Judgment On Godlessness
JUDGMENT ON GODLESSNESS
JUDE 1-7
The best way of contending for the truth is living it.
Most of this short letter is reproduced in 2 Peter 2. As we read through it, we must remember that we are dealing with two phenomena which need not be linked. It is a pungent attack on people who, while genuinely attracted to certain features of Christianity, had no real claim to the name. Today they may be represented by some of the modern cults and certain New Age and theosophical groups. Then they represented a widespread antinomian, anti-moral movement, which was not confined to Christian circles, though they found the rapidly growing enthusiastic groups a useful base. Such an outlook is sweeping over us in this generation, but for the most part it has no interest in Christianity, or the churches.
Jude (see also Mark 6:3) is Judas or Judah, the third of Jesus’ brothers; apart from this letter nothing is known of him. Hegesippus tells us that his grandsons were brought before the emperor Domitian (ad 81–98) as members of the house of David, and so possible rallying points for Jewish disaffection. When he found they were mere peasants, he sent them home. The NEB gives the sense well in verse 1, “to those whom God has called, who live in the love of God the Father and in the safe keeping of Jesus Christ.”
Jude had been wanting to write to his unnamed readers when a sudden danger made it necessary (v.3). “To contend”: there is no necessary connection with physical fighting in the word. “Once for all,” and so new ideas and revelations just cannot be true. Certain people (v.4) found acceptance in Christian circles by hiding their views at first. The foretelling of their coming is found in passages like Matthew 24:5,24. “Our only Master and Lord”: Master is a strong word, used in 1 Peter 2:18 for a slave owner. Only here and in 2 Peter 2:1 is it applied to Jesus Christ, to show how wicked their action was. Their denial was by a life and teaching completely contrary to his.
He said their doom had been foretold (v.4), and he demonstrates this by listing some of the judgments on similar people in the past. As Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians 10:6-8, one of the chief sins of the Israelites in the wilderness was immorality. We know from Jewish writings that “the angels” (v.6) were above all those mentioned in Genesis 6:2,4 (see also 1 Peter 3:19f. On the basis of Genesis 19:4-11, it is assumed in Jewish tradition that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was above all unnatural vice, though this is hardly borne out by Ezekiel 16:49f. “Eternal fire” means fire that blotted out the cities forever.