In the first
installment, I set out the traditional Greco-Roman letter format and looked
at the “Judases” and “Jameses” in the New Testament. In the second
installment, I weighed the arguments on authorship and decided the best
evidence points in the direction of the Judas/Jude who is the brother of
Jacob/James and Jesus. I then looked at what this means for the date of the
letter and the location, or place, in which the letter was written. In the third
installment, I examined the salutation, verses 1-2, in which I studied the letter
itself, the reasons the letter was sent, and the goals of the letter. In
the fourth installment I studied the “Reason for Writing” in verses 3-4, a
part of the letter typically called the “Thanksgiving,” but in Jude lacking
that element. In the
fifth entry, verses 5-7, I studied the first three charges Jude makes
against the “intruders.” In the sixth
entry, verses 8-10, I looked at how Jude applies the charges made against
the intruders. For
the seventh entry, I considered the further charges against these intruders
and “dreamers” taken from the Old Testament, and an actual charge made
regarding their behavior in the community. We encountered some prophetic charges against
the intruders in
the eighth entry, but in
the ninth installment we found Jude focused on exhorting and building up
the recipients of the letter and encouraging the Church to reach out to those
who are estranged.In this, the tenth entry, we look at the Conclusion and the Doxology which makes up the Conclusion and then offer some final thoughts on the letter of Jude for readers today.
6. The Letter of Jude:
To see the breakdown of a typical Greco-Roman letter, the
category into which Jude fits, please consult the
first entry in the commentary. There
we see that following the Body of the Letter there is a section called
variously the
Closing or the Conclusion. We can break the conclusion of a Greco-Roman
letter into a number of parts. For instance, John Ziesler breaks it down into greetings,
doxology and benediction. Calvin Roetzel
divides it into the peace wish, greetings, kiss, grace and benediction. This
does not mean that every element is always present in each conclusion and that
is the case with Jude. In Jude, we find only the Doxology and it is a beautiful
closing to this short letter.
e) Conclusion: Doxology
in Praise of God : verses 24-25
24 Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you
stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, 25 to the
only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power,
and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (NRSV)
Daniel
Keating makes an excellent point about how the Body of the letter of Jude
ends: “in a letter full of sharp denunciation, mercy in action has the final word” (217). When we come to the Conclusion,
this positive focus is maintained, but mercy is transformed into a paean of
praise for the glorious attributes of God. The initial stress is on what God
does for his faithful followers; it is God “who is who is able to keep you from
falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory
with rejoicing” (v.24). This sounds remarkably similar to other epistolary language
in early Christian letters, particularly Paul’s 1 Thessalonians. In the Conclusion to 1 Thessalonians,
Paul’s earliest extant letter, he writes,
23 May the God of peace himself
sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who
calls you is faithful, and he will do this. (1 Thess. 5:23-24)
Paul stresses that God will
sanctify the congregation “entirely,” which I would compare to Jude’s promise
that God will keep the congregation from “falling.” And as Jude promises that
God will “make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory,” so Paul
claims that in keeping oneself “sound and blameless” it is actually God, who is
“faithful,” who “will do this.” The comparisons here are not exact, but the
parallelism is strong: 1) it is God’s action which will keep the Church from 2)
falling (sanctify it) to present it 3) without blemish (blameless) at the 4) eschaton.
These four elements concentrate us not on the human dimension of faith, which
is not insignificant, but God’s supernatural care of his followers which will
ultimately allow us to live in the presence of God.
The final verse, then, is Jude’s
soaring stanza of praise for God, “the
only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord,” in whom is found “glory,
majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen”
(v.25). It is a fitting ending for a letter which has spent most of its time
detailing God’s action in bringing the unrighteous to account, but in the final
verses turns its attention to those who need to be brought back into community with
those who have remained faithful so that they too can experience the saving
action of God. Keating
draws our attention to the nature of this prayer as offering praise both to God
and Jesus Christ, which makes it a typical early Christian prayer, both persons
receiving adoration (219).
He makes another key point, too,
about the qualities of God located in v.25, those of “glory, majesty, power,
and authority,” which parallel David’s hymn of praise to God in 1 Chronicles 29:11:
“Yours, O Lord, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the
majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; yours is the
kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all” (Keating,
219). This draws our attention fully to the fact that the only one worthy of
such praise is not a human ruler, either in the Church or a human king, but God
alone. It also allows us to pay proper attention to the fact that in stressing
the eschatological Judgment to come, Jude is actually stressing the divine
Kingship of God, for the result of the establishing of God’s Kingdom is the
fact that God’s Kingdom is eternal, it will never end. This ought to force us
to focus on God’s Kingdom as the key to our earthly lives and our behavior.
7. Some Closing Thoughts:
Jude is not an apocalyptic text as
such, that is, it does not fit in the genre of apocalyptic literature, such as
Revelation of John, but it is thoroughly imbued with the sense of the coming of
the end and the Judgment that accompanies the end. So real and imminent was
this coming Judgment to the ancient Christians that it seems sometimes that the
emphasis of much early Christian writing is an unhealthy concentration on doom
and gloom. Jude fits in this camp. I would not call this “doom and gloom,”
however, but a sense of imminence of the end combined with a healthy recognition
that it was necessary for those in the Church to remain steadfast in their
faith in light of temptations offered by some unnamed “intruders” and “dreamers.”
The language is so stark because the outcomes are so stark: life with God or
life separated from God, which do you prefer?
Nevertheless, I do think that we
today find the language of Judgment so harsh because we attribute this harshness
to God and not to human choices, as some ancient texts indeed seem to do. The language of apocalyptic thought is also mythic
in character, too, such as the passage Jude cites from 1 Enoch, “See, the Lord
is coming with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute
judgment on all, and to convict everyone of all the 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” (vv.14-15). Judgment in this kind of
mythic apocalyptic passage is often pronounced in a sort of “military”
language, which states that God will “execute judgment on all.” There is also a
pronounced emphasis on “the deeds of ungodliness,” but not the deeds of
goodness which human beings perform. As a result, we come to see God as a harsh
military commander just waiting to execute Judgment on all of those who have
gone astray. God’s love does not seem present; in fact, love seems absent.
This does, I think, point to both
a genre issue – this is how apocalyptic thought discussed the coming end, in
sharp black and white terms – and the fact that moderns are moved more by a
stress on God’s love than God’s punishment. Jude suggests a couple of things in
this context. One is that we should not overlook that we can through our
actions distance ourselves from God’s love and that it is usually a series of
choices that we make which move us farther and farther from God’s love. It is
not God’s wish for us. When I think of the horror in Cleveland in which a man
(or men) kept three kidnapped young women in slavery for numerous years, I find
it hard to think that evil is not real and that those who choose it over and
over, day by day, have not turned their back on God’s love, some so entirely
that we can see that only God’s grace can heal them and that if they choose not
to respond to God’s grace here on earth, it is difficult to see how God can
welcome them into the presence of eternal love. We cannot forget evil and
apocalyptic imagery, in its black and white bluntness, makes us confront it,
not just in others, but in ourselves. Jude makes its first readers and us think
seriously about our choices and our behavior.
Finally, even in a letter as
clearly centered on the “intruders” and their (final) judgment, ultimately the
letter turns its attention to winning back these very people who are troubling
the community and those tempted by or entranced by their teaching! Mercy does
win the day, that is, God’s mercy as channeled through the Church. The “intruders”
are causing divisions, but the Church is to concentrate on unity through faith
and prayer (vv.19-20). They are called not
to get angry with the “intruders,” but to maintain themselves in God’s love and
to “look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal
life” (v.21). The language regarding the troublemakers at the end of the letter
does not turn to condemnation and mockery, but to mercy and salvation (vv.22-23).
Love does win the day and the letter. Jude’s hope is that it will also win
those who have been attracted by faulty teaching and behavior and those who are
even engaged in it. One must respond to God’s call, but God is there to help
all of us to the end and it is an end which is intended to be filled with God’s
love. Jude says, it is God who “is able to keep you from falling” (v.24) and
this was true in Jude’s day and today. However much some of Jude might sound
foreign to us, this love of God transcends all cultural differences and beckons
us to change our ways, not so that we can be condemned, but so that we might
rest in the presence of mercy. As Jude says, “Amen.”
John W. Martens
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This
entry is cross-posted at America Magazine The Good Word
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