Study in the Epistle of Jude # 2: Verse 1

by Chris McCann

EBible Fellowship (http://www.ebiblefellowship.com)

Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study. We are going to continue our look at the book of Jude—that little Epistle near the end of the Bible right before the book of Revelation.

We started out looking at Jude himself as to who this man might be. We saw that in all probability, he was Judas, one of the twelve Apostles; not Iscariot, but Judas the brother of James. Jude was one of the lesser-known Apostles, yet God used him to write this little Epistle. We saw that Judas (and by the way Judas or Jude is exactly the same Greek word—they are just pronounced a little differently as the translator translated them) said in verse 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:

We saw that Jude writes this Epistle under the inspiration of God, and that ultimately it does not really matter whether it was Judas or Peter or Paul or any man because, finally, God is the One who is the author of the Bible. God is the One who has written the Word of God. He used Jude or Peter or Paul or Moses. He used these men as instruments, as a secretary that He Himself was dictating to. Then these men wrote down the words of God. They could not change these words that they had to write down. They were the very words that God had moved them to write, therefore, it is no more their words than if a man dictated to a scribe. We would not give the honor to the scribe, but we would realize it was the mind behind the words, not the fact that someone took pen to paper—that does not make someone an author. It is the one in whose mind these thoughts and these words originated—he is the author. The Word of God comes directly from the infinite mind of God. That is why we read, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16). That is why God says in 2 Peter 1:21:

For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

God is the One who has moved these men and Judas, one of the twelve Apostles, to write this little Epistle.

We should not think that this is an insignificant book because it is only one chapter long. Nor should we think that it is not to be considered being as great as the other writings of the Bible. It is all part of the Word of God. It is all part of God’s communication to mankind. Therefore, we had better listen to everything that the Bible has to say. And here, in Jude 1, we read:

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:

“Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ”—this is a very common introduction. Many of the Epistles have this type of introduction where the writer of the Epistle will be introduced as either a servant of Jesus Christ or an Apostle of Jesus Christ. For example, in 1 Timothy 1:1, we read:

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the commandment of God our Saviour, and Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope;

That is because an Apostle is really the same thing as a servant. He is one who has been sent with the Gospel to serve Christ by bringing forth the Word of God, and so Jude is a servant. In Philippians 1:1, we read:

Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:

All believers are servants of Jesus Christ once they have become saved. This is what God has commissioned us to do. He has saved us, He has redeemed His people, and He has forgiven the sins of His elect. Then He commissions those that have become saved to send forth the Gospel into the world so that they now become servants of Jesus Christ.

A believer who is here on earth is not here to find his own pleasure any longer. He is not here to see how much enjoyment he can get out of life and how much money he can save. He is not here to find out what kind of nice things he can purchase, or how he can make his life as easy and as comfortable as possible. That is not what a servant of Christ should be aiming for. That is not what we should be thinking about or trying to achieve in our lives, but rather our goal in life should be to serve Jesus Christ.

If someone is a true servant, a true child of God, they will want to bring the Word of God, the Gospel, to others in the world because this is the desire of Christ, and He is the master. He is the Lord, and what He says is what the servant ought to do.

Let us turn to 1 Corinthians and see how this ties in with the whole idea that we are servants. In 1 Corinthians 6, we read in verses 19-20:

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.

God is indicating here that He has made a purchase. When God has elected someone to salvation from before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4), at some point in that person’s life, He will have brought them under the hearing of the Word of God and blessed that Word to their hearts and saved them (Romans 10:17). Then at that point, they cease to be their own free agent. They cease to be someone who is their own, and they no longer belong to themselves. Actually, they never did.

God is really making a point of it here by saying that He has purchased or “bought with a price” that sinner, and that price was an enormous price. It was the price of the Lord Jesus Christ taking upon Himself the sins of that person and paying the penalty of an eternity in Hell for each and every one of those sins. That is the price with which the sinner has been purchased.

We have been bought. We are no longer our own. We are like a slave that has been placed on an auction block. The slave is standing up there and the auctioneer is trying to jack up the bidding. People are naming their prices and finally someone agrees to pay an amount that no one else wants to top. They have then bought that man. This is the way it was in many cases of history throughout many nations of the world in which individuals could be bought as slaves.

In Genesis 37 and 39, we read where Joseph’s brethren sold him into slavery and he became a slave in Potiphar’s house. Joseph was a servant to Potiphar the Egyptian, and so he did his master’s bidding. Yet, we see that Joseph was a very faithful servant with everything that his master gave him to do. His master had no concern because he knew that Joseph would do it heartily with all his might.

This is the very same idea when we have become bought by Christ and when we have become a servant of Christ. We have not been bought by some evil master. We have not been bought by someone who is going to abuse us. We have been bought by eternal God Himself, and we have been bought out of misery. We have been bought out of the dungeon of sin and from under the wrath of God. Though while we are no longer subject to spend an eternity in Hell, it is as though we are already actually slaves, because in Romans 6:16-18, we read these words:

Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.

We must realize it is not as though we were some great or grand prize. We were filthy, rotten sinners. We were involved in covetousness and idolatry and murder and theft and all kinds of wickedness. This is what we were bound and enslaved to. We were going after the lusts of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:16). We were ensnared by our own sins. Our iniquities were wrapped about us as cords (Proverbs 5:22). We were in the pit of the dungeon of sin, and on top of it all, we were on our way to Hell. Yet God has purchased us from this evil master of sin itself and from obeying sin as sin was carrying us to death and reigning in our life unto death.

God has set us free from all of that. He has made us free, by the grace of God, so that we can stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free (Galatians 5.1). We then are free men in the sense that, if we have really become saved and sin has no more hold over us, then there is nothing else that sin can do to us. We no longer have to obey it from the heart; therefore, we are made free.

But we are creatures. We were created to be creatures to serve God. That is how we were originally created. We were created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26), yes, but still creatures. We were made to obey God. Yet, when Satan deceived Eve, and then later, Adam also rebelled against God (Genesis 3), we became servants of sin. Either way, though, we are a servant. We never rise above that level. We are either going to serve sin unto death, where Satan would be paid homage, or we will serve the Lord Jesus Christ, because He has saved us.

If we are true believers, God has freed us. He has saved us and set us free from the penalty of sin and all that that involves, and yet we are still a servant. But now we are a servant of righteousness—of righteous act unto righteous act, where we desire to keep the law of God and to do the will of God now more than ever in our lives. We are at God’s command (1 John 2:3-5), and God’s chief desire is that we send forth the Gospel (Mark 16:15) and minister it faithfully however we have been equipped to do that (Romans 12:6-8).

We then look at ourselves and say, “Well, what can I do? What has God given me where I can be involved in this? Do I have the ability to teach, or do I have the ability to pray a great deal? Has God given me these things? Do I have time on my hands where I can go out regularly with tracts and hand them out, or am I someone who can mail out certain things dealing with the Gospel? Am I someone who makes additional money that I really do not need? Am I spending money to make my life easier, to please myself and to give myself more comforts, and is my money going to feed my belly that really does not need all these extra treats everyday?” We honestly look at our lives and ask ourselves, “How can we serve God?”—because each believer will serve God. We will serve Him because He has placed this desire in our hearts so that we will do His will more and more (Psalm 37:4-5).

The Apostle Paul also speaks of another aspect of serving God in Galatians chapter 1. We read in verses 6-10:

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

Here Paul is making a very important point when he is saying that the desire of the servant of Christ, of the one who is a slave that has been bought and redeemed by the blood of Christ so that he is no longer his own, is no longer towards mankind. We are not here to please men. We are not here to satisfy other men and what they want us to do and would like to see. We are not here for that.

It is easy to see how this relates to the Gospel because the Gospel is sometimes very offensive. The Gospel can really offend mankind. It is full of information that is not pleasant to the ears. It speaks of sin, it speaks of eternal damnation, and it tells us that we are in a dire predicament in which no one can save himself. It is offensive to mankind again and again on many points and individual doctrines.

For example, the Bible says that when we are once married, we are always married, and that there is not to be divorce (1 Corinthians 7:39). Well, what if during the Church Age you have people in your church that are divorced? Do you become silent about these truths? Do you just avoid teaching what the Bible says on divorce so as not to offend man?

Again, the Bible says that women ought not to teach (1 Timothy 2:12), but there rises up in the congregation a woman who really is becoming more and more outspoken and many of the people like her. Do you then allow a woman to teach?

God is constantly testing us on this very point. Do we seek to please men, or are we seeking to please Jesus Christ and be His servant?

The answer is that we cannot seek to please man. If we did, we would not be the servant of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we bring the true Gospel faithfully, and men may not like to hear it. They may not like the question, “Does God love you?” They may not like to hear about Hell. They may not like to hear about the end of the Church Age and that it is time for believers to come out of the church (Matthew 24:16), but what is a servant to do?

Even though man does not like to hear these things, if a true believer stops proclaiming these truths in order to get along with these people who do not want to hear the truth, then he would no longer be serving Christ. He would no longer be doing the will of the Lord. This would be terrible because it would indicate he was not saved. This would indeed indicate that he was not a true child of God.

We, finally, have to come to the following conclusion and say, “I am sorry if this offends you. I am sorry if you are bothered in your soul and in your mind because we are talking about Hell again, or you really do not like this idea that the Church Age is over. I am sorry about that, but these are the truths that I am constrained to proclaim.” That is how the believer must approach it.

But, there is something else that the Apostle Paul wrote that we have to consider. In 1 Corinthians 10:31-33, we read:

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God: Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.

Here, at first glance, it looks as if we have a contradiction to what Paul was writing under the inspiration of God in Galatians 1:10. There he is indicating that he cannot please man because he is the servant of Christ. If he, therefore, sought to please man, he would no longer be serving Christ. But here in 1 Corinthians 10, he is saying, “Even as I please all men in all things.” Is he compromising the Gospel? Is he now doing what he said that a servant of Christ ought not to do?

No, he is not compromising the Gospel. This verse is not contradicting what we read in Galatians 1:10 at all. He is basically saying that he is made all things to all men. That is, he seeks not to be the offense himself. He will then try to please man in all matters that are not doctrinal and that do not touch upon the Bible.

If someone, for instance, is visiting someone’s house, he will be meek and mild and very pleasant and will not get into any arguments. He will not try to impress his will on a question that has nothing to do with the Gospel and where an argument could develop. Even if he felt a certain way, he would just let it go, because that is not the area in which he is called to proclaim truth. Therefore, he would never try to be the offense himself. He would never be strong-willed about an issue of politics, or be strong-willed about some other issue that is not really touching on the Gospel.

However, whenever it comes to the Gospel, whenever it comes to preaching the Word of God, then he would never (and neither would any believer) seek to please man. Instead, a true believer would always seek to teach the truth. That would be his desire—to teach the truth—and yet in this area, he would be uncompromising. He would be firm, and people might think that he was stubborn when it came to the will of God and the Word of God. While you could meet him on some other issue outside of the Bible, he would seem almost wishy-washy. Whatever pleased man in that sense, he would not try to be the offense or to press anything to the point of argument.

This is really a wise way for believers to conduct themselves in this world. We may have some knowledge about some other issues. We may have some personal decisions about politics or about sports or about some other areas of life that do not touch directly upon the Bible, but why would we want to offend anyone in these areas? Why would we want to hold onto something like this, which could possibly have someone refuse to listen to the Gospel because they were offended at our strong position on some other frivolous matter?

So as believers, we walk very humbly in this world and yet at the same time, whenever it comes around to the Word of God, there is that stubbornness. It is a stubbornness that God places within His people, a stubbornness to do the will of God.

We are going to continue taking a look at this Epistle of Jude in our next study, and we will move on to what it means to be sanctified, as it says here “to them that are sanctified by God the Father.” So, Lord willing, in our next study, we will take a closer look at what the Bible has to say about these matters.