NOTES for Jud 1:1-25

Dangers to the Church can come not only from outright persecutors, but also from among those who would seem to be our own brothers. It is true that the Apostle Jude calls such false brothers people long ago designated for condemnation, thereby noting their dependence on the forces of evil already condemned. This is so, but it makes sober rejection of the temptations that have penetrated the Church all the more necessary.

The seducers laid bare the problem of a right and a distorted understanding of Christian freedom. Christians have often faced this problem, especially in our own time, when people of very different convictions and beliefs regard freedom as an essential value. It still prompts many different ways of resolving it, including shameful ones. But the freedom brought by Christ is not arbitrary license or lawlessness; it is liberation from every form of slavery, especially from the power of sin, which is harder to eradicate than social slavery.

The reminder that those who have been saved can choose to take the road to perdition and thus reject the salvation granted to them sounds severe. Hopes that a fall can be avoided are illusory. Could it be that the false brothers are called dreamers precisely because their calculations for a favorable outcome, however carefully considered they may seem, are bound to collapse?