Love feasts, banquets, or fellowship meals were a vital part of church life, an important social time in which the church gathered together to spend time with each other.1 The heretics were joining everyone else at these occasions, sharing and having fellowship with them. Most probably their participation in these banquets also meant that they were joining in for the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:17–34). Jude, however, makes it clear that the result of this is a blemish upon these gatherings. The heretics should not be there but they are, and thus they can use these times to entice others to sin. Their presence at the feasts was a particular danger because that would be a time of discussion and teaching.2
12 These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted;