Jude 1

¹Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, to those who have been called, who are loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: ²May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

³Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our shared salvation, I found it necessary to write and exhort you to contend for the faith that was once for all handed down to the holy ones. ⁴For certain people have slipped in stealthily—those who were designated for this condemnation long ago—godless people who turn the grace of our God into a license for unrestrained behavior and deny our only Master-Sovereign and Lord, Jesus Christ.

⁵Now I want to remind you, although you once knew it all, that Jesus, having saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not trust. ⁶And the angels who did not keep to their own domain of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling place, he has kept in everlasting chains under murky darkness for the judgment of the great day. ⁷Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, which indulged in sexual immorality in the same way as these and went after different kinds of flesh, they stand as an example by undergoing the justice of eternal fire.

⁸Yet in the same way, these dreamers defile the flesh, reject lordship, and slander celestial glories. ⁹But even Michael the archangel, when he was disputing with the devil and arguing about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slandering judgment against him, but said, “May the Lord rebuke you.” ¹⁰But these people slander whatever they do not understand, and whatever they do know instinctively, like irrational animals, they are destroyed by these very things. ¹¹Woe to them! For they have walked in the way of Cain, they have abandoned themselves to Balaam’s error for the sake of profit, and they have perished in Korah’s rebellion.

¹²These people are hidden reefs at your love-feasts, feasting with you without fear, shepherding only themselves. They are waterless clouds carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, twice dead and uprooted; ¹³wild waves of the sea foaming up their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the murky darkness of gloom has been kept forever.

¹⁴Enoch, the seventh from Adam, also prophesied about these people, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with myriads of his holy ones, ¹⁵to execute judgment against all and to convict every soul concerning all their godless deeds which they committed in a godless way, and concerning all the harsh things that godless sinners have spoken against him.” ¹⁶These are grumblers, fault-finders who follow after their own desires; their mouths speak arrogant bombs, and they flatter people for the sake of their own advantage.

¹⁷But you, beloved, must remember the words spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. ¹⁸For they told you, “In the last time there will be scoffers following after their own godless desires.” ¹⁹These are the ones who cause divisions—soulish people, not having the Spirit.

²⁰But you, beloved, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, ²¹keep yourselves in the love of God as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, leading to eternal life. ²²Have mercy on those who are wavering; ²³save others by snatching them out of the fire; and on others have mercy with fear, hating even the tunic stained by the flesh.

²⁴Now to the one who is able to guard you from stumbling and to stand you before his glory, blameless and with exultation— ²⁵to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority, before all time, and now, and for all the ages. Amen.