Introduction to Jude

Title and authorship

The writer is Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James. Only one James could stand in a letterhead without further address: the Lord's brother who led the Jerusalem church Acts 15:13 Galatians 2:9 and opened his own letter with the same plain servant James 1:1. That places Jude among the brothers named in the Nazareth synagogue — James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas Matthew 13:55.

The restraint of the title is its own testimony. The Lord's brothers did not believe during his ministry John 7:5; after the resurrection they are found at prayer with the disciples Acts 1:14. Jude writes as one who learned that kinship confers no standing — a servant first, a brother of James second, and a brother of the Lord not at all, by his own pen.

Date

The letter cannot be dated more closely than the later apostolic age, and it does not date itself. Two marks orient it: the faith has been once for all delivered to the saints Jude 1:3, and the readers are told to remember words the apostles spoke beforehand Jude 1:17 — a letter looking back on apostolic preaching as something received. Its relation to the second letter of Peter, which walks much of the same ground, is weighed under Additional notes and settles no date either.

Backgrounds

The danger is inside the room. Certain men crept in secretly Jude 1:4 — not wolves at the door but guests at the table, hidden reefs in the love feasts Jude 1:12, the shared meal the assemblies ate together and could already abuse in Paul's day 1 Corinthians 11:20–21. Their teaching turned grace into license and amounted to denial of the only Master.

Jude had meant to write a different letter. He was eager to write about the common salvation and found himself constrained to write this instead Jude 1:3 — emergency correspondence, the planned letter set aside because the situation would not wait.

Theology and purpose

One verb is the letter's spine. The readers are kept for Jesus Christ Jude 1:1; the angels did not keep their own domain, and are kept in everlasting bonds Jude 1:6; deepest darkness is kept for the wandering stars Jude 1:13; the readers must keep themselves in God's love Jude 1:21; and the doxology praises the one able to keep them from stumbling Jude 1:24. Five times in the Greek, at every level of the letter. Human keeping lives inside divine keeping, never the reverse — the command of verse 21 is bracketed by the kept of verse 1 and the able to keep of verse 24.

The purpose is a fight conducted in mercy. Contend earnestly for the faith once for all delivered Jude 1:3 — yet the contending the letter actually orders is building, praying, keeping, and a triage of rescue: compassion for the wavering, fire-snatching for the far gone, fear alongside mercy for the worst cases Jude 1:22–23. The letter full of judgment ends not in polemic but in doxology.

Additional notes

Note — the parallel with Peter. Most of verses 4 to 18 walks in step with the second and third chapters of Peter's second letter 2 Peter 2:1–3 2 Peter 3:3. Which letter leans on which, Scripture does not say, and the book's force does not depend on the answer. Two things are observable. Peter largely speaks in the future — there will be false teachers — while Jude writes in the past: they crept in. And when Jude tells his readers to remember what the apostles said about last-day mockers Jude 1:17–18, the words he cites stand nearly verbatim in Peter 2 Peter 3:3. The doubled witness works here as it does elsewhere in Scripture: when a word is repeated, the thing is established Genesis 41:32.

Outline

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