Study in the Epistle of Jude # 3: Verse 1

by Chris McCann

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

Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study time. We are continuing with our study of the book of Jude, the little Epistle right before Revelation near the end of the Bible.

So far, we have looked at Jude and seen that he is a servant of Jesus Christ. But before we move on and go a little bit further in verse 1, we are going to go back and reexamine Jude or Judas to make sure that we have correct understanding in that the human author is one of the twelve Apostles.

Someone mentioned to me that when we read that Judas is the brother of James in Luke 6:16 (a listing of the twelve Apostles), the word “brother” is italicized, which means that it is not in the original Greek at all:

And Judas the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, which also was the traitor.

Also, in Acts 1:13, it says:

And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James.

Once again, “brother” is italicized—it is not in the original Greek. The translators have added the word “brother” in both cases. These are the only two places outside of Jude where we read about Judas and then see that he is identified as being the brother of James.

Also, notice in this verse that the word “son” is italicized, so that word is not there either. The question then that was raised was, “Since in many cases it seems that the word ‘son’ is not found (as we see here in Acts 1:13, ‘James the son of Alphaeus,’ where the original only says, ‘of Alphaeus’), how could the translators know that when Judas is standing in the same sort of relationship to James as James is to Alphaeus, that Judas was the brother of James? How could they say that he was a brother and not the son of James? And could it be possible that Judas might be the son of James since the word is not actually in the text?”

Well, let us turn to Matthew 10:1-4:

And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease. Now the names of the twelve apostles are these; The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip, and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the publican; James the son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus; Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.

One thing we notice is that we do not find Judas the brother of James mentioned here in Matthew 10, and we wonder, “What happened to him? And who is this guy Lebbaeus whose surname was Thaddaeus. Where did he come from?”

It happens that Judas, the brother of James, is also known as Lebbaeus. He has another name—a surname, Thaddaeus, just as Simon had a surname of Peter, and James and John were surnamed by the Lord Jesus Christ, “Boanerges,” meaning “sons of thunder.” So Lebbaeus had this surname of Thaddaeus, and the other name of “Judas the brother of James.” But, we are looking at the question of how can the translator determine if a man is a brother or a son of another individual who is mentioned?

In Matthew 10:2, where it mentions James the son of Zebedee, how did they know that he is the son of Zebedee when in the original text, it just says “of Zebedee”? And how do they know that James was the son of Alphaeus when that word “son” is not found in the original text either? Well, there is a certain Greek construction that is found.

Let us first go to verse 2 of Matthew 10. Here we see James, and we see him standing in a certain relationship to Zebedee. In the Greek, we would find the name James then the definite article which we would probably pronounce ho (Strong’s #3588). Then we find another definite article following that which would be tou (Strong’s #3588), and that is in the genitive case. There are two definite articles in front of the name Zebedee; therefore, it would be read literally as “James the one of the Zebedee.” The translators realized that this is saying that James is the one, the son of Zebedee. The genitive is relating this one, who is James, back to Zebedee.

This is the same Greek construction in verse 3 of Matthew 10. “James the son of Alphaeus,” we have in the English, but in the Greek, we have James and then the definite article followed by the definite article in the genitive case in front of the name Alphaeus—”James the one of the Alphaeus.” So we see that wherever we find this kind of construction, it is saying that the one man is the son of the other man whom he has been begotten from. This James was begotten of Alphaeus and the other James was begotten of Zebedee, and so on.

Actually, in every case that I looked at where we do not have the actual word “son” found in the text, this construction is there, except for one place. That is in Acts 1:13 where we have James the son of Alphaeus, but the definite article is missing. However, since the translators have this verse here in Matthew 10, and I believe in another place they did have the definite article standing in that kind of relationship between James and Alphaeus, they knew that he was the son of Alphaeus and translated it as such in Acts 1:13.

Looking again at Judas, let us turn to Luke 6:16 where we read, “And Judas the brother of James.” Here we have the name Judas and then we have the name James, and in the text there is no definite article at all.

Also in Acts 1:13, we find “and Judas the brother of James.” Once again, we have the name Judas and the name James immediately following with no definite article. Since there was no other place where the definite article was used to indicate a father-son relationship between Judas and James, the translators followed the guideline that this is not a son but a brother.

I believe that they properly translated these verses, and I think that the Epistle of Jude confirms this as we see in verse 1 of Jude, “Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James.” Here we do find the word “brother” in the text and so there is confirmation, because we are very much leaning towards the fact that this Judas is one of the twelve Apostles and not Judas, one of the half-brothers of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no discrepancy at all in the fact that the word “brother” was not found in the other two verses. Actually, once we look at the original language, at the Greek, we see that it was properly translated.

All right, I just wanted to quickly go over that. I think it is great that we can have this kind of feedback as we go along. In this manner, if there was an error, regardless of what it might be, we can correct it almost immediately. This is how we have to study the Bible. We cannot come to the Bible proudly and arrogantly and not be willing to make correction when we are off on a verse or off on an idea. We do not want our pride to be at stake, but we want to be very humble. Our ultimate goal has to be faithfulness. It has to be that we want to teach and to know exactly as much as possible as closely as possible to the Word of God. We want to know what God is saying. We do not want to teach error. Therefore, if ever I do make a misstatement or anything like that, I would encourage you to please let me know about it and to bring it up. Then, we will try to make correction if it does need correcting.

Now going back to Jude, we read 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:

“Sanctified by God the Father”—now sanctification is a Biblical term as well as a theological term, and many theologians have developed theories and doctrines surrounding the idea of sanctification. They teach that sanctification is when a believer becomes saved and God draws him to Himself and blesses His Word to his heart. They teach that this begins the process of sanctification.

They agree that we all begin as filthy, dirty, rotten sinners, spiritually dead, far from God, and that we are unholy, and so on. But after salvation, they say what happens is that we slowly, in some cases (and they would say there could be a different rate of development for certain individuals) get holier and holier. They believe that we become more righteous and that we become sanctified in our lives. They believe that this is why we are growing and turning away from sins, and after maybe a couple of years of being a Christian, we are turning away from sins that we had not previously turned away from, and so on. They develop this whole elaborate scheme called sanctification.

I have even heard some pastors add their own ideas that we are growing in grace. They teach that we are becoming more and more holy until the point where God can then take us into Heaven once we have reached that point where we are ready. In essence, they teach that we become qualified and cleansed to the point where we can enter into Heaven.

What can we say about this except that it is not what the Bible teaches; it is not God’s Word? This is not God’s teaching. This is not what He means by sanctification. God provides no intention in the direction that these theologians are heading that would say that a man is slowly improving and slowly becoming more pure in the sight of God.

What the Bible declares is that we are all sinners. They have that part right. We are all dead in sin. We are all filthy. We are all unclean in our sinfulness, and we are under the wrath of God and it is God who saves His people.

But here is where the difference lies. At the moment of salvation, God instantaneously gives the sinner a new heart, a new spirit. He gives the sinner a new resurrected soul that is perfect, pure, clean, justified, and right in the sight of God. There is no sin in the new heart and the new spirit that God places within the saved individual. Therefore, there is no room for someone to progressively become holier and holier.

Once we are saved, all of our sins are forgiven. God has given us that perfect and pure new heart, yet we remain in our old physical bodies. Our bodies are not saved at all, and so there is no sanctification as far as the theologians understand it taking place in our physical body after salvation. Our physical body is not getting more and more holy. Our body is seeing corruption because it has not become saved and it will finally, physically die and go to the ground at some point, if Christ tarries. So there has been no sanctification as theologians understand it in our physical body. Our bodies have not gotten holier because our soul after salvation cannot get any holier since it is already made perfect and pure. So their whole idea is way off base.

Someone might ask, “Well, how can you prove that? How can you prove that the believer who becomes saved is perfect, and how can anybody say that?” In 1 John 3:9, we read:

Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

That is what the Bible says; “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin.” Let us also look at 1 John 5:18:

We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.

God says it twice in the same book of 1 John, “Whosoever is born of God doth not sin.” Now someone else might say, “Now wait a minute, what are you saying? Are you saying we are without sin?” No, I am not saying that. Back in 1 John 1:8, it says:

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

Here it seems as though we have a contradiction, as though God is speaking out of both sides of His mouth. First of all, He says that whosoever is born of Him does not sin. But He says in the above-mentioned verse that if we would claim or say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and we are a liar and the truth is not in us. How can we find agreement with these two ideas? How can we harmonize these two thoughts? We know there are no contradictions in the Bible.

The harmony or the answer comes once we understand that we are saved in our spirit essence. Once God gives us a new heart, that heart is perfect and cannot sin.

A human being is made up of really two elements—we have a spiritual side and we have a physical side. It is in our spirit where we are born again. This is what Jesus means when He says that we must be born again. When God says He will take out our heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26), it will be a heart transplant, a heart operation such that we will receive a heart after His own heart. It will be a heart that desires to do the will of God and to keep His commandments. It will be a heart that believes and wants to do things God’s way because it has been made perfect. There is no sin in the heart of the child of God. That is where we have this perfection. We cannot sin any longer from the heart.

However, we are still in a physical body. After salvation we are still in the same old body that we were in before salvation, and there has been no change to the body. The physical body remains the same.

Not until the Last Day will God change the physical body on the day of resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). At that time, we will receive a new, resurrected body that will be perfect itself, and then we will be one whole personality without sin. But until that point, as we live in this life, we have a body that lusts after the things of the world and is capable of sin, and so we sin.

Since we are one personality made up of these two sides—the physical and the spiritual—we cannot separate ourselves. If our body is sinning, we cannot say that it is not we who are sinning. It is still us. It is still a part of us, and so we admit and confess that we are sinners. We will still fall into sins and break the law of God. But the problem is lying in our physical side, if we are a true child of God. The problem is no longer coming from the heart.

That is how we understand what God is saying in 1 John. That is why, when we are thinking about sanctification, we are thinking, “What is this Biblical doctrine all about? What does God mean when He says here in Jude, ‘to them that are sanctified by God the Father?’ What does it mean to be sanctified?”

Let us turn to Matthew 23:16-17. It says here:

Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor! Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?

Now here is a big, big clue and a great deal of evidence for us as we are trying to discover what this sanctification means. There is gold that is sanctified by the temple. Now, of course, as we think about this, we realize that there cannot be any change in the gold. The gold is not of a greater quality because it is given into the temple treasury once it is cast into the temple. It does not then begin to purify to a greater degree or to become more valuable in that sense. That is not what is taking place. There is no progressive growth in the gold at all where the chemical elements are changing to make it of a finer grade. That cannot be happening. But what is happening? What happens to the gold that is cast into the temple treasury?

The answer is that the gold becomes set apart for God’s use, for the work of God. God is now going to utilize the gold for His purposes, and that is what the sanctifying of the gold is pointing to—that it is being set apart for the use of God. There is no outward or inward change in the gold in any way, but the gold is now in the hands of God and God will do with it what He pleases.

That is as far as we are going to get in this study. We will pick this up again in our next study, Lord willing.