What Jesus' Brother Jude Wanted Us to Know | Verse 10 | As Holy As A Cow
Having established the proper and noble example of the archangel, Michael, in how he did not—even as the chief of all angels—pronounce a blasphemy, or railing judgment, even against Satan, Jude then turns back to the false teachers that have been the target of his indictments and the very reason for causing him to write to the church in the first place.
“These people,” Jude stresses in verse 10, are not like Michael. These people have no discretion. These people do not have self-control. These people do not submit themselves to the full authority of God. These people are rebels. These people not only practice error, but teach others to do the same.
“But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.” | Jude 10
The parallel passage in 2 Peter 2 says: “But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed” (v. 12).
Theoretically, you could divide any one person into two parts, one being made up of the stuff they know and the other being made up of the stuff they do not know. Jude does that here, but there is nothing positive or even neutral about his division. He is saying that what they talk so strongly about, they don’t actually truly understand. They are talking about spiritual matters, yet they are spiritually ignorant. The only thing they do understand is the animal-like instinct to hate, mate, and procreate, and by way of these lusts they will be destroyed. The context of Jude’s entire letter is clear that sexual immorality is still in view as one of the hallmarks of the false teacher, whether in deed or in thought, as is so clearly taught in the New Testament.
The true minister of the gospel is a holy and humble servant and not one who seeks notoriety, fame, power, or the applause of men and women. Yet, so entrenched and infatuated are false ministers of the gospel in their own reasoning and spin on theology that they carelessly blaspheme anything and everything that does not corroborate it.
They do not understand spiritual realities because their “foolish hearts are darkened” and they have “become futile in their thinking,” as Paul explained to the Roman church (1:21).
The Bible has a lot to say about false teachers and how they think: They have lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God (2 Cor 10:5); Human cunning; deceitful schemes (Eph 4:14); Going on in detail about visions and puffed up without reason by sensuous minds (Col 2:18); Deceitful and insincere (1 Tim 4:1).
Paul’s warning to Timothy is worth quoting at length:
“[The false teacher is] puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain” (1 Tim 6:4–5).
They are insubordinate empty talkers (Tit 1:10); They profess God with their lips but deny Him by their works (v. 16); They are warped and self-condemned (3:11).
The lists go on and on.
Needless to say, Jude is saying nothing new about the heinous nature of those ungodly people who peddle the Word of God under the pretense of grace in order to make excuses for their sin and gain a following in the process.
The reality of the situation, he argues, is that they actually know nothing of the holiness and righteousness of God, yet about these things they blaspheme. They are no better than brute beasts who act and react to the cravings of their flesh. By these very things they will be destroyed.
Jude’s earlier mention of the Jews’ destruction for spiritual unbelief, the angels’ rebellion against God’s authority, and Sodom’s punishment for physical impurity in verses 5–7, sets the context for what he is now saying in verse 10, in that they are guilty of all of these sins, therefore their own destruction is simply a matter of time.
Their habit of turning the grace of God into an opportunity for the flesh will not go unpunished, indeed God is not a God who excuses the wicked. He is a God “who will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex 34:7). Hence, Jude’s urgency from the start of his letter to simply contend earnestly for the true faith and not to be caught up with novelties.
It is interesting to note that Paul exhorted Christians to let their reasonableness be known to all (Phil 4:5), something that the unredeemed and false teachers cannot do consistently as they are “depraved in mind and deprived of the truth” (1 Tim 6:5)—the very thing needed to be of sound reason.
On the negative side, the prophet Hosea spoke from the Lord, calling out Israel as being no better than a “stubborn heifer” (4:16) for their unreasonable obstinacy.
The Psalmist declared that “man in his pomp yet without understanding is like the beasts that perish” (49:20).
They are “enemies of the cross of Christ,” Paul warned. “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly” (Phil 3:18–19)—just like the beast of the field.
To shine a little light on this topic, the word that Jude uses for “instinct” in verse 10 is the Greek word phusikos, from where we get the word “physical” and it literally means acting in a manner that is aided by the bodily senses. It is precisely what Paul said is so characteristic of the insincere liars who hate God: their “consciences are seared” (1 Tim 4:2). They have no sense of guilt, nor need for repentance. They are as a beast of the field being guided along by the next craving of their fleshly nature.
The only way to protect ourselves from being carried away by our bodily senses is to arm ourselves and with—and feed ourselves on—the written Word of God.
I will end with an excerpt from Thomas Watson’s extremely practical little book The Doctrine of Repentance. Watson was a Puritan in the 17th century who had this to say:
“When men have hearts of stone and foreheads of brass, it is a sign that the devil has taken full possession of them. There is no creature capable of shame but man. The brute beasts are capable of fear and pain, but not of shame. You cannot make a beast blush. Those who cannot blush for sin do too much resemble the beasts.”
Brothers and sisters, may it not be so of us. May we stand with that faithful man of God, Ezra, and blush in humiliation at our sin (Ez 9:6) and then, upon recognizing our guilt before God, may we continue repenting as we are sanctified and changed more and more into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ! Such is characteristic mark of the true child of God and we thank Jude for his discerning reminder of these essential truths.
In Christ Alone,
Ben
