Shared Word Translation
Jude 1
Greeting
Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.
Contend for the Faith
Beloved, although I was making every effort to write to you about our shared salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have slipped in unnoticed, those long beforehand marked out for this judgment, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
Judgment on False Teachers
Now I want to remind you, although you once knew all things, that Jesus, having saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.
And the angels who did not keep their own domain but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day,
just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.
Yet in the same way these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and slander glorious ones.
But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you.”
But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.
Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam’s error and perished in Korah’s rebellion.
These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, carried along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted;
wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying,
“Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones,
to execute judgment on all
and to convict all the ungodly
of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way,
and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”
These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own desires; they are loud-mouthed, showing favoritism to gain advantage.
Keep Yourselves in the Love of God
But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly desires.” It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
Doxology
Now to the one who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.