Jude 3–11

JUDE’S PURPOSE IN WRITING

³Dear friends, although I was eager to write you about the salvation we share,^f I found it necessary to write, appealing to you to contend for the faith^g that was delivered^h to the saints once for all. ⁴For some people, who were designated for this judgment long ago,^Bi have come in by stealth;^j they are ungodly,^k turning the grace of our God into sensuality and denying^l Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord.

APOSTATES: PAST AND PRESENT

⁵Now I want to remind you, although you came to know all these things once and for all, that Jesus^C saved a people out of Egypt and later destroyed those who did not believe;^{m 6}and the angelsⁿ who did not keep their own position but abandoned their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains in deep darkness for the judgment on the great day. ⁷Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah^o and the surrounding towns committed sexual immorality and perversions,^D and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.^p

⁸In the same way these people—relying on their dreams—defile their flesh, reject authority, and slander glorious ones.^{q 9}Yet when Michael^r the archangel^s was disputing with the devil^t in an argument about Moses’s^u body, he did not dare utter a slanderous condemnation against him but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” ¹⁰But these people blaspheme anything they do not understand. And what they do understand by instinct—like irrational animals—by these things they are destroyed. ¹¹Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain,^v have plunged into Balaam’s error^w for profit, and have perished in Korah’s rebellion.^x