An Introduction to an Urgent Letter
1/12/202645 min
The Letter of Jude E2 — In the introduction to his letter, Jude (or Judah) shares that he had hoped to write about the community’s “shared rescue” of salvation in Jesus. But urgent problems in the church forced him to send a warning instead. He calls his readers to “contend for the faith once for all handed down,” describing this faith as made up of trust in the story of Jesus and loyalty to Jesus’ way of life. But what is the threat Jude wants them to guard against, and how does he describe it? In this episode, Jon and Tim break...
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First 90 secondsJon Collins· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Welcome to BibleProject podcast. We just started a series slowly walking through the short New Testament letter of Jude, or as we've been calling it, the Letter of Judah, a man known to be a brother of Jesus.
Tim Mackie· Host0:18
The relatives of Jesus participated in the planting of new house churches, overseeing them, and the letter Jude emerges out of that network. This is one of the earliest Christian documents coming from the earliest roots of the Jesus movement.
Jon Collins· Host0:35
The letter itself was an emergency letter that Jude wasn't planning on writing. In fact, Jude was working on a different letter, which he mentions. It's a letter all about our shared rescue.
Tim Mackie· Host0:46
In English, it's our common salvation, the thing that we are all connected to and united in and participate in.
Jon Collins· Host0:53
How cool would it be to have that letter?
Tim Mackie· Host0:56
It would've been like an early Messianic Jewish biblical theology of salvation.
Jon Collins· Host1:00
And while we don't have that letter, his biblical theology of salvation leaks out into this letter.
Tim Mackie· Host1:07
It's on his brain. We're gonna see echoes of it.
Jon Collins· Host1:10
Now, the reason for this letter is to address an urgent matter. He wants to warn about dangerous people who have snuck into the larger church network, people he calls irreverent ones.
Tim Mackie· Host1:21
Most other English translations are gonna say godless or ungodly. Somebody who doesn't think that God exists, but more importantly, doesn't