He looked for multiplication instead of simple addition.ģ. Be multiplied to you: In the mind and heart of Jude, it wasn’t enough to have mercy, peace, and love added to the life of the Christian. Mercy, peace, and love: This is not the same greeting as found in most of Paul’s letters (which usually begin with some variation of “Grace and peace unto you”). Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.Ī. ( Jude 1:2) Jude gives a warm and typical greeting. Jesus Christ is our guardian and our protector.Ģ. This means that they were set apart - set apart from the world and set apart unto God. The important thing is to answer the call when it comes, just as we answer the telephone when it is ringing. A person is a Christian because God has called him. Jude identified his readers as Christians in three specific ways: This is not an evangelistic tract and it deals with things that believers need to hear, but often don’t want to. To those who are called: Jude wrote to Christians. Both James and Jude were half-brothers of Jesus.ĭ. And brother of James: James was an important leader of the church in Jerusalem and the author of the New Testament letter that bears his name. Jude could say with Paul, “Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16).Ĭ. To Jude, the blood of the cross that saved him was more important than the family blood in his veins that related him to Jesus. But even more valuable to him was his new relationship with Jesus. Without a doubt, Jude valued the fact that Jesus was his half-brother and that he grew up in the same household as Jesus. Jesus spoke of this relative unimportance in passage such as Mark 3:31-35 and Luke 11:27-28. The fact that he wanted himself to be known this way instead of introducing himself as “Jude, the half-brother of Jesus” tells us something of the humility of Jude and the relative unimportance of being connected to Jesus by human relationships. A bondservant of Jesus Christ: Jude was a blood relative of Jesus, but he considered himself only as a bondservant of Jesus Christ. Jude, like the other half-brothers of Jesus (including James), didn’t believe in Jesus as the Messiah until after the resurrection of Jesus ( John 7:5 and Acts 1:14).ī.
There are six people named “Judas” mentioned in the New Testament, but the best evidence identifies this as the one mentioned in Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3: Jude, the half-brother of Jesus. Jude: The name is literally “Judas.” But to avoid connection with Judas Iscariot, the infamous man who betrayed Jesus, most English translators have used the name “ Jude.” Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, To those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ:Ī. The danger that prompted Jude to write this letter.ġ. “Its neglect reflects more the superficiality of the generation that neglects it than the irrelevance of its burning message.” (Guthrie)Ī. These shorter letters of the New Testament are often neglected, but the neglect of this important letter says more about us than it does about the Book of Jude.
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