Podcast: A Brief Look at One of the Shortest Books in the Bible (Matt Harmon)

June 12, 2023 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

What Is the Book of Jude All About?

In this episode, Matt Harmon walks through the book of Jude to explain its meaning and relevance for God’s people today and explains how the key themes of this short, confusing letter apply to us, giving Christians comfort and motivation in the face of serious challenges and opposition to the gospel.

The God Who Judges and Saves

The God Who Judges and Saves

Matthew S. Harmon

In this addition to the New Testament Theology series, Matthew S. Harmon examines the unique themes of 2 Peter and Jude as well as their common ground, addressing topics such as false teaching, God’s authority, and the new heavens and the new earth.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:06 - Context Is Key for This Unique Letter

Matt Tully
Matthew, thank you so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

Matthew Harmon
It’s good to be with you again.

Matt Tully
We were together a couple years ago, and we had a conversation about your first book with Crossway, Asking the Right Questions, a book about how to study the Bible. Today we’re going to be talking about another book that you’ve written with Crossway on the book of Jude. I think for many Christians the book of Jude is a bit of an enigma. It’s short, which I think is nice for a lot of Christians, but it’s also filled with some stuff that I think many of us find confusing at times and maybe even a little bit bizarre in some ways. Have you ever felt that way about the book of Jude?

Matthew Harmon
Absolutely. I think when it comes to Jude, he seems to be working with and writing to a group of people that obviously share the same sort of cultural experiences and background that we don’t share today as modern readers. So it can feel very much like you enter it as an outsider, and that strangeness can be a little off-putting or even just a little unsettling of I don’t know what to do with this.

Matt Tully
He’s referencing things that, for us, are not immediately in our minds.

Matthew Harmon
Exactly. It would be like if someone was visiting the United States from India, and we’re talking about American football—about our favorite NFL team or college football team—

Matt Tully
What is your favorite NFL team, by the way?

Matthew Harmon
NFL team? I don’t know that I have a strict favorite. I’m more of a college football guy, but I just enjoy watching NFL football. It’s kind of nice to have a sport to watch that I’m not that emotionally invested in. It doesn’t ruin my day if my team loses, unlike Saturdays with college football. If you’re part of our American culture, most people are probably, at least at some level, familiar with football. For someone coming from the country of India where for them even the word “football” would refer to soccer, those cultural conversations can seem very confusing. Or even just popular movies that we would take for granted that we could say a line from that people would catch the reference, someone from a different culture would say, That didn’t really mean anything to me. And you have that same kind of dynamic with the book of Jude for us today, that if you’re not as familiar with some of the Jewish literature and the Jewish background that Jude assumes, it can seem a little strange to us.

Matt Tully
Speak to us a little bit about that context in which this short letter was written. First, who was Jude? What do we know about him? And then who was he writing this letter to? Where were they? When was this letter written? Anything there you can share?

Matthew Harmon
Jude introduces himself as a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James. So that most naturally is to be taken as a brother of James, the one who wrote the letter of James, and James was a half-brother of Jesus, so that would make Jude a half-brother of Jesus as well. And it’s fascinating that even though he has that family relationship to Jesus, he chooses to introduce himself as a servant of Jesus Christ. To think about him growing up in the same household as Jesus, and at some point coming to the realization This is God in the flesh. Now, I’m not saying he came to that realization when he was living in the same household as Jesus. But eventually coming to that realization, having some sort of conversion experience like that is fascinating to me that even though he had that kind of relationship, he identifies himself as a servant of Jesus Christ. And then when it comes to who he’s writing to, it’s a very generalized address: “To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ” (Jude 1:1). So he doesn’t give a specific geographical location of where these readers are. As a result, I think it’s probably written for Jewish believers living somewhere in the land of Israel, because they seem to be pretty familiar with the Old Testament and also even some Jewish literature that’s outside of the Old Testament. And the most natural context for that would’ve been somewhere living in the land of Israel.

Matt Tully
And do we have any sense for when it was written? Can we discern that from anything that he says in the book?

Matthew Harmon
It’s pretty wide open in terms of when you look at how different scholars interpret and place that. Some see it as early as the early 50s or 80s AD, so making it one of our earliest New Testament letters.

Matt Tully
Jesus would’ve died and raised again—

Matthew Harmon
In either 30 or 33 AD are the two traditional dates.

Matt Tully
So, potentially just over a decade or so after his resurrection.

Matthew Harmon
Yeah, so we’re talking very early within the early Christian movement. Other scholars place it much later towards like 90 AD—towards the end of the first century. I personally think that he is probably writing somewhere in the 50s because I think it’s most likely that Peter, when writing 2 Peter, is using what he finds in Jude and adapting that material for his own purposes. And based on church history, we know that Peter was martyred sometime in the mid 60s. So to me, that kind of sets an end point for when that would be written. So if you backtrack that a little bit, I would say somewhere in the 50s or maybe early 60s AD is when Jude probably wrote this.

Matt Tully
That’s fascinating. There’s almost this investigative work that goes into trying to deduce when these things could have been done.

Matthew Harmon
Absolutely. It’s all about piecing together what evidence we have and trying to make best guesses, because oftentimes that’s what we’re left with.

Matt Tully
In verses 3–4, I think we get a glimpse into why Jude wrote this short letter. I wonder if you can speak to that. What was going on? Even if we don’t know the exact location or city that these recipients were in, what’s the broader situation that Jude is writing this letter into?

Matthew Harmon
The primary situation is that you have what we would refer to as false teachers. Jude calls them, in verse 4, “certain people.” I love that just sort of generic reference—“certain people.” It’s sort of implied, You all know who we’re talking about.

Matt Tully
Is that meant to be a rhetorical slight against them in some way? Why doesn’t he list them more specifically?

Matthew Harmon
I think it could be. I think part of it is because, as he’s going to show in the rest of this short letter, he’s going to use all these examples of false teaching throughout redemptive history. And it’s almost like he’s saying this is just the latest version of a certain type of person. So that in one sense, it’s not all that crucial the specific identity of these people. It’s the fact that they’re part of a line of false teaching that goes back all the way back into the Old Testament.

Matt Tully
So this is not a new phenomenon.

Matthew Harmon
Correct. Yes. So I think that’s part of why he doesn’t go out of his way to more specifically identify them. But he talks about them as “they’ve crept in unnoticed.” So that would suggest that they gave the appearance of being believers, at least initially, and only over time has their deviation from the truth of the gospel shown up.

Matt Tully
That feels like a theme that is repeated throughout the New Testament, this idea that false teachers are often wolves in sheep’s clothing, that they’re hard to identify at times.

Matthew Harmon Yeah.

09:24 - Jesus Saves

Matt Tully
Before we get into some examples of these false teachers, in verse 5 he says that Jesus “saved a people out of the land of Egypt.” And right there is when things start to feel a little bit different than we might expect, referring to Jesus and playing that role of what the Old Testament describes as Moses and Joshua. Those are the people that we would see there. So what’s going on in that case?

Matthew Harmon
I think that what Jude is doing is he is looking back at the Exodus event and he is seeing that ultimately it’s the Lord who was delivering his people, Israel, out of slavery in Egypt. And he is looking at, well, who do we know that the Lord is based on the clearest revelation of who the Lord is? And that the Incarnate, Jesus, the Son of God. So I think he’s, in one sense, retroactively looking back and saying, Yes, since Jesus is the one who saves us, there is some sense in which he was the one who saved Israel out of their bondage in Egypt. And he’s stressing the continuity of what God has done throughout redemptive history, that God is the one who saves, rescues his people. And he’s doing that to establish this common ground so that we as believers today can look back at Israel’s history and see it as instructive for our life as followers of Jesus today.

Matt Tully
It strikes me that this is perhaps one of the most, and I don’t know if it’s considered this, but it seems like one of the most clear indications of Jesus’s divinity in the New Testament, where it’s so clearly directly associating him with Yahweh in the Old Testament.

Matthew Harmon
It certainly is. Now there is a textual variant issue there where some manuscripts have “Jesus” and some manuscripts have “Lord.” And so there is some scholarly debate as to which of those is the original word that Jude himself wrote. I think, based on my own look at the evidence, that the ESV is on the right track, that the original reading was in fact “Jesus”—Jesus as the one saving his people out of Egypt.

Matt Tully
It’s pretty amazing to think that if you’re correct that the author Jude here is indeed another half-brother of Jesus, to think of him growing up (to some extent) alongside Jesus and knowing him in that personal, familial way, and then coming to this realization at some point that Jesus was the God behind the Exodus, which is the foundational event in Jewish history. It must have been a pretty remarkable and stunning kind of realization.

Matthew Harmon
It seems most likely to me that it probably took the resurrection to clench that. There seem to be indicators in the life and ministry of Jesus that his family was, at best, uncertain about him. There are indications where they think, Maybe Jesus has lost his mind—as he’s going around and teaching and saying these things. And yet, after the resurrection suddenly you have his brothers all on board when it comes to Yes, he is who he said he was. And to me, it seems like the resurrection was probably the definitive clenching moment of pieces coming together and putting all those things in place. I agree. I think there must have been some remarkable looking back at experiences growing up in the same household and just sort of putting pieces together and having that jaw-dropping moment of this explains so much about the, in one sense, the strangeness of your brother.

13:37 - An Issue of Authority

Matt Tully
Let’s keep going into more strangeness. I think we get verse 5 and then we go right into verse 6, and it starts to get even more bizarre and hard to understand what Jude is trying to tell us. Verse 6 says, “And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day . . . .” And then he goes on from there. What angels is he referring to, and what’s this event that he’s referring to about “not staying in their own positions of authority”?

Matthew Harmon
I think the most likely explanation is that Jude is referring back to what’s recorded in Genesis 6, where you have the, admittedly, kind of cryptic story of the sons of God taking the daughters of men to be their wives and producing children from that. And there’s been plenty of debate throughout the centuries as to how to best interpret that expression “sons of God.” Is that referring to angels? Is it referring to descendants from the line of Seth that was the line of promise? It seems like the pretty consistent line of interpretation in Jewish literature was to take these as angelic beings. This is one of those areas where it just seems like I don’t know that we know how best to understand how all that fits together.

Matt Tully
Because the Jewish understanding of that story is that angels married human women. Is that correct?

Matthew Harmon
Yes. And then they produced offspring that are referred to as the “Nephilim”—the almost giant-like offspring. And again, this is one of those moments where this is the part of the strangeness of we hear that and we’re like, That just doesn’t make sense to us. That just doesn’t seem possible, or even just in the realm of our conceptual framework. So that just reinforces some of the strangeness. And that story was picked up in Jewish literature and talked about in ways that basically indicate God bringing judgment upon those angels, casting them into darkness, binding them into chains. Jude seems to be dependent on looking back at Genesis 6, but doing so informed by some of these other Jewish writings that interpreted it that way.

Matt Tully
So what’s the purpose of him bringing that up here in this case? And maybe also speak to the same question for why he mentioned Jesus and delivering people out of Egypt? It seems like in that example his point is actually that final phrase, “and afterward he destroyed those who did not believe.” Why is he referencing these two events?

Matthew Harmon
I think that it is part of his larger program to exhort his readers to continue to persevere in the true apostolic faith, and that that path of perseverance is the path that will lead to their ultimate rescue on the last day. These examples of people who did not persevere or went astray, they focus on rejecting boundaries and authority. That’s a picture of these false teachers that he’s trying to help his readers know how to respond to. They are going beyond the boundaries that God has set both morally and theologically, and this is part of the reason why Jude is trying to help you see that when you transgress the boundaries that God puts in place for our good and for our benefit, it ends up leading to destruction.

Matt Tully
Another big example that he offers and that he cites that, again, is probably going to feel somewhat foreign to most of us is in verse 9 where we read about the archangel, Michael, disputing with the devil—arguing or wrestling or fighting with the devil—about the body of Moses. What in the world is that all about?

Matthew Harmon
That’s a story that’s not found in the Bible, just to be clear.

Matt Tully
Unlike the Genesis 6 one where we think we know what he’s referring to, even if it’s vague, we at least can find it in Scripture itself. This is not like that.

Matthew Harmon
Correct. This is a story that’s found in Jewish literature that dates from in the centuries before the time of Jesus. The basic idea of this story is that when Moses dies, which the actual event is described in Deuteronomy 34, that there is this dispute between the archangel, Michael, and Satan over the body of Moses and who gets to have it, essentially. And according to this Jewish tradition, there’s this argument back and forth between Michael and Satan over this. The punchline of Jude telling this story is there in verse 9 where he says that Michael “did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said the ‘Lord rebuke you.’” Jude’s point in telling this story is less about the speculative How do we put together that story? It’s more of even someone as great as the archangel Michael, who you would think would have the authority to maybe issue a direct rebuke to Satan, defers to the Lord’s ultimate authority and will not step out on his own and exercise his own great, amazing authority as an archangel. He himself even still defers to the Lord and his statement of judgment and his announcement of judgment.

Matt Tully
So it’s safe to assume, in whatever was going on in this confrontation, the understanding of Jude and his hearers would’ve been that Michael was representing God. He was in the right, and Satan is clearly not doing the right thing. And yet even with that, he’s saying that Michael knew his place and didn’t overstate things.

Matthew Harmon
Yes, absolutely. And that’s part of his rebuke to these false teachers of You seem to be assuming for yourself levels of authority and freedom to transgress boundaries that God himself as put into place, and that is always the path of destruction if pursued consistently.

20:31 - What about Extrabiblical Literature?

Matt Tully
This is maybe tangential to Jude’s point here in referencing that, but I think it’s a question that many would come to mind for many of us, and it’s, namely, if this story, which is not found anywhere else in the Old Testament but it’s found in extrabiblical literature that we are aware of, but if this story is referenced here in the New Testament by an inspired writer like Jude, does that mean that we, 1) should believe that it did indeed happen this way? Is Jude teaching us that this is a true historical event? And 2) if so, should we then embrace these other writings where we find that story as Scripture in some way?

Matthew Harmon
In answer to your first question, I would say the answer is yes. Now, you always have to look a what is the biblical author saying when using this event and how is he presenting it? There’s every indication here that Jude is presenting this as this happened. And so it would seem in this particular case that this story, coming from a non-inspired Jewish writing, that Jude, as an inspired writer of Scripture, is able to see that this is in fact a true story, a true event, that he can refer to in the course of his letter. Now, there’s a sense in which I think it’s very similar to the passage in Titus 1 where Paul quotes a Greek poet about the nature of the credence. And then in Acts 17, Paul quotes a different Greek poet to make a true statement. And in essence he’s saying, These are true statements without making the blanket endorsement. Therefore, these Greek poets in the writing that I’m pulling that from, that’s inspired.

Matt Tully
We intuitively have a whole category in our own day-to-day lives where we can read a book or read a statement that is indeed true but not still think the book is inspired in the same sense that scripture is.

Matthew Harmon
Absolutely. And I think that’s what we see Jude doing here, and he’s going to do it again in verse 14 and 15 where he refers to Enoch, where he quotes from a writing that we’ve come to know as First Enoch. And so I think he again is saying this is a true statement from this source without automatically endorsing, therefore, that everything in that source is in fact true and correct.

Matt Tully
Do you think there’s value in Christians reading some of these other other extrabiblical texts that nevertheless have a long tradition within Jewish or Christian circles?

Matthew Harmon
Absolutely. I think as long as you recognize the value of it in a certain way—meaning it’s not on the same level as Scripture, everything must be evaluated and judged based on what we know is true from Scripture itself. I think we live in a time where we have so many resources available to us that are so helpful in our understanding of the Christian life, helping us understand doctrine and how to live as Christians and those sorts of things. Those are good and valuable, but we’d be misreading them if we put them on the same level of authority as the text of Scripture itself. Even if you think about a study Bible, there’s a reason there’s a line between the text of the Scripture and then the study notes at the bottom. It’s a visual reminder of what’s above the line in the text is the inspired word of God; what’s in the study notes is, ideally, supposed to be helpful, but it should always be evaluated back against what is what we know to be true and inspired, and that’s the text of Scripture itself. So I think if we approach these kinds of texts with that kind of posture, then we can benefit from them because they do shed light on the sort of conceptual world that the biblical authors lived in and thought in.

Matt Tully
I’ve heard some scholars talk about these two examples in Jude as he’s not necessarily teaching us that these things did indeed happen, that we should read these references to other extrabiblical Jewish literature as he’s just sort of using these examples to illustrate a point from their own tradition, but not necessarily saying that that stuff really happened. Do you buy that argument? Does that resonate with you at all, or does it feel like no, we should really take this as actually historical?

Matthew Harmon
I think scholars who tend to reach those conclusions have a good instinct in wanting to preserve the uniqueness of Scripture. However, I think that ultimately I want to keep looking back at the text and see if there is any indication in the text itself that suddenly we’ve gone from, for example, the author’s talking about these biblical examples and he’s treating them as if they actually happened. Is there anything in the text that now tells me Well, now let me just use an illustration from a text that we’re all kind of familiar with without making any sort of statement about whether or not this actually happened. I don’t see any indication where Jude’s like, Oh, and by the way, here’s another example. It’s not on the same historical level as the ones I mentioned before. He just keeps moving along, which to me is an indication that he wants us to see them as things that actually happened.

Matt Tully
So it wouldn’t be a situation like if a pastor were preaching and he gives an illustration or story from World War II that the congregation would intuitively know actually did happen. And then he could jump right over to some example from The Lord of the Rings. Again, he can assume, because of his context and because of that shared knowledge of culture, that they’re going to get that this story is not true and not real. This story is, but they both are illustrating a similar point.

Matthew Harmon
Right. Yes.

26:58 - The Doxology

Matt Tully
The final two verses of this short book—Titus 24–25—are an amazing doxology that maybe some people have heard their pastors say at the end of a sermon or a service. And sometimes I think we can tend to fly through these doxologies rather than really meditate on what’s being said. So I wonder if you could help us slow down a little bit and walk us through these two verses.

Matthew Harmon
In verse 24, I’ll just read verses 24 and 25 and then I’ll comment on them and go back through: “Now to him 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.” So when Jude begins in verse 24 by saying, “To him who is able to keep you from stumbling,” that’s catching onto a major theme in the book. In fact, if you go back to verse one where Jude writes: “To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.” That could also be translated as “kept by Jesus Christ.” So, God is the one who is keeping us, protecting us, preserving us. But then if you jump down to verse 20–21, he writes, “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.” So this idea of God keeping us from stumbling, that’s a huge encouragement because he’s warning about the dangers of false teachers. And that can create this sort of unsettling Oh no! Could that happen to me? Could I be led astray? And he’s reminding them God is able to preserve you, and the way that he does that is he keeps pointing you back to the truthfulness of the gospel, once for all delivered to the saints. As you keep clinging to that, that is the means by which God continues to keep you, to preserve you from stumbling, so that he can on the last day present you blameless before the presence of his glory. And I love this last little part of verse 24—“with great joy.” So he’s pointing them to this hope of the joy that will be there on the last day when there’s that sense of relief—We made it! Through all the struggle, through all the difficulties, through all the hardships, we made it! And now we’re in the presence of the One that we’ve worshiped by faith and not by sight. And that leads into verse 25 where you’ve got this directed praise towards God himself: “to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” And that title Lord is important because throughout the letter he’s been stressing the authority of Jesus, the Lordship of Jesus, as our final authority in contrast to these false teachers. And that he receives “glory, majesty, dominion and authority”—and then this last phrase here—“before all time and now and forever.” So there’s the whole scope of eternity.

Matt Tully
He’s going out of his way to emphasize this eternal timelessness.

Matthew Harmon
Yes, and he is stressing that we can join into all of creation, which already is erupting in praise to God, so that when we praise God in the present, we’re joining into a song that’s already ongoing. One day, when he brings us blameless into his presence, that’s not going to stop; it’s only going to intensify our experience of joy in his presence.

Matt Tully
That’s beautiful.

Matthew Harmon
It’s understandable why this is a common doxology to read over God’s people as a source of encouragement and putting before them the ultimate glory of God, stretching from before eternity passed all the way into eternity future.

Matt Tully
Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to help us to, I think as you said, see this short book that is sometimes confusing to us and it feels a little bit different than we expect, but it is intended to be an encouragement to us and to point us back to Jesus.

Matthew Harmon
Absolutely. Thanks for having me on today.

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