Jude 1

2.    The readers (1b)

    [1:1] Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James,
    To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:
(Jude 1:1 ESV)

Jude uses the standard letter opening to say three things about his readers. The churches he was writing to cannot be identified precisely, but the letter makes clear that he did not think he was writing a general letter of broad application to an unlimited number of churches. He was writing to a particular group or groups of Christians he knew very well.

a.    Christians who are called

Christians are often referred to as people whom God has called,20 and this is an important starting-point for understanding this letter. Every Christian has been called by God to be a Christian, and one of Jude's key ideas is that God will continue to call us home until we join him in heaven.
    Yet it goes deeper even than that. A great truth about Israel in the Old Testament was that they too were called by God to be his people.21 Jude here writes to Christians who stand in a line of succession which stretches back to God's call of Abraham, through today, to a wonderful future in glory. Christians are the people of God, inheriting the promises God made to Israel.

b.    Christians who are loved22

The second foundation truth is that Christians are loved. Jude is saying something more profound than that Christians are loved by God (although that is true), for he says, literally, that Christians are 'beloved in God',23 which is complicated. We are loved by God and we are loved in God. What does Jude mean?24 It is a wonderfully embracing promise of God's love in an insecure world, for Christians 'are loved by God and … his love enfolds them'.25 It is a double guarantee that God's love will not fail us, protecting us from the outside and strengthening us from within. Jude's reason for giving this remarkable reassurance will appear only towards the end [2 Peter & Jude, Page 169] of his letter, as he brings out their responsibility to 'keep' themselves 'in God's love' (verse 21).
    Again, this is no novelty for God's people, who have always known that were loved by God.26 God's love stretches across both the Testaments. But there are a remarkable number of passages in Isaiah where the people who are called are also those who are loved,27 and perhaps that is where Jude's mind is dwelling. If so, then he is making the identification of Christians with God's ancient people very clear indeed.

c.    Christians who are kept

This third grand definition means that Christians are secure for the future when Jesus comes again. This verse (1) does not promise wealth or fame or success; but it promises that when we are poor, despised failures, God has not let go of us, and will not let go of us.28 In particular, Jude wants us to know that when we see churches flooded with wrong teaching about God, and leaders making money out of peddling quack religion, Christ will keep a firm hold on his people. That was the problem that his churches faced, and the problem he addresses here. The Puritan commentator, Thomas Manton, says quaintly that 'Jesus Christ is the cabinet in which God's jewels are kept; so that if we would stand, we must get out of ourselves and get into him, in whom alone there is safety.'29 This is obviously a key idea to grasp at the outset of Jude's letter, for he mentions 'keeping' four times in such a short work (here, twice in verse 6 and again in verse 24).

    For the third time, Jude uses a term that has deep Old Testament sources, and once again Isaiah has proved important.30 Jude has chosen three words that deliberately remind us that we are not the first people to hear God's covenant promises. This is his platform to show that God's earlier dealings with Israel lay down a pattern for his dealings with the new Israel.

    The three terms also give us a Christian time-frame. We have been called, which refers to God's gracious acts in the past; we are loved, which describes his gracious attitude to us in the present, and we are being kept for a wonderful future with him in endless glory.


20 Cf. Mt. 22:14; Rom. 1:1, 6–7; 8:28; 1 Cor. 1:24, 26; 1 Thes. 5:24; Heb. 3:1.

21 Especially Is. 42:6; 48:12, 15; 49:1; 54:6.

22 The AV and NKJV have 'sanctified' here, and many older commentators assume that translation. The reading 'loved' is probably correct, though, and 'sanctified' is possibly an assimilation to 1 Cor. 1:2, which made the Greek flow more easily.

23 NRSV; so too RV, NASB, NEB, RSV, GNB.

24 Some say that this is simply where the name of the town to which Jude was writing has dropped out (as at Eph. 1:1), and we should read 'loved by God, in X'. But the Greek here runs more smoothly than the Ephesian hiatus, and the text should be read as it stands.

25 Kelly, p. 243.

26 Dt. 7:7–10; 33:3, 12; 2 Ch. 20:7; Ps. 28:6.

27 E.g. Is. 42:6; 43:4; 44:2.

28 1 Pet. 1:3–7; 2 Pet. 2:4–9.

29 Manton, p. 43.

30 Is. 49:8.