Jude: Who is a False Teacher?
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Jude: Who is a False Teacher?

About This Episode

Jude addresses a group of false teachers who are using God's grace to justify their greed and sensuality. Seth and David talk about all of Jude's weird references to the Old Testament and Jewish literature and how the good news of Jude is that Jesus keeps us for himself.

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Jude: Who Is a False Teacher?

Show Notes

David and Seth open this episode of the Spoken Gospel podcast by introducing the Book of Jude, a short but intense New Testament letter written by Judah — the half-brother of Jesus — to a community of Jewish Christians facing a crisis of false teaching from within their own ranks.

A Reluctant Letter from Jesus' Brother

The name "Jude" is actually the Hebrew name Judah, the same name as the tribe of Israel. Though Jude was a biological brother of Jesus through Mary, he identifies himself only as "a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James." There are several possible reasons for this. One is humility, following the pattern of Jesus himself, who came to serve rather than demanding worship based on his identity alone. Another possibility is that Jude may have been offering a veiled admission of his own failure. The Gospels record that Jesus' brothers did not trust in him during his earthly ministry. By calling himself a servant rather than a brother, Jude may have been acknowledging that he once denied the very thing he now writes to defend — the lordship of Jesus. That detail takes on a sharper edge when you realize that Jude's summary of the false teachers' error is that they "deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ." Jude himself once lived in that very pattern of denial, which makes his transformation into a servant of Jesus all the more remarkable.

Jude also shares significant overlap with 2 Peter, both in structure and content. Many scholars believe Jude wrote first and Peter later expanded on the same themes for a different audience. Both letters were likely addressing the same regional crisis of false teaching. Regardless of the order, both writers felt the urgency of the same problem and tag-teamed their response to protect the early church.

The Hidden Danger: Grace Twisted into License

Jude tells his readers he originally wanted to write about the salvation they shared together in Jesus. But a theological and moral crisis forced his hand. Instead, he had to urge them to "contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints." The faith delivered to them was the apostolic teaching about Jesus — the Gospel — and it was being eroded from the inside.

The false teachers had "crept in unnoticed." Jude later compares them to hidden reefs lurking beneath the surface of a calm ocean, invisible until they destroy the ship passing over them. These were not outsiders peddling an obviously strange religion. They were likely the leaders and pastors of these congregations, people who appeared orthodox on the surface. They preached about God's grace, but underneath that veneer, they were "perverting the grace of our God into sensuality." In practical terms, they were claiming that God's grace cancels his moral commands — that because God forgives, Jesus no longer needs to be the moral Master or Lord of their lives. They taught that following your desires and your heart was compatible with the Gospel because, after all, it is God's job to forgive.

This is why Jude's opening identification as a "servant" — literally, a slave — of Jesus is so deliberate. He is positioning himself against the false teachers' core error. They denied that Jesus is Master; Jude embraces it. The word "master" here carries the weight of a slave-owner or a lord with full authority over someone's life, and it appears rarely in the New Testament outside of 2 Peter and passages where Paul reminds earthly masters that they, too, have a Master in heaven. To reject Jesus as moral Master is not a minor theological adjustment. It is an attack on the Gospel itself, because if Jesus does not have the authority to define right and wrong, he has no grounds on which to judge sin or extend forgiveness. The Gospel saves sinners — it does not promote sin. If you remove Jesus' authority, you remove the very foundation on which his mercy stands.

Old Testament Warnings: A Biblical Pattern of Judgment

Jude then turns to a series of Old Testament stories to expose the false teachers' ignorance of their own Scriptures. His strategy is pointed: these were teachers of the Bible, likely converted rabbis preaching in synagogues, and Jude uses their own playbook against them. If they claim to know God's word, they should recognize themselves in these stories of rebellion and judgment.

His first example comes from the Exodus. God graciously saved Israel out of Egypt, but afterward destroyed those who did not believe. That disbelief took many forms — grumbling in the wilderness over food, worshiping the golden calf and throwing themselves into a sexual celebration while God was giving the law on the mountain, and refusing to enter the Promised Land out of fear. In every case, the pattern was the same: God's people stepped outside his moral authority because their desires pulled them away. Jude draws a direct line between Israel's disbelief and the sensuality of the false teachers. Whenever we want something God has forbidden, we are, in that moment, not believing that Jesus is our Master.

The second example comes from Genesis 6, where angelic beings — the "sons of God" — left their proper dwelling and had sexual relations with human women. Drawing on the Jewish book of 1 Enoch, Jude explains that these angels are now kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness, awaiting judgment. Even heavenly beings with great authority were not exempt from judgment when they crossed divine boundaries. Then Jude reverses the image with Sodom and Gomorrah, where human men attempted to sexually overpower angelic visitors. The literal Greek phrase translated "unnatural desire" is simply "different flesh" — the flesh of angels. And that same word for "flesh" appears in Jude's next sentence, where he says the false teachers are "defiling their flesh" by rejecting Jesus' authority. Jude is drawing a direct equation: you false teachers are Sodom and Gomorrah, attempting to assert authority over what is holy, and your judgment will be just as certain.

Cain, Balaam, Korah, and the Archangel Michael

Jude then packs three more Old Testament examples into a single sentence: "Woe to them! 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." Cain murdered his brother out of envy. Balaam sold out Israel for greed, giving lip service to God's blessing on the mountaintop but sowing discord and a curse in the camp below. Korah committed treason against Moses and Aaron — God's appointed leaders — because he wanted power and autonomy, and the ground opened up and swallowed him. Each of these figures wanted something badly enough to step outside God's moral authority, and each was destroyed by what they desired. Jude is showing the false teachers that they stand in a long spiritual lineage stretching all the way back to the serpent in the Garden, who first tempted humanity to reject God as their moral Master and define good and evil for themselves.

Jude also draws on an episode from the Jewish book known as the Testament of Moses. In this story, the archangel Michael disputes with the devil over the body of Moses. The devil accuses Moses of being a murderer — a reference to the Egyptian he killed back in Exodus. Michael could easily have rebuked Satan directly. Instead, he says only, "The Lord rebuke you," leaving the judgment to God. Even the highest angel, speaking to the lowest of beings about a holy man, would not assume the authority to pass judgment. That authority belongs to God alone. And yet these false teachers, mere humans, have claimed moral authority for themselves and blasphemed the "glorious ones" — a phrase that likely refers both to angels and to the angelic mediators who delivered God's law at Mount Sinai. To reject God's moral law is to blaspheme those who delivered it.

After these examples, Jude unleashes a torrent of vivid metaphors. The false teachers are shepherds who feed only themselves, waterless clouds blown by the wind, fruitless trees twice dead and uprooted, wild waves casting up the foam of their own shame, and wandering stars destined for utter darkness. Each image carries the same message: these teachers give a brief appearance of something good — a cloud, a tree, a wave, a star — but deliver nothing, and their end is destruction. Jude then quotes 1 Enoch directly, hammering the word "ungodly" four times in a single sentence. His point is devastating: the false teachers claim to have God while rejecting his authority, but that is the very definition of ungodliness. They do not have the God they claim to have, because you cannot use the Gospel to justify the very rebellion the Gospel was meant to save you from.

The Good News: Jesus Is Able to Keep You

After this relentless indictment, Jude pivots to the community sitting under these false teachers and delivers some of the most comforting words in the New Testament. He encourages them to "build yourselves up in your most holy faith, 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." The language of "building up" echoes the temple — God's people are being constructed into a holy dwelling place where God himself lives. And they do this not by white-knuckling their way to obedience but by grounding themselves in the Gospel, praying in the Spirit, and patiently waiting for the mercy of Jesus toward sinners like them.

This raises a question that runs through the entire letter like a live wire. If God's judgment falls on those who deny his moral authority, how can anyone survive? The answer Jude gives is that God himself is the one doing the keeping. The letter opens by addressing those who are "kept for Jesus Christ," and it closes with one of Scripture's most magnificent promises: "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." Jesus is presented as the Good Shepherd who does not exploit his sheep the way the false teachers did. He keeps his own. He preserves them. And he does so not by ignoring their sin but by bearing it — taking all of their rebellion, their denial of his lordship, their false-teacherness into his own body on the cross so that they might live to righteousness and godliness.

Mercy for Those Who Doubt

Remarkably, after an entire letter cataloging the horrors of denying God's moral authority, Jude does not end with a slammed door. He instructs the community to "have mercy on those who doubt" and to "save others by snatching them out of the fire." The fire imagery echoes Sodom and Gomorrah, where Lot and his family were physically pulled from the city before judgment fell. Jude is saying that even those who are drifting toward the false teachers' lie — even those who are beginning to doubt that Jesus is their Master — can be rescued. The community of God has a role to play in that rescue by extending mercy rather than giving up hope.

The distinction Jude draws is not between people who sin and people who don't. Everyone in the letter's audience was a sinner. The distinction is between those who admit their failure, repent, and cling to Jesus as their Lord and Master — and those who justify their rebellion by appealing to the very grace that was meant to save them from it. Repentance, not perfection, is the mark of someone who truly trusts Jesus. And the promise that closes the letter is that the God who began keeping you will finish the job. In a world that has always tempted humanity to define its own good and evil — from the serpent in the Garden through Cain, Balaam, Korah, Sodom, and every false teacher since — there is a God who keeps his people close, builds them into his dwelling place, and will one day present them fully and truly human before his glory with great joy.

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Introduction to Jude

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