Jude 1.19-25.
Years ago, I had to deal with an unteachable co-worker. We’ll call him Ulises. Nice guy, but nobody could tell him a thing: He knew what he already knew, and figured he already knew best. This attitude eventually got him fired. Our boss discovered repeated warnings just weren’t working, and sent him home.
Ulises followed his gut. Most people do. They encourage us to. We’re supposed to listen to that deep inner voice which tells us what we really oughta do. What we really want, what’s really best for us, what’s the right thing to do: The inner voice knows all. Don’t starve it.
Sometimes we call it following your instincts, following your hunches, following your gut; following the core of our being which knows the difference between wise and dumb, true and false, right and wrong, good and evil. Christians imagine it was put there by God. And it’s not a new idea, believe it or don’t; it’s always been around. Every generation dusts it off and repackages it.
The ancient Greeks called it the
Your average person who follows their inner voice, has never heard of this and may even think it’s rubbish. But Plato, Erasistratus, Galen, and plenty of ancient Greeks sure did. And of course these beliefs trickled into the church, and warped a few teachers. And that’s where we get to Jude.
Jude 1.19-20 KWL - 19 They’re the ones making distinctions based on a “psychic spirit” they don’t have.
- 20 You, beloved: Build each other up in your most holy faith. Pray by the Holy Spirit.
We Christians aren’t to follow any “psychic spirit,” inner voice, id, instinct, inner child, or whatever you wanna call it. Because the scriptures actually call this
In contrast, Jude told his readers to pray by the Holy Spirit. We’re not to follow our own spirits, but our Lord. The inner voice is the wrong voice—and the devil does a mighty good job of hijacking it, making evil look good or pragmatic, and getting us to do evil instead. So listen for God. The Spirit knows the right way to go.
And
How do we follow him together?
Like Jude said in verse 20, we’re to build one another up in faith. Usually we do this by interacting with fellow Christians. We encourage them as they encourage us. We tell ’em
And we pray by the Holy Spirit. True, Christians who dabble in Greek like to monkey with Greek prepositions, and turn
Other apostolic instructions:
Jude 1.21-23 KWL - 21 Watch over yourselves in God’s love.
- Get ready for the mercy of our master, Christ Jesus: Life in the next age.
- 22 Show mercy to those who are shaky. 23 Rescue them. Snatch them out of fire!
- Show mercy to them in fear—“hate even the tunic stained by the body.”
The
The command “Get ready…” is part of the same verse and sentence: We’re watching over one another ’cause we’re getting ready for the kingdom. Life in the age to come begins now, with the way we live our lives today. Let’s help each other prepare for it.
In his statement, “Show mercy to those who are shaky,” various interpreters take the “those” and “them” of verses 22-23, and presume Jude isn’t speaking of the same wobbly Christians, but three kinds of shaky believers:
- Some are shaky. Show them mercy.
- Some are in fire. Rescue them from it.
- Some others… well, show ’em mercy cautiously, ’cause their sins are contagious.
And maybe there are levels to how immature these other Christians might be. But let’s be honest with ourselves: Any of us can fall into any of these categories at different points in our lives.
A lot of preachers figure “fire” refers to hellfire. Maybe it does; maybe not. I mean if Jude was writing to fellow Christians, they belong to Jesus:
As for that odd bit about hating “the tunic stained by the body”: Certain preachers love to quote this one, ’cause they use it to justify hating sinners. They hate sin—as we should; so does God, and if we follow him we oughta hate sin too. Problem is, they love to extend their hatred to the people who sin. They hate sin and everything sin touches, just like “the tunic stained by the body,” a shirt with big yellow sweat stains. They proclaim their hatred proudly, as an example of just how zealous they are against sin.
So… what’d the tunic do wrong? Well, nothing! It didn’t put itself on the body; it didn’t choose to get dirty. I mean, if this saying is meant to be a parable about hating everything which comes in contact with sin, it certainly doesn’t endorse this behavior. The tunic isn’t a perpetrator; it’s a victim.
And the saying isn’t about sin either.
The proper idea Jude’s trying to teach is caution. Yes, help fellow Christians who are in trouble. But stay out of their sins! Don’t assume we can pull ’em out of the mud without getting our hands dirty. We don’t abandon them to their ruin, but we don’t stupidly think we’re temptation-proof.
In conclusion, praise.
Unlike Paul’s letters, Jude didn’t wrap things up with a bunch of shout-outs to people he knew from church. True, he might have, and somebody trimmed it off in order to make Jude’s letter applicable to all sorts of churches. But I doubt it, ’cause this wasn’t a usual practice. The letter doesn’t read like it was truncated.
Instead it’s just a bit of praise to God, who’s so awesome.
Jude 1.24-25 KWL - 24 To the one able to protect you from stumbling, who in great joy considers you, in his opinion, blameless—
- 25 to God alone, our savior through our master Christ Jesus:
- Our glory, greatness, power, and strength before everything else,
- in the next age, now, and in every age. Amen!
God saved us. Did it through Jesus, whose death eliminated any barriers between him and sinful humanity. Those of us who trust him,
A lot of translations, and Christians, like to phrase these doxologies, “To God be the glory, honor, power, wisdom,” and so forth—and in our minds we think, “Yeah, I really wish all these things upon God.” Nope; not what these praises mean. We’re not wishing these things upon God: He already has glory, honor, power, wisdom, et cetera. Always had, always will.
What we’re doing instead is committing our honor, power, wisdom, yada yada, to him. We don’t have much, but every once in a while we get praised, we’re given authority, we’re put in places where people listen to us, we’ve got the wherewithal to get stuff done. And if we have it, God has it—for