Study in the Epistle of Jude # 6: Verses 2-3

by Chris McCann

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

Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study. We are going to continue taking a look at the Epistle of Jude. We began several studies ago, and now we are in verse 2 of Jude. Jude is a little book and it only has one chapter. In verse 2, we read:

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

During our last study, we were looking at these wonderful statements of God—these wonderful truths that accompany salvation when God saves a sinner. We learned that upon salvation, God has mercy upon the sinner and gives him peace. We learned that that peace is in fact the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He is our peace (Ephesians 2:14). We also learned that the love of God is greatly demonstrated once God saves a person because God’s love covers “the multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).

We left off last time wondering, “What does it mean for these things to be multiplied?” We can understand that when God says “Mercy unto you and peace and love” and so forth, He is speaking of salvation.

When a person becomes saved, God has given him a new heart and translated him from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of His dear Son (Colossians 1:13). Once that has taken place, has not God bestowed abundantly His mercy to its fullest degree? That is, once someone’s sins are all paid for, once their sins are all forgiven, and once God has given that person the gift of eternal life, what more mercy can God bestow? At the moment of salvation, God has abundantly had mercy upon that person who has experienced the salvation of God. Once they are saved, they have the peace of God, who is Jesus Christ Himself. Jesus has come into their life. They now have peace between themselves and God. The spiritual warfare is over.

Will they find more peace then they had at the moment of salvation? Is this peace somehow capable of growing?

No, because their peace is Christ himself, and once they possess Christ, they have the fullness of peace and love with God. When God says, “Mercy unto you and peace and love,” will God somehow shed forth His love greater and greater upon the sinner in covering further sins?

No, because there are no further sins to cover. Each and every one of the sinner’s sins (whether past, present, or future) were paid for while Christ was on the cross. All of the sins of those whom Jesus would save in the New Testament era were future, and Christ paid for all of those sins, too. So, the love of God has covered the multitude of sins. There cannot be any greater expression of love than that.

We wonder then how these spiritual attributes of God and these spiritual blessings from God can be multiplied in the life of a child of God. We would like them to be multiplied, and God is indicating somehow that they can be multiplied in our lives. But how can that be? How is it possible that God’s mercy can grow?

This is really where some get the wrong idea that sanctification is an ongoing process. Some say, “We see God’s grace growing in our lives and His mercy growing in our lives, and we ourselves are experiencing the peace of God more and more,” and so forth. But we have already seen that the idea of sanctification being an increased state of holiness, a growing in holiness and purity, is not Biblical. To be sanctified means to be set apart, and then at the point of salvation, we are cleansed from our sin and given a new heart and a new spirit that is without sin.

So how can we understand this? The answer is found in 2 Peter 1:2, where God says:

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,

This verse is very similar to what we read in Jude 2. “Grace and peace be multiplied” is similar to “mercy unto you and peace and love be multiplied,” which we find in Jude. Well then, God tells us how they will be multiplied in 2 Peter 1:2:

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,

That is what God is saying. It is not that God is going to bestow more mercy, or that we will somehow experience more peace from God. On the other hand, we will have the knowledge of God increase in our lives as we read the Bible. That is, the more we read the Bible and study the Scriptures, and the more time we spend in the Word of God, then the better the understanding we will have of God’s mercy. We will see how sinful we are as we learn more and more about God’s commandments. We will get an increased understanding of just how wretched we are spiritually, of how dead in sin we were before salvation, and just how numerous our sins were.

The more we learn about God’s commandments, the more we will see our sin. The more we see our sin, the more God’s mercy shines through, because all those sins are forgiven and God has had mercy upon us. The more we learn about the Bible, the more we understand the Scriptures. As God gives us the ability to do so, as He opens up our understanding, we will see more and more how rebellious we truly were. We will see how stubborn and hard-hearted and set in our own ways we were, and how we warred with God on every point. We will come to see how we would not submit to Him in any way, but continued doing our own will and having things our own way.

So, we will begin to understand more and more the peace of God. The peace of God will be multiplied unto us as we see how contrary we were to the person of God, and how set against Him we were in our spiritual deadness. Also, the more that we understand about what the Bible says about our situation—about our fall into sin and being under the wrath of God subject to spend an eternity in Hell—the more the love of God will shine forth brighter and brighter. We will see just how tremendously God has loved His people as He sent forth His Son to die for our sins.

Another example of understanding the love of God is that we begin to see in the Bible and understand much better what the atonement was all about. We see that all our sins were laid upon Jesus Christ and that He paid the penalty for our sins. The more we read the Bible and the more God gives us understanding, the more we see that the penalty for sin is eternal damnation and that Jesus experienced this penalty. He paid this price as He went through the fires of Hell to save His people. As we grow in that knowledge, we are growing in our understanding of God’s love, and so it is multiplying. It is increasing, and that is how we are growing in grace and in the knowledge of God.

That is what growing in grace is all about. It is not that God will somehow extend further grace—that has nothing to do with it. All the grace necessary for salvation has already been given. It is our understanding that is lacking. Our ability to comprehend to any degree what God has done is what we are going to grow in, and we are going to come to a greater knowledge of these things. In that sense, God’s spiritual blessings will be multiplied.

Going back to Jude, we read in verse 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.

Now we are starting to get into the body of the letter. We are starting to move on as Judas writes under the inspiration of God and begins to get to the point of his writing. We have already been blessed by hearing the Gospel in just the first couple of verses as he introduced this Epistle. Now in verse 3, he begins with “beloved.”

God calls His people “beloved” and this is an affectionate term. It is also translated in a couple of places as “dear,” which is very common in our English language. A husband may say to his wife, “dear.” It is an affectionate term, and God uses it to speak to His elect. “Beloved,” we are loved of God, we are close to God, and we are the children of God. So God speaks to us tenderly here as He says “beloved.”

In Romans 9:25, we read this statement:

As he saith also in Osee, I will call them my people, which were not my people; and her beloved, which was not beloved.

We see that God in this reference is referring to the Gentiles. The Gentiles would one day come into the body of Christ. During the Old Testament, the Jews were primarily those whom God was dealing and working with. They were the caretakers of the Word of God, and they were the ones greatly blessed of God. With regard to the rest of the nations of the world, God says, “I will call them My people which were not My people.” The nations of the world were not the people of God, and God then says that they will become His people.

We were not beloved. We were hated. We were under the wrath of God. God was angry with us as with all sinners each and every day (Psalms 7:11). Yet, if someone is one of God’s elect and truly becomes saved, God says that He will call those His beloved which were not beloved. And so, He indicates that He will make a change in that person’s life. He will reach out through His Word, grab hold of that sinner, and begin to deal in that sinner’s heart whereby He will change his heart, save him, and make him beloved.

It is very similar to a man and a woman. A man sees a woman and they have no relationship at first. She is not beloved. When he goes and seeks her out, and asks her to be his wife, she then becomes his beloved.

In the same way, God has done this with those that He has decreed to save, with those whose names have been written down in the Lamb’s Book of Life (Ephesians 1:4 and Revelation 13:8). He seeks them out, and they become His beloved. This is true for anyone who is a true child of God. We are beloved of the Lord.

It goes on to say in Jude verse 3:

Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation…

The Apostle Judas is saying that he gave all diligence. The word “diligence” is at times translated as “haste.” For example, Mary went into the hill country “with haste” in Luke 1:39. Here, this word is speaking of something that must be done urgently. In using this word, one of the ideas is that there can be no delay. This is also picked up in the next part of verse 3 in Jude, where God says:

it was needful for me to write unto you…

Jude is giving us some insight into what it means to be moved by the Holy Spirit. He gave all diligence to write. It was needful for him to write. He could not prevent it. He could not hold back the words. He could not stop the words from coming. He could not say to God, “No, I am not interested in writing down these thoughts.” That would be an impossibility.

Let us turn to 2 Peter 1:21 where God says:

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.

And so, Jude is being moved by the Holy Ghost, and he gives all diligence to write. It is necessary and needful for him to write. He is like the prophet Jeremiah who could not hold back the words of God (Jeremiah20:9). Jeremiah had said, “I will not make mention of Him [the Lord], nor speak any more in His name.” Yet, the Word of God so constrained Jeremiah that he felt a tremendous need, a tremendous desire, to the point where he had no choice but to declare the Word of God. It came forth, and he could not hold it back. Neither could Jude or any writer of Scripture hold back what he must write. So Jude is saying “I gave all diligence.”

But what does it mean when he says, “I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation”? The words “common salvation” are an unusual way of stating what God has done with His salvation plan. It is a great salvation. We can imagine him saying that it is a magnificent salvation or it is a glorious salvation, but why would he express it by saying that it is a common salvation? That does not sound so glorious. That does not sound so praiseworthy or wonderful at all. It is common. We would think about this word “common” as it is used elsewhere, and we find this word used in certain ways by God.

In other places, it is translated as “unclean” or “unholy.” It is the same word as when the Apostle Peter was shown the vision of unclean animals (Acts 10:9-16). God said to him, “Rise, Peter; kill, and eat.” But Peter said, “Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean.”

Wow, what a way of speaking of salvation! How can we understand this? When we understand Peter’s remark, that these unclean animals were marked out and separated by God and not to be eaten by the Jews, the true, faithful Jews, we see that this kind of a word speaks of that which is ordinary. For example, the Jews were not to eat of the pig (Leviticus 11:7), but many other nations certainly would eat of it. Certainly the unclean animals were commonly eaten by the nations of the world, but the Jews would not eat them in order to be obedient to the command of God (Leviticus 20:25). But the rest of the world had no such commandment, or at least they lived as if they had no such commandment, and so those animals were commonly being eaten by the various nations. It was a common food, and so God used that kind of a word to speak of His salvation. It is a common salvation. Jude says, “I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation.”

What is this common salvation all about? Let us turn to Acts 2:44-45 where God says:

And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.

God states in Acts 4:31-32:

And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness. And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.

Here, God gives us a couple of examples of the forming of the New Testament church. As they believed, as they were being saved by God’s salvation, as they were experiencing this deliverance from sin, from Satan, and from the threat of damnation, they were coming together and they had all things common. It even says in Acts 4:32, “the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul.” “One heart and one soul” means that they had all things common.

This is the point that God is making regarding salvation. We all are partakers of that One heart (Ezekiel 11:19)—the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ. He gives us a new heart and a new spirit. But what heart do we receive? We receive that heart that is patterned after the heart of God, after the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ. A broken and contrite heart, a heart that is willing to submit to the commandments of God, a heart like God’s own (Psalm 34:18, 51:17). That is what God said of King David, that he was a “man after mine own heart” (Acts 13:22). Each child of God receives a heart like the heart of Christ. They then have an obedient, sinless heart that is patterned after God’s own heart. This is our common lot. We receive this salvation of God, each one of us.

Also, salvation is common because God is no respecter of persons. He is not saving only the Jews, but He is saving people from every nation. From every nation in the world, it is possible for people to become saved. It does not matter if we are rich or poor, if we are black or white, if we are smart or dumb. It does not matter if we are physically healthy or physically lame. It does not matter in God’s sight, because He is no respecter of persons when it comes to salvation (Acts 10:34). It is a common salvation. All who become saved share this common grace of God, the common faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, because it is equally distributed to each one of His elect.

In Titus 1:4, God speaks of the common faith. He says there:

To Titus, mine own son after the common faith: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Lord willing, we will be going on in Jude verse 3 in our next study and looking a little bit more at this common salvation. From there, we will move on to this faith, the faith that we should earnestly contend for.