Jude 1

Jude greets those “who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.” Though he wanted to write about “our common salvation,” he found it necessary instead to “appeal to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints,” because “certain people have crept in unnoticed,” ungodly men who “pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” Jude then piles up examples of God’s certain judgment: the Lord destroyed the unbelieving Israelites in the wilderness, kept the fallen angels “in eternal chains,” and made Sodom and Gomorrah “an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.” Likewise these teachers defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme; they “walked in the way of Cain,” “abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error,” and “perished in Korah’s rebellion.” Jude describes them vividly as “hidden reefs at your love feasts,” “waterless clouds,” “fruitless trees... twice dead,” “wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame,” and “wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.” He cites Enoch’s prophecy that “the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment,” and calls them “grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires.”