotable material, as long as context isn’t an issue for them… and context in James isn’t as easy to identify as it is in other places. My real question relates not so much to James as it does to the impulse to make rules to hold others accountable to.

Here’s another way of saying this: Why is it that some Christians read the Scriptures and see faith in terms of ordinances and violations while others see love and our response to love?

Obviously I’m not the first to ask this sort of question, and just as obviously I won’t be the last to have a stab at it, if nothing else I hope to encourage you to give this a though or two. In the next post, I’ll share mine…