What [is] the life of those who reject Jesus Christ like? Let us reveal it quickly here. Jude 1:4 says that there are those who turn the grace of God into life's sensualities and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Jude 1:5 says they are like those whom God left behind in the wilderness because of their disobedience. They are like those angels who fell away in unbelief. They are like those of Sodom and Gomorrah (Jude 1:7). In Jude 1:11 Jude says, woe to them, for they have gone the way of Cain; they have rushed headlong into the error of Baalam; they have perished in the rebellion of Korah. What a picture is given!
And then Jude turns the tables when he says in Jude 1:17: but you beloved, you ought to remember the words that were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying, during the last times, there will be mockers. Yes, this is the case, so do not be surprised. Jude 1:20 reads: but you beloved, building yourselves up in the most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God. In other words, do not be like all these other people that have been described; be quite the opposite. Keep yourselves in the love of God, and do this, how? By building yourselves up in the most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, and waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, helping those who doubt, and witnessing to others to snatch them out of the fire that leads to destruction. As you do so, you will keep yourself in the most holy faith as you practice these things, as you live these things, and there will be assurance which is built up in your life.1
Dennis Prutow
3 Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.