JUDE

v1: Jude was the half-brother of Jesus, but Jude was also His servant. In humility, Jude identifies himself with James, who wrote the epistle of James and was also a half brother of Jesus. (Yes, Catholics, Mary did not remain a perpetual virgin. It's in Luke's gospel if you care to check it out.)

v2: The characteristics listed in this verse are how Christians are to be as opposed to the people Jude is going to be spending the rest of this letter expounding upon.

v3: Jude wanted to write a nice, happy letter about how great it is to have found salvation in Jesus Christ, but the matter he will bring up in the following verses was what ended up being the cause for the letter instead.

Contend for the faith, but don't be contentious. Approach everyone with the love all members of the human family and fellow sinners deserve, guided by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit in your individual and even specifically situational approach to them.

v4: This verse does not prove Calvinism. God established His law long ago and anyone who is living outside it is currently destined for Hell because they are disobedient to the precepts of this ancient law. If they repent, however, and obey God's law, they are then destined for Heaven.

Even if these false Christians Jude describes were truly saved at one time and have fallen away, in both their initial salvation and their abandonment of the faith Jude is telling the believers to contend for, each person acted out of their own freewill, given to them by God. It was all on them, not being the case they did one thing that displeased God and He kicked them out, but rather that they chose to keep sinning more and more and more, letting their transgressions and iniquities come between them and the Lord, till they finally woke up one day and realized they no longer believed in or even cared about God.

These men have gone from God's grace to twisting Christianity to suit their own unrestrained thoughts. In so doing this, they are denying God and Christ, making Them into something They're not.

v5: Like the ten bad spies in Numbers 12-14, these men want to believe what they sense with their five senses and think and feel inwardly as opposed to viewing life through the eyes of faith.

v6: The angels that rebelled against God have been sentenced to Hell and will be thrown into the lake of fire. Hell was meant for the devil and his angels, but sinful men will go there, too, if they don't turn to Christ in obedience.

v7: Sodom and Gomorrha were destroyed because they piled sexual sin upon sexual sin, as well as other kinds of sin upon other kinds of sin. In all probability, their sins started out few and small, then grew and grew and grew until there weren't even ten righteous people left and God had to destroy those two infamous cities.

v8: Filthy dreamers aren't just liberal Christians who have compromised the Word to suit their own social, sexual and otherwise agenda. Legalists are also filthy in their imaginings, too, thinking they have to do a whole bunch of other things to earn God's grace. In either case, they hate God's dominion and speak against Biblical church authorities, people who are preaching the uncompromised and nonlegalistic truth.

Additionally, though many compromisers are well-known for defiling their flesh, you'll also find that, among legalists, the same thing too often also occurs.

v9-10: We must add to the types of people we've already mentioned the kind who think they can take on Satan in their own strength, merely using principles or formulae at least somewhat based on the Bible, often just going by what they personally think or feel is the best way to deal with these evil forces, but without actually being in relationship with Jesus Christ themselves. Never try to fight Satan on your own!

v11: Like Cain, their hearts aren't right with God, but evil. Like Balaam, they're only concerned with what they can get in this life, and, like the sons of Kora, they recruit people in their rebellion against proper, Biblically-based authority.

v12: These people have made shipwreck of their faith and are trying to do the same thing to yours. 

They fellowship with you, but don't truly have any respect for God, thus eating and drinking damnation to themselves by partaking of Communion while willingly steeped in sin as Paul says in 1 Corinthians.

They have no substance to them and, like waterless clouds, bring no benefit or refreshing to wherever they are. This is at least partially because they just go by whatever false doctrine is popular this week.

These people produce no evidence of living the Christian life and will, as John the baptist warned, be cut down and burned in the fire.

Twice dead seems to indicate that these false Christians once believed the Gospel but walked away from it to satisfy their own lasciviousness.

v13: Like shooting stars, these compromisers and legalists burn brightly, gaining prominence for a little while, then fade away.

Both types are often quite angry people and, in displaying their general anger at the world, God and everything else, make shameful public spectacles of themselves.

v14-15: As far as the Book of Enoch is concerned, see this post.

v16: These people are always talking smack and complaining about the true church because they want to do what they desire and not what Christ desires.

Like Paul talks about in the first few chapters of 1 Corinthians, these people also speak worldly wisdom as opposed to the wisdom that comes from God. Other people admire them and these lascivious ones make a whole lot of money from their seemingly wise and profound words.

v17-19: Just like Peter and apparently other apostles warned, these people mock the teachings of Jesus, including what Christ said about His return, again out of the desire to follow their own lusts. These people separate themselves from the true church, forming their own heretical sects and denominations, the tenints of which cater to said lusts and, of course, are devoid of the Holy Spirit.

v20: In contrast, as a true Christian, increase your faith in the Lord by Holy Spirit-guided prayer as Paul talks about in Romans. Also take the actions which flow from your faith and are part of a proper relationship with God. Learn about spiritual warfare and how to defend yourself against the enemy.

This also includes taking Communion regularly because, in 1 Corinthians, Paul commands people partaking of the Lord's supper to examine themselves.

v21 Keep yourselves in the love of God by loving what God loves and hating what God hates. John 14 24

Our relationship with the Lord has to be a 100 percent commitment, forsaking all other gods and everything else that is called God.

Wait patiently and expectantly for Jesus' return.

v22-23: While we need to deal with everyone in the love of Jesus Christ, there are those to whom we have to show tough love as opposed to the others to whom we display what we typically think of as love.

v24: God is the only one who can keep you and make you unlike the people Jude has been warning against.

God is the loving father who is there, watching and helping us while we take our first (and subsequent) steps.

He is the loving parent who dresses us up in our beautiful baby clothes. We constantly stain them, but, one day, we won't.

v25: Unlike what the filthy dreamers think, only God is wise. He is the only one who can save us; not ourselves, the government, etc. 

See the Lord's prayer.

Moment by moment with Christ.