Jude 1:1-11 - Frederick Brotherton Meyer's Commentary

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“Contend Earnestly for the Faith”

Jude 1:1-11

Kept is the keynote of this Epistle. It occurs in Jude 1:1; Jude 1:6; Jude 1:21, and in another form in Jude 1:24. Many evil doctrines and practices were intruding into the Church. Certain persons had crept in, who quoted the mercy of God as an excuse for immorality and practically disowned the teachings of the Lord Jesus.

In contrast with these were the disciples whom Jude addresses and who owned the Lord Jesus as their beloved “Despot,” (the Greek for Master, Jude 1:4, r.v.) They were kept for him, as the others were kept in chains. Let us also keep ourselves in the love of God, Jude 1:21. It is much easier to live consistently in hours of storm than in hours of ease.

Let us be warned against drifting back from our first faith. Let us take heed from the fate of fallen angels, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Cain and Balaam, of Korah and others. Let us watch and pray and earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints, Jude 1:3, bearing it through the world as the pilgrim host bore the sacred vessels in the days of Ezra. See Ezra 8:28.

Related Commentaries of Jude 1:1

Jude 1:1-11

1 Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, [and] called:

2 Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.

3 Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort [you] that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

4 For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.

5 I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.

6 And the angels which kept not their first estate,a but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

7 Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strangeb flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

8 Likewise also these [filthy] dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.

9 Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.

10 But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.

11 Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.