Study in the Epistle of Jude # 5: Verse 2
by Chris McCann
EBible Fellowship (http://www.ebiblefellowship.com)
Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study time. We are continuing to study and to go very carefully through the book of Jude—that one-chapter Epistle that comes right before the book of Revelation. We have progressed to verse 2 of Jude where it says:
Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.
This is one of those introductions that is really very familiar. This kind of language can be seen in several of the Epistles where the Apostle Paul or even Peter, who is likewise writing under the inspiration of God, would give this type of greeting.
Unfortunately, it is the type of greeting that often gets quickly overlooked. We quickly read it and then move on to the next verse, because we really think it is lacking in something. Since it is not the chief focus of the Epistle, we want to move on to see what more God has to say to us rather than focus on this kind of language.
We also read in 2 Thessalonians 1:2:
Grace unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the same type of greeting that we saw in Jude, and in 1 Thessalonians 1:1, the last part of that verse says:
…Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.
God often uses this kind of language as He begins to address those whom He is writing to, the people of God. It is part of an introduction. It is God’s way of introducing the topic that is true, and it is not to be overlooked.
In Colossians 1:2, the last part of verse 2, we read:
…Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We see how often God is repeating this and we know that when God says something once in the Bible it is very significant. When God would take the time to perhaps mention the same thing twice, we sit up and take notice and understand that God is really beginning to emphasize that particular thing. But here, we have a very similar verse repeated again and again.
In Philippians 1:2, it says:
Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Why does God continue to repeat Himself? Why is He saying the same thing over and over again? We read in Ephesians 1:2:
Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
God certainly does not want us to quickly read over this.
In 2 Corinthians 1:2:
Grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
And in 1 Corinthians 1:3:
Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, if this was any other kind of writing, if the Bible was just another book written by man, we would think this was some type of a form letter, or a mannerism, or a way of introducing a topic. For example, some people close their letters with “sincerely,” or “love,” or something like that, and it has no meaning.
This is not so with the Word of God. Everything has meaning. Everything has a purpose. God has not written to us anything that is to be considered incidental. Nothing is just fluff or filler that is there to take up space, or to fill in the gaps until we get to the real important stuff. This is the real important stuff.
Verse 2 of Jude is really giving us the heart of the Gospel itself. That is why God is continually repeating it again and again and again, so that we do not miss it. But it is so simple and so straightforward. It is so much to the point that we just glance right over it.
Going back to Jude verse 2, we read:
Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.
“Mercy unto you”—right there is the whole Gospel. There is mercy available to you and to me and to any sinner. There is the potential that God could be merciful to you. There is the possibility that God might show Himself merciful to you and forgive your sins. This is a great fact of the Gospel. As we live out our lives, the great potential that exists in this life is the real possibility that God could forgive a sinner of his sins. It is actually in the realm of possibility.
Someday soon, there will be judgment without mercy. Someday soon, there will be the casting away of mankind into Hell and there will be no more mercy in Hell. But for now, “mercy unto you,” and where do we read about that mercy? We read about God’s mercy in the Bible. There is where we learn about the merciful God of the Bible. God, who has not just in His wrath decided to throw every sinner into Hell, but God who, in His great mercy has developed a plan of salvation. It is a plan whereby if someone sees their sins and recognizes that they are in rebellion against God, they can approach God very humbly. They can come near unto Him and they can beseech Him for mercy (Hebrews 4:16).
It is just like blind Bartimaeus in Mark 10. Let us read Mark 10:46-48:
And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.
It would be a useless exercise to cry out to God for mercy if God was not a merciful God. If God did not say that He was rich in mercy or tell us that He was a God who delighted in mercy, then we might think, “What is the point?” We are under His wrath and on our way to Hell. We deserve to go to Hell, and God would be right to just throw us all into Hell. But God does tell us these things. He does indicate that He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy (Romans 9:15). He will bestow mercy, therefore, upon some.
Now, we do not know which ones will be the wonderful recipients of the mercy of God, and so we as blind Bartimaeus, as someone who is spiritually blind in sin and has no eyesight, can from the advantage point of being a sinner, cry out to God for salvation. We can beseech Him for mercy.
Some people do not like this idea. They do not like the fact that God indicates that He gives us the privilege to come near to Him beseeching Him for mercy. They do not like that idea because they would rather have some kind of Gospel where they can claim salvation for themselves. They want a gospel where they can bring salvation to themselves. They want a gospel where they do not have to wait upon God at all. They want a gospel where they do not have to beseech Him for mercy. They would call that Hyper-Calvinism, or some other term. They are just like the people who, when blind Bartimaeus was crying out for mercy, said, “Hold your peace! Do not cry out for mercy! Stop that! You should not do that. Hold your peace!”
Can you imagine what they were actually saying to this poor blind man who was in his blindness? He had never been able to see, and he would never be able to see without God taking mercy upon him. His only hope was that God might have mercy upon him. They were actually brazen enough to say to him, “Hold your peace!”
Can you imagine that? They were not the ones who were blind! They were not the ones who were in this condition themselves, in this historical situation. They did not know what it was like to be a poor, blind beggar by the wayside, by the side of the highway for day after day and year after year. They did not know what it was like to be in this terrible condition, and yet they would say, “Hold your peace!”
That is exactly what some in the churches and even some other professing believers say today. They say, “No, there is no need to cry for mercy. Hold your peace!” Do they not know what it is like to be a poor, wretched sinner? Have they not become convinced of their sin to the point where they are becoming aware of their terribly sinful condition before God? Have they not learned from the Word of God of the judgment of God upon sin? Have they not learned that a sinner who does not find a Savior will end up in Hell? Do they not know how terrible a situation it is to be under the wrath of God? How could anyone say to a poor sinner, “Hold your peace, and do not cry out to God for mercy?” What a horrible thing to say to someone!
Bartimaeus was not buying it. He was not going to care what they thought about him. He knew that this was a matter of him having the possibility of seeing. He had never seen—he was a blind man, a beggar—and so he cried all the more, “Thou Son of David, have mercy on me!” He knew that the Son of David, the Lord Jesus Christ, was a merciful God. God was merciful and showed Himself merciful to Bartimaeus.
Mark 10:49-52 reads:
And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.
So God was merciful, and when God is saying to mankind that we are sinners under His wrath and on our way to Hell, He does give us the terrific privilege of approaching unto Him in a humble manner and beseeching Him for mercy (Luke 18:13).
This is no guarantee that we will find mercy. This is no formula for salvation because there is no formula for salvation, but it is something that we are permitted to do. We can come unto the One and Only merciful God, and we can beseech Him for His mercy. It could be, who really knows, it could be that God would be merciful to you. So here in Jude, we read, “mercy unto you.” It is wonderful to think about and meditate on God’s statement, “Mercy unto you, and peace.”
Before we can understand what God means by peace, we have to realize that, first of all, mankind has no peace. “There is no peace, saith the LORD, unto the wicked.” That statement is found in Isaiah 48:22. “There is no peace.” Mankind is at war with God. There is enmity between man and God.
In James 4:4, we read:
Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
Each one of us has been a friend of the world. We have gone after the things of the world and have desired the things of the world. In our sin, we have lusted after the things of the world. In that friendship with the world, we have shown that we are an enemy of God. Therefore, there has been warfare. This is rebellion on the part of man. We have been rebels in our lives as we have lived like others that are under the wrath of God. That is what we read in Ephesians 2:2-3:
Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
There is no difference—all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). We have all rebelled against God. We were all enemies of God, and we were at enmity with Him.
Further down in Ephesians 2, we read about God’s plan to reconcile the situation. In verses 12-17, it says:
That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh.
So here is God’s plan. This is how He brings reconciliation between God and man. The Lord Jesus Christ enters into the picture. He is the One who slays the enmity. He takes all of the rebellious sins of those whom He has elected and came to save and places them upon Himself (Isaiah 53:6, Ephesians 1:4). God pours out His wrath and His punishment, the equivalent of an eternity in Hell for all those transgressions, upon Christ, and Christ Jesus pays that penalty. He pays it completely, and by it, the enmity—that warfare between us and God—is slain. It is removed and taken away from the picture leaving peace. Jesus Christ Himself is peace (Ephesians 2:14). He is the embodiment of peace. This is what it means to have the peace of God “which passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7).
We might think that we are at peace in our lives. We might think that we are at peace with people. If we are not violent and get along with others, we might have these definitions of what peace is in our minds. If we are a very peaceful fellow, we can even be a conscientious objector to war. We would never want to physically hurt anyone. We can be all these things and have this kind of mindset, and yet if we do not have Christ, if He is not our Savior, then we do not have peace. There is no peace in our hearts and no real peace in our lives, because spiritual warfare is still going on (Romans 8:7). There is spiritual warfare raging against God, and it is of the most violent type. We are contrary to God, just as it says in Romans 3:15-17, in speaking of the unsaved of the world:
Their feet are swift to shed blood: Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known:
In John 14:6, we read “Jesus is the way.” In Ephesians 2:14, we read “He is our peace.” Therefore, the unsaved have not known Christ. They have never known peace—not true peace, not Biblical peace, God’s definition of peace. The Lord Jesus Himself is peace, and we need to have Him. He has to be that peace that we possess. He has to be indwelling us in order for us to have peace with God.
This is what Christ means when He says in John 14:27, “My peace I leave with you.” We must have the peace of Christ—the peace in which the warfare is abolished and the battle is done—the peace in which we are no longer in rebellion against God and are broken of those transgressions that have set us contrary to Him. At this point, we are no longer trying to exert our own will over the will of God, but we will now want to be in submission to God. We will want to humbly do things His way.
This is the character of someone who has found peace with God. He will not be trying to exalt himself and to figure out how he can get his own will accomplished or do things his own way. He will be broken before Christ because Christ will have broken him and given him His peace.
We can now understand that Jude is picking out some very, very important words that get right to the heart of the Gospel, as He says:
Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.
Love—the love of God as He has shed forth His love upon those that are undeserving and demonstrated His great love by sending His Son. Eternal God has shown and proven His love for man as He has emptied Himself of His glory and greatly humbled Himself as He came down from Heaven above, taking upon Himself the form of a man (Philippians 2:7). He has shown His love as He entered into the human race and then took the sins of the rebels and the transgressors upon Himself when He paid the penalty, not only of physical death but the penalty of the second death (Revelation 21:8). Christ has suffered far more than anyone would ever suffer as He went through the fires of Hell in order to purchase a people for Himself. This is a grand testimony to the love of God, the gigantic love of God.
In 1 Peter 4:8, it says:
And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.
Charity is the same word as “love.” And remember, 1 John 4:16 says, “God is love” or “Christ is love.” Just as Christ is peace, He is love, and it is love that covers the multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8). It is the love of the Lord Jesus Christ that was demonstrated when the sins of those that were named to salvation were laid upon Him and covered over by His blood as He shed His blood in dying for those sins and gave up His life (Isaiah 53:6). We know this means that He suffered eternal damnation. This is the love of God that covers the multitude of sins, and we can never fully comprehend this. We can never completely understand the great and enormous love of God as He has provided this salvation for His people.
Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.
You could not wish nicer or kinder or more wonderful things upon anyone. We have a tremendous desire for the salvation of someone if we would want to say to them, “Could it be that God’s mercy be upon you and that you might experience and know the peace of God—that God’s love be shed forth on you?”
This is a tremendous desire of God as He writes this Epistle. It is God’s desire that these spiritual blessings that are found in Christ be experienced by the reader of this Epistle, by the reader of the Word of God, by the poor lost souls as they would pick up the Bible and read the Word of God. This is God’s statement to them:
Mercy unto you, [that readeth] and peace, and love, be multiplied.
Could it be that you will find these things and that you, too, might be someone who experiences salvation? Could it be that you might be blessed by the reading of the Word of God?
Romans 10:17 reads:
So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
Salvation is one package—all of the spiritual blessings of God are wrapped up into one. Mercy comes with peace, and peace and mercy arrive together with love and grace and the gift of faith and repentance. All the rich blessings of God are given as someone reads the Bible and God blesses that Word to them. Then, they can begin to know these things in their own lives.
The question then that we have as we read this is, “Why does God say, ‘Mercy unto you, and peace and love be multiplied?’ How can these things be multiplied?”
In our next study, Lord willing, we will try to answer this, and we will try to see how these great spiritual blessings can be multiplied in the life of a child of God.