Jude

Overview – November 2019 – Grace & Truth Magazine

Jude

“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.” — Jude 3 NKJV

Jude means “praise.” Although deeply desiring to write, he had not intended at all to write as he did. It would have been a much more pleasant and precious employment to write of the common salvation. However, God, who had given him the desire to write, decided that Jude’s message was to be one of intensely serious exhortation: the saints should “contend earnestly for the faith.”

His epistle has been spoken of as contemplating the decay and death of Christianity in the world. Its subject is the apostasy – the deliberate turning of the grace of God into lasciviousness, or lustfulness or lewdness, through evil men creeping into the circle of professing Christendom.

The book’s language is strong and prophetic. Jude used the history of past occasions of revolt against the gracious authority of God to illustrate the condition that would develop in Christianity during the last days. Israel was blessed in being delivered from Egypt, yet through unbelief many perished in the wilderness. Even angels, greatly blessed of God, were brought down to eternal darkness because of rebellion. Sodom and Gomorrah, Cain, Balaam and Korah all provide dreadful warnings of God’s just judgment.

Even though all this seems somberly negative, Jude’s closing words, beginning with “But you, beloved” (v. 20), are a lovely, positive encouragement to a faith that trusts the living God. Praise, as seen in the last two verses, remains the Christ-honoring attitude of the child of God in a world where God’s great name has been dishonored.

By Leslie M. Grant

This column is taken from the book: “The Bible, Its 66 Books In Brief.”
It is available for purchase from Believers Bookshelf USA and Believers Bookshelf Canada.