Jude: Show Mercy, But With Wisdom

The book of Jude, also known as Judah (N. T. Wright’s preference) or even Judas, was possibly written by the prophet Judas (not Iscariot), though more likely written by Judas the brother of Jesus (c.f., Matthew 13:55).  This view is favored because the author does not consider himself an apostle and he calls himself a brother of James, which most believe is the pillar in the Jerusalem church, the author of James, and the brother of Jesus.  Seemingly not wanting to ride the coat-tails of his brother, Jude does not refer to himself as the Lord’s brother.

This is a hard book to date, and much of the decision rides on whether one thinks Jude borrowed from 2 Peter or vice versa or neither.  If Jude borrowed from 2 Peter, then Jude can be dated as late as the 80s.  As authors tend to borrow and elaborate, most scholars think Peter borrowed from the shorter Jude, meaning Jude cannot be dated later than AD 65.

Hebrews, James, John, Peter, and Jude are sometimes called the General Epistles because, unlike Paul’s letters, they appear to be written to broad groups of people, addressing very general circumstances.  Jude is likely the most general of the General Letters.  It is hard to say who is being addressed, what ethnicities are present, where they are located, and who exactly are the false teachers being discussed.  Regardless, the message is clear and widely applicable.

Verse 4 may be the best summary of the message of Jude:

They are godless men, who change the grace of God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

People have arisen in the church(es) Jude is addressing that have turned the grace of God into an excuse to sin.  If wrongdoing is going to be forgiven, why not live how you wish.  This could have been a libertine version of Gnosticism that Jude was attacking, though as we see even still today people who love their sin more than their Savior have always used grace as a license to stay in their old ways.

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“Shrewd as serpents, innocent as doves”

The ancient Egyptians of the Exodus.  Angels who rebelled and were cast out of Heaven.  The perverted people of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Dumb animals who only follow their instincts.  Cain, who killed his brother.  Balaam, who would prophesy for the highest bidder.  Korah and his fellow rebels who dared to question the leadership of Moses.  Jude compares the false teachers in the midst of his recipients to this rogue’s gallery.  Not great company.

As I read Jude again, a book I do not spend a lot of time in, I was struck by this interesting passage:

With some people who are wavering, you must show mercy.  Some you must rescue, snatching them from the fire.  To others you must show mercy, but with fear, hating even the clothes that have been defiled by the flesh. (22-23)

Jude is clear.  Show mercy to everyone, even those on the fence thinking about walking away from the way of life you think is right and best, even to those trying to lead you astray.  But it would be unwise to think that all people are equal threats to your faith.  There are some who need you to be deeply invested in their lives, fighting for their very souls.  But there are others — like these false teachers — who, while we do not give them the ill treatment they deserve, must be treated with a healthy fear of what they can do to a person’s faith.  There is a distance that must be in place, lest one be pulled into their wickedness as well.  All must be shown mercy, but not all should be related to in the same way.

What caught your eye in this often-neglected book?

2 Peter 3: The Provocative Patience of God

He had the patience of Job.  At least that is what they said of him.  And I now see why.

He was my high school PE teacher and basketball coach.  I can’t remember a time I ever saw him genuinely angry, quite a thing to say about a coach.  I gave him many reasons to be angry.  He probably should have benched me most games for the tirades I was unfortunately prone to when playing basketball.  During game, he found me exasperating, and he showed his displeasure with grimaces and hands thrown in the air. But he never raised his voice with me or made me run extra.  In fact, no one knew of a time when he had done that with students, even though teenagers are notorious for their unreasonable behavior.

Why would he do that?  I have to wonder if it wasn’t for the same reason that God does the same with people.

Now that I am a teacher, I would imagine people said of him that he was a pushover.  Other teachers who ruled with an iron fist probably looked down on him as lax and irresponsible.  Maybe there were even students and athletes who doubted that he would ever lower the boom and took advantage of it.

It seems there were people in the background of Peter’s second epistle who were thinking the same about God.

This is what they will say: “Where is the promise of his [Jesus] royal arrival?  Ever since the previous generation died, everything has continued just as it has from the beginning of creation.” (3:4)

Where is this promised re-creation?  Judgment?  I don’t see that happening.  People get away with wrongdoing today just like they did yesterday and the same will happen tomorrow.  I would like to believe that there is a better day coming, but all I see is the same darkness.  Some days it seems to be getting darker.  So goes the thinking that some addressed by Peter were thinking.

But there was a reason for God’s patience with wrongdoers:

The Lord is not delaying his promise, in the way that some reckon delay, but he is very patient toward you.  He does not want anyone to be destroyed.  Rather, he wants everyone to arrive at repentance. (3:9)

And when our Lord waits patiently to act, see that for what it is — salvation! (3:15)

I had many great teachers, coaches, administrators, and mentors in high school, but few were as influential as my teacher and coach mentioned above.  I often see that I have unconsciously gravitated towards his way of teaching and mentoring.  The way he was willing to laugh with his students.  The way he would grab your arm for emphasis.  The gentleness with which he said and did everything, even though he was six and a half feet tall and had the body of a former college athlete.  I realize now that he saw what we — what I — could become, not just what we were at the moment.  I know he was longing for the day I learned the lessons he passionate taught.  I know he was being patient with my learning curve.  Had he done it for us, we never would have learned.  Had he (and others) given up on me, I am not sure I ever would have come around.  He was patient for a reason.

God is also patient for a reason.  Likewise, God wants all to “get it.”  He is being patient with our learning curve.  He is even being patient those who do us wrong (though we might wish otherwise) hoping that all will come around to his way of love and goodness.

What a provocative patience!

What did you learn from 2 Peter?  

2 Peter 2: Like a Dog to Vomit

Peter gives one of the most detailed descriptions of a group of false teachers that I am aware of in the New Testament:

• Their false teaching is destructive (2:1)
• Their teaching can even cause someone to renounce Jesus (2:1)
• They will be destroyed (2:1)
• They will be popular (2:2)
• Their practices are disgusting (2:2)
• They cause people to blaspheme the way of truth (2:2)
• They exploit people to satisfy their greed (2:3)
• They prophesy, but falsely (2:3)
• They follow their carnal lists (2:10)
• They despise authority and arrogantly assert their own will (2:10)
• They act more like irrational animals than the knowledgeable people they claim to be (2:12)
• They hurl curses at things they do not fully understand (2:12)
• Their lifestyle comes back to destroy them (2:12)
• They are unjust (2:13)
• They audaciously enjoy flaunting their decadence (2:13)
• They turn Christian fellowship into crass parties (2:13)
• They are especially inclined toward adultery (2:14)
• Their appetite for sin is insatiable (2:14)
• They especially target vulnerable people (2:14)
• They are driven by greed (2:14)
• They used to be orthodox but have since wandered after gain like Balaam (2:15)
• They promise what they cannot deliver (2:17)
• They teach their foolishness with charisma (2:18)
• They promise people freedom, but they themselves are slaves to their immorality (2:19)
• They are worse off than pagans because they have known Christ and have knowingly turned away (2:20)

I cannot even imagine this combination of characteristics.  It is unfathomable that all of these could be true of one group of false teachers and they were still persuasive to Christians.  The very fact that these false teachers seem to be as sexually immoral as they are described to be and still were considered credible is mind-boggling to me.  But that is probably because I am a post-Puritan Christian living in a time and place shaped by the Moral Majority where sexual sin is especially taboo.  Licentiousness was much more commonplace in the ancient Roman Empire.

The closest thing I can imagine to false teachers like these might be church leaders who wind up on the front page of the news because of their sex scandals and money-grabbing.  Inevitably their egos, appetites, and greed are their own undoing.  It is shameful, and as the honor of God is tarnished in the process there is no wonder justice so often comes.  However, even people like this try to hide their sin, whereas the false teachers of 2 Peter flaunted it.

Maybe the most important passage in today’s reading is Peter’s reassurance that God will not allow this sort of false teaching to overwhelm his Church.

The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from testing, and how to keep the unrighteous ready for the day of judgment and punishment. (2:9)

Peter’s audience surely needed this affirmation.

What caught your eye today?

2 Peter 1: Real Knowledge

Well, folks, we are on to the third last book of the year.  One more month and we will have met a great goal of reading through the New Testament this year.  The reading plan we are using takes us now to Peter’s second letter, out-of-order as we read 1 Peter a month ago or so.  I am sure they have put 2 Peter here because of its many connections to the book of Jude.  If you would like to review the short introduction the Petrine letters I wrote back when we came to 1 Peter, you can find that here.

What does it mean to know God?  What is real spiritual knowledge?  

As we will learn more about on Monday, there were false teachers in the churches Peter was addressing.  Most people identify these as early versions of Gnostics, Christians who mixed their Christianity with significant doses of Greek philosophy and mystical kind of thinking.  These dualists made a strong contrast between the flesh and the spirit and, given the emphasis in this chapter on moral purity, they often taught that one showed their spiritual strength by engaging in sin with the body so as to show that their spirits were pure enough to remain unaffected.  Gnostics spoke often of having “knowledge,” which for them meant an intellectual and spiritual understanding that allowed them to rise above the mundane matters of physical life.  These false teachers had definite ideas on what it meant to have “knowledge.”

But so did Peter.  As he uses the word “knowledge” five times in this opening chapter and refers to “truth” and the “mind” as well, we know Peter wanted to weigh in on what true “knowledge” is.  Knowledge gives us everything we need to live a godly life that runs away from the “corruption of lust” (1:3-4).  Knowledge is one element necessary in living a fruitful life, a partner to character traits like virtue, patience, self-control, faith, and love (1:5-8).  In short, for Peter “knowledge” is an embodied understanding and skill that allows its possessor to live an earthly, physical life in the nitty-gritty in a way that glorifies God and maintains a high level of moral quality.  Knowledge is as much about the hands as the head.  Knowledge is lived, not simply believed or thought.  Truth is a lived, physical reality.  That would be a definite contrast to Gnostic thinking.

God has bestowed upon us, through his divine power, everything that we need for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and virtue. (1:3)

What did you notice anew in this chapter?

BONUS: An Introduction to Peter’s Letters

The author of 1 Peter is almost certainly the Simon Peter of the Gospels; only a few have doubted this.  On the other hand, if there is a letter included in the New Testament that was not written by the person who it claims to be written by (“pseudopigraphic,” is the technical term), 2 Peter is our best candidate.  It is rather different in style, language, and theme from the first Petrine epistle.  The mention of persecution in 1 Peter makes a date in the 60s AD more likely, and by that time in Peter’s life he is traditionally placed in Rome, where he will die by the Emperor’s order in the late 60s.  The cryptic mention to being in “Babylon” in 1 Peter 5:13 is most likely  referring to Rome, as we will see in Revelation.

The apostle Simon Peter is absolutely a classic Bible character.  He ranks up there with Abraham, Moses, and David.  Jesus is in a class of his own, of course.  Peter is well-known, including much of his psychology.  He is a full character.  Impetuous Peter!  If we go to the Gospels to learn about Peter, we must end that character study with a good look at his letters too.  This is where his changed heart comes out the most.

The last recorded instructions Jesus gave to Peter alone were to “feed my sheep” (John 21:15-19).  That he does in grand style in 1 Peter.  Churches in modern-day Turkey that Peter had either started or ministered to in a special way (1:1) are now experiencing harsh treatment in their society.  The recipients are clearly Gentile Christians (with maybe some Jewish Christians thrown in), as they used to live an idolatrous pagan lifestyle (4:3).  Now, because of their devotion to Jesus, they refuse to live in the same coarse way that used to.  As a result, their pagan neighbors heap abuse on them.  This persecution is certainly social versus political; systematic persecution of Christians in Asia Minor by the Roman government won’t start for another twenty years after the death of Peter.  Peter’s recipients were mocked and even harmed physically, but the greatest suffering would have been social ostracism and the economic marginalization that would come from being shunned by their pagan society.  What is the faithful response to suffering a follower of Christ is supposed to give?  This is the main theme of 1 Peter.

Second Peter is either written by Peter at a very different time and place than First Peter (and a convincing case can be made for this) or as more and more conservative scholars are willing to accept, it was written by a disciple of Peter “in the spirit of Peter” or as a way to honor their master.  Efforts would have been made to convey what Peter would have said; good pseudopigrapha did not try to deceive readers and pass unorthodox views off as apostolic.  Regardless, 2 Peter addresses a group of false teachers akin to the early Gnostics we have seen previously this year.  Of special importance in this letter is Peter’s exhortation to his recipients to vigilantly hang on and prepare for the certain coming of Jesus.