Greeting (1:1 – 2)
The Christian warfare (1:1 – 19)
The need to contend for the faith (1:3)
Identifying false teachers (1:4 - 11)
Their subtle entry into the church (1:4)
Old Testament warnings (1:5 – 7)
Their ungodly speech (1:8 – 10)
False teachers have no place among God’s people (1:12 – 13)
Ancient prophecy about judgment of false teachers (1:14 – 15)
The character of false teachers (1:16)
The apostles warning about false teachers (1:17 – 19)
Pillars of the faithful Christian life (1:20 – 23)
The pillar of faith (1:20)
The pillar of prayer (1:20)
The pillar of remaining in the love of God (1:21)
The pillar of keeping clear of danger (1:22 – 23)
Yielding the very highest esteem to God (1:24 – 25)
- to urge God’s people to continue walking in the truth as the only path of safety
- to teach the church to identify false teachers
- to seek the purity of the local church
- to show how perfectly Scripture prepares us for Christian warfare
- to assure believers of God’s final judgment on all error
- to distinguish apostates from those who are affected by them
- to teach how some fallen into error can be rescued
- to exhort the highest esteem for God
Bible Commentary on The Epistle of Jude
by Dr Peter Masters, Metropolitan Tabernacle, London (adapted from sermons)
This remarkable and somewhat unusual letter in the New Testament is an epistle always needed by the people of God. It is by Jude, not the apostle but the brother of James, half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was converted we know after the resurrection of Christ, a late convert you may think.
There is no mention in this book of the fall of Jerusalem which leads many people to think that it was written before AD 70. But others feel it is later than that, although not quite as late of course as the epistles of John who would be the oldest surviving of the apostles and who wrote between AD 90 and 95. But probably between AD 80 and 85, and that is likely to be true because Jude speaks of the ‘faith once delivered’. It would seem that the era of inspired prophets and apostles was at a close and the Scriptures were largely intact, almost complete, and he could speak of the faith, the whole body of truth, once delivered and sealed and settled.
This letter primarily concerns the error and the failure of the people of God to defend the truth. It is about warfare, the Christian warfare, the defence of the faith. There is in the Christian life a personal battle, a battle for holiness, and there is another aspect of the personal battle dealing with the temptations and doubts and assaults of Satan to individual souls. Then there is the grand battle for souls itself: soul winning and the reaching out to the lost; all these are parts of the Christian warfare. But here is another aspect, the battle to defend the truth, because it will always be under attack, and that is what Jude focuses on in this epistle.