15. Learning from Bad Examples
"Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam's error; they have been destroyed in Korah's rebellion" (Jude 1:11).
Like 2 Peter, the epistle of Jude was largely written to combat problems within the Church itself; but while Peter mainly addresses the problem of false teachers, Jude draws our attention to the problem of individuals exhibiting uncorrected human nature within the body of believers. He gives three Old Testament examples of what such individuals are like and draws important conclusions from them.
If Hebrews 11 is the Bible's "Hall of Fame" because it lists the outstandingly faithful individuals found in the Old Testament, then the first chapter of Jude contains what must be the Bible's "Hall of Shame," listing examples of extreme sinfulness. Jude mentions Cain, the murderous son of Adam and Eve who gave an inferior offering (Genesis 4); Balaam, the prophet who lured ancient Israel into sexual licentiousness for personal gain (Numbers 22-24); and Korah, the would-be priest who rebelled against Moses and God (Numbers 16).
But Jude does not simply list these individuals as bad examples from the past. He holds them up as instances of problems that were afflicting the early Church in his time and that could occur in any age. If we look back to the beginning of Jude, we find that he alludes to these sins as being present in his own time:
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 1:4). Although Jude is talking in the present tense about individuals who "have secretly slipped in among you," the problems he lists also clearly reflect the errors of the three arch-apostates of the past. "They are ungodly people" certainly reflects the attitude of Cain (1 John 3:12). Those "who pervert the grace of God into a license for immorality" likewise reflect the successful attempts of Balaam to seduce the Israelites through sexual immorality (Numbers 25:1-9; 31:16). The fact that the false teachers "deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord" can be seen to be parallel to the way in which Korah acted as a leader of rebellion, elevating himself above Moses and ultimately, above God himself (Numbers 16:1).
So Jude's choice of the three individuals Cain, Balaam, and Korah is not an arbitrary one. The problems of these individuals are potentially recurrent ones that had infiltrated the early Church in the form of individuals who were "wolves in sheep's clothing" – people who were in the Church, "among" the believers, but were not really believers themselves.
But we should not imagine that the false Christians of Jude's day were actually murdering, seducing the congregation, or rebelling outwardly against God as Cain, Balaam and Korah had done. Rather, Jude points out the subtler ways in which the attitude of these individuals was being expressed.
He tells us that such individuals "slander whatever they do not understand" (vs. 10). They are "shepherds who feed only themselves" (vs. 12), they are "… grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage" (vs. 16), and finally, they are "… the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit" (vs. 19).
These characteristics sound much more like those we might, unfortunately, sometimes experience today, and Jude's warnings are, in fact, as valid now as they were two thousand years ago.
Today, just as in the past, in extreme cases we can experience false worshippers whose heart is not in their worship (like Cain), false believers who collaborate with the enemies of God (like Balaam), and false leaders who instigate division (like Korah).
We too, of course, can fall victim to these same attitudes expressed in everyday ways if we are not careful. We may not be rebels, but do we grumble? We may not be licentious, but does our speech sometimes lack purity? We may not try to hurt others for our own gain, but do we boast, or flatter others for our own advantage? We may not be heretics, but are we not always faithful to what we know is true?
This is Jude's point. He does not simply preach a history lesson to show how bad people can be; he uses historical examples to show us how we too can be – even within the Church itself – if we are not aware of the possibility and alert to our own inherent nature. Jude knew that "those who do not remember the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them." He helps us remember that the examples in God's word – even the bad examples – are there to help us be better individuals within a better Church.