False Believers and Divisive Persons in Jude

Jude's description of divisive persons in the church points to false believers who try to look like us but have infiltrated the church for their own advantage, to serve their own greed and lusts. They are dead trees, and dead trees bear no fruit. In dealing with them, we need to contend for the truth and resist contending against them personally.

            The whole short book of Jude is a warning against licentious, divisive persons who have crept into the church.  It reinforces 2 Peter 2, particularly, with additional description and examples, without ever using the words “heresy” or “heretic.” The key parts of Jude to the thesis of this chapter will be quoted below—and the remainder will be explained between the quotations.

Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

Jude 1:3-4 (NIV).

            The first point this passage makes is that, because ungodly people who look like good Christians have crept in among us, we must “contend” for the faith in the Christ we know.  The word “contend” (epagōnizesthai) here really does mean to contend sharply.  Our response to the kind of licentious falsehood Jude describes should not be weak and timid.  But note that Jude says to contend for the faith, not (in our usual fashion) to contend against the evil person, or against anything else.  When faced with one of the people Jude is describing, spreading poison in the Church, our role is to stand up, resist being intimidated into silence, and contend not only for the truth but even more for obedience to Christ from a heart of faith.  If we are fooled into fighting against someone, some human person, the evil person has won.

            Jude then starts his description of these people who have secretly slipped into the visible Church.  It is important to note simply that these people have slipped in without our noticing it—they seldom act openly.  This characteristic is mentioned in some of the other passages, too.  Next, Jude notes that God is not surprised by their appearance in the visible Church.  He anticipated it, and even included it in his plans.  He knows, and has always known, who the false believers will be, and has already prepared for their destruction.  This is, in fact, one of the implications of Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13:24-30 and 36-42 (parable explained).  The landowner knew the tares were there as soon as they sprouted. Just as the landowner let the wheat and the tares grow up together until the harvest, to avoid damaging the wheat, even so God lets good and evil grow together in the world, and good and evil people remain together even in the visible Church, until the harvest.  All the time, the Lord knows who are his¹, but he lets the wicked grow with us to avoid damaging us.  We should learn from the Lord’s patience.  Our right response to wicked people among us is to contend for the truth, to contend for the faith, not to try to uproot the wicked.  That is the task of angels, when the harvest comes. 

            Jude then begins his description of the carefully hidden but true character of these false believers.  They are “ungodly,” literally, people who show no reverence, people who speak and act as if God did not exist.  Because of this, they are licentious—they cast off all moral restraint, at least in private (but remember that they have crept in among us, so publicly they look like us!)—and therefore in their actions deny the authority of our only master (Gk., despot!) and Lord, Jesus Christ. Their religious acts are only a show; they do not recognize Jesus’ right to rule them. 

In the next three verses, here cited but not quoted, Jude compares these people to three groups of beings whom God judged for their rejection of his authority in the past.  They are like the unbelievers among the “mixed multitude” that came out of Egypt with Moses, in that they want to receive the benefit of God’s liberty from bondage, but do not want to listen to him and complain about what he provides².  They are like the angels that rebelled and followed Satan, in that they have likewise chosen to reject God’s authority and set themselves in his place, not keeping the place God ordained for them, to “do their own thing” without him^3,4,5  And they are like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, who, rejecting God’s authority over them, engaged in exploitation of all kinds against the poor, the weak and the stranger (see Ezekiel 16:48-50), and demanded that those who lived among among them also follow their practices—even, in the story in Genesis 19, demanding that Lot bring out the two male-appearing angels who were staying in his house so that they could gang rape them^6,7 All three of these groups will be considered in future posts. With these links to historical examples made, Jude states the next three (hidden) characteristics of the false believers among us:  

Yet in the same way, these also in their dreaming defile the flesh, despise authority, and slander celestial beings.  

Jude 1:8 (WEB).

            In public, false believers look like us and talk like us.  But in the imagination of their own hearts, they see and plan defiling and violent things (like the people of Sodom), they despise authority and speak evil of all those who are above them, particularly God.  Their thoughts, and their private lives, are very different from their “church face.”

Yet these people slander whatever they do not understand, and the very things they do understand by instinct—as irrational animals do—will destroy them.

Jude 1:10 (NIV).

            Jude’s description of false believers sounds, at this point, like a description of modern humanity.  If there is something they do not understand, and therefore cannot manipulate to serve their own agenda, they speak evil of it.  “If we can’t understand it, certainly it is not true, does not exist, etc., and something is wrong with anyone who believes it!”  On the other hand, they give themselves over to the desires they understand instinctively, like lower animals.  In these instinctive lusts—sex, food, security, territory, power—they find many ways to corrupt themselves.   Compare Romans 1:24, 26, 28.  Being given over to lusts is a two-way street.  Those who reject God give themselves over to their lusts, but God for his part also gives them over to the control of those things they have chosen to honor instead of him. This description also closely parallels that in 2 Peter 2.

 Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam’s error; they have been destroyed in Korah’s rebellion.

Jude 1:11 (NIV).

            Here, Jude directly addresses the false believers’ motivations by comparing them to three Old Testament figures—Cain, Balaam and Korah.  Each of these examples is significant enough to be given a separate discussion.  We have already met Balaam, and Cain and Korah are each also discussed in at length in separate sections of this work.  For the present purposes, it is sufficient to merely identify the three motivations highlighted by these examples.  Cain was motivated by arrogant self-sufficiency before God, Balaam was motivated by greed, and Korah was motivated by resistance to authority and lust for power and recognition.  These are the core motivations of anyone who tries to lead a following away from God.  Jude’s description continues: 

These are hidden rocky reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you, shepherds who without fear feed themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn leaves without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; wild waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved forever.

Jude 1:12-13 (WEB).

False believers feast with us—they come among us and feed themselves (remember that their approach to life is really all about themselves) without fear.  They do not fear being detected.  But, because they have wandered from the true source of life, they are dead—in fact, twice dead.  They have uprooted themselves, and they have no fruit.  As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, at Matthew 7:15-19, we will know them by their fruit.  Good trees bear good fruit; bad trees bear bad fruit.  According to Jude, and nature, dead trees bear no fruit.  A false believer can be recognized by the absence of any spiritual fruit.  Having no work of the Spirit in their lives, such people can be seen, at least by those close to them, to resemble raging waves of the sea, violently unstable, foaming with their own shame.  Jude continues:

These are murmurers and complainers, walking after their lusts (and their mouth speaks proud things), showing respect of persons to gain advantage.But you, beloved, remember the words which have been spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you that “In the last time there will be mockers, walking after their own ungodly lusts.”

Jude 1:16-18 (WEB).

            Because these false believers live for themselves, following their own desires, when their “needs are not met” they grumble, complain and start trouble.  They are always the loudest voices—wisdom speaks softly—speaking boastfully and arrogantly.  They give and withhold their approval of others based on what they think they can gain by it, showing favoritism in their actions.  They mock the truth when it contradicts what they want.  And now Jude reaches the crux of the matter of divisiveness:

These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit.

Jude 1:19 (KJV).

These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit.

Jude 1:19 (NASB).

Because these false believers do not have the Holy Spirit in whom all true believers participate, even while they are among us false believers “separate themselves” from us; it is they who “cause divisions.”  We did not create this separation, they did.  Eventually, this covert separation as a false believer feeds among us will lead to an overt separation, with the false believer going his own way or leading a group to separate from us.  If the church is functioning properly—which is seldom the case—the separation will come because the divisive person leaves, not because we angrily drive him out–simultaneously uprooting some true believers in our anger. (See Matthew 13:29).

Next: The Bad Example of Cain