The New Testament contains twenty-seven books. The first four are what we call the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Following them is the book of Acts or the Acts of the Apostles. This book deals with the Holy Spirit working through the lives of the apostles and other followers of Christ.
We view the book of Acts as the book that deals with the beginning of the church age and the work of the apostles as they were empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit. The book of Jude, we can view as the book dealing with the end of the church age and the work of the apostates.
The book of Jude will help us to come to an understanding of the term apostate. An apostate is someone who has turned from revealed truth. Apostasy is a subtle rejection of essentials while maintaining the outward form of belief. An apostate is not a Christian; he is not someone who was once saved but then lost his salvation as this is impossible. An apostate sees the truth and knows the message of the truth but turns from it.
The book of Jude forms a hallway leading into the book of Revelation. Most of Revelation is devoted to the Tribulation period, the seven-year period between the Rapture of the church and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. At the end of the Tribulation, Christ will come to the earth with His saints to execute judgment upon this unbelieving world. Before that, however, the Lord Jesus Christ will return in the clouds for His church—this takes place before the Tribulation.
The book of Jude is God’s way of leading us to the teaching of the “last things” we find in the Bible. We are living in days of darkness, saturated with doctrines of demons. This is a time of apostasy. May God help us to proclaim the truth while we still have time.
1 Timothy 4:1 warns us of the coming of a great falling away: “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.”
Read 2 Timothy 4:1-4. God said that there is coming a time when people will rather hear a lie than the truth. The Bible also teaches that many people will follow the damnable heresies taught by false teachers.
Read 2 Peter 3:1-3. These scoffers have always existed, but we are living in an intense time of scoffing. The Bible says that they scoff because they are walking after their own lusts. They would rather have people say they are right than say that God is right.
Now, let us take a closer look at the man Jude, the human author of this epistle:
His Birth
This particular Jude calls himself the servant (bondslave) of Jesus Christ. Read Matthew 13:53-55. The name Jude is the same as Judas. It is a form of the name Judah, a very popular Hebrew name.
Judas, or Jude, was born to Mary and Joseph after the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Jude was the half-brother of the Lord Jesus, having the same mother as Christ. He grew up in the same home in Nazareth. There are others in the Bible with this name, but we believe the human author of Jude’s epistle is this son of Mary and Joseph.
Jude calls himself the servant of Jesus Christ. He opens this epistle with his heavenly relationship to Jesus, not his earthly one. We see that in his opening line: “Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ,” speaking of the God-Man, the Anointed One.
His Bond
A bondslave or servant had a bond, something he was bound to do. That bond was very simple: the servant would always do the work of his master. Nothing would ever come before the master. Jude identifies his Master as the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jude says, “I am a bondslave of Jesus Christ,” using the word for servant which means “born into servanthood.” Can you imagine growing up in the same household and saying, “I am born His servant”? This is what Jude said of the Lord Jesus Christ. His bond was that the Lord Jesus was always preeminent in his life.
His Burden
Jude said in verse 3, “…I gave all diligence to write unto you…” and “…it was needful for me to write unto you…” We can clearly see that Jude felt it was extremely necessary to write his epistle. He wanted his readers to know that they needed to “earnestly contend for the faith.”
Why? Because how are people going to what God wants them to know unless someone tells them the truth? We are God’s servants. We have been given His work to do.
Christians have an understanding that the world does not have. We get this understanding from God. We know that there is a real Heaven and a real Hell. A real Tribulation period and a real Antichrist are coming. One day, there will be a Great White Throne Judgment and a lake of fire awaiting the lost.
Because of these things, we are accountable to God to tell people the truth. As Christians, we must have a burden to spread the truth of God’s Word. So many are still in darkness; so many are dying in their sins. We must get the message of Truth out! This is our responsibility in this age of apostasy.
The time is so short. The need is so great, yet the laborers so few. May the Spirit of God help us to be obedient to Christ as we spend the next several weeks studying the book of Jude.
Background Reading for Next Week: Jude 1; 1 Peter 1:13-19; Hebrews 12:1-2; Genesis 2:1-3; Joshua 3:1-5; John 17:16-17