Sermon Tone Analysis

Jude 20 But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

(NIV)

The contents of Jude 20-21 stand in contrast to the contents of Jude 19, which presents the final three descriptions in this epistle of the Jewish Zealots who were infiltrating the meetings of the Christian community in Judaea.

This verse describes these individuals as divisive who are worldly by nature because they do not possess the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

Jude 21 contains a solemn, urgent command, which is addressed to the recipients of this epistle who were the members of the Christian community in Judaea.

This command required that they must keep themselves in the state of loving the Father because of the Father’s love for them as manifested through both the work of the Son and the Spirit.

The means by which they were to obey this command this is three-fold.

This is another triad which we have come across in our study of the epistle of Jude.

In fact Jude 20-21 not only presents one triad but rather two since these verses also refer to each member of the Trinity and also constitute the ninth and tenth triads we have come across up to this point in our study of the epistle of Jude.

Now, the first two means by which the recipients of the epistle of Jude were to obey the command to make it their top priority of keeping themselves in the state of loving God because of God’s love for them appear in Jude 20 and the third and final one appears in Jude 21.

The first asserts that they must obey this command by building themselves up spiritually by means of their most holy faith.

The second asserts that they were to obey this command by praying by means of the power of the Holy Spirit.

The third asserts that they were to obey this command by anticipating the compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ, which will manifest itself at the rapture of the church.

The purpose for which they were to obey this command by this three-fold means was so that they would continue to experience eternal life.

Therefore, a comparison of the contents of Jude 20-21 with the contents of Jude 19 indicates that the contrast is between the members of the Christian community in Judaea who were regenerate and these Jewish Zealots who were not.

The former were experiencing fellowship with God and thus eternal life.

On the other hand, the latter was not because they did not possess a relationship with the triune God, which is the result of being declared justified by the Father through faith in His one and only Son, Jesus Christ.

As was the case in Jude 3 and 17, the writer addresses the recipients of this epistle with the adjective agapētos (ἀγαπητός), “beloved” which is indicating the close personal relationship that existed between the recipients of this epistle who were members of the Jewish Christian community in Judaea and the writer, Jude.

It also speaks of the relationship the recipients of this epistle possessed with the Trinity and expresses the fact that they were the recipients and beneficiary of God’s love.

This adjective is a reminder that before conversion, they were the object of God’s “impersonal” love but now after conversion, they are the object of God’s personal and affectionate love since now they possess something God personally loves, namely, His righteousness, which they did not possess prior to their justification.

The nominative second person plural form of the personal pronoun su (σύ), “you” not only refers to the recipients of the epistle of Jude as a corporate unit but is also used in a distributive sense emphasizing no exceptions.

The latter is expressing the writer’s Spirit inspired concern that each of the recipients of this epistle obey the command to keep themselves in the love of God.

It is also emphasizing with each of them their responsibility to individually and as a corporate unit to obey this command to keep themselves in the state of loving God because of His love for them.

The use of this personal pronoun su (σύ), “you” is unnecessary in Greek since the form of a finite verb in this language indicates the person, number and gender of the subject.

This is what makes Greek an “inflectional” language.

When the personal pronoun is used therefore, it may serve to clarify the subject or contrast the subject with someone else or for emphasis.

Here it is used for emphasis as well as contrast.

First, it is emphasizing with each member of the Christian community in Judaea what they were to do in order to fulfill the requirement of the command in Jude 21 to make it their top priority of keeping themselves in the state of loving the Father because of the Father’s love for them and continue doing so.

Secondly, it is marking a contrast between the Christian community in Judaea and these Zealots who were infiltrating their meetings in order to recruit the recipients of the epistle of Jude to join their rebellion against Rome in order to prompt the Messiah of Israel to come to earth to establish the kingdom of God on the earth.

Specifically, it is marking a contrast between what these Zealots were doing and what the Christian community in Judaea must continue to do.