Because the Advent season is upon us, it is particularly fitting to focus on the fact that the Holy Spirit glorified Christ by bringing to completion the miracle of the incarnation. When the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she is going to conceive in her womb and bear the promised Messiah, she wonders how this can possibly come about since she is a virgin (Luke 1:34). The angel tells her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).

This advent season, should Christians focus less on Jesus and more on the Holy Spirit? Do we emphasize Jesus so much that we sometimes neglect the Holy Spirit? After all, we celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christ-mas and the resurrection of Jesus at Easter. We refer to the gospel of our salvation as the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we refer to our Bible and our sermons from the Bible as Christocentric. Even the name of this website is “Christ Over All.”
Too Christocentric? What About the Spirit?
According to one common narrative, Western Christianity has seen a revival of pneumatology in the last century. The Holy Spirit, so the narrative goes, was neglected in Christian worship and theology from the days of the early church until the Pentecostal renewal movements of the early twentieth century. Since that time, however, the Holy Spirit seems to be center stage in much contemporary Christian worship and theological reflection. It is common to see this historical narrative framed by the metaphor of the classic fairytale of Cinderella. Overlooked, neglected, and long uninvited, Cinderella finally showed up to the ball and stole the show. A well-worn explanation for this so-called neglect of the Cinderella Spirit is the church’s overemphasis on the person of Christ.
A survey of this so-called revival of pneumatology will reveal that the new emphasis on the Holy Spirit has often resulted in new theological commitments. These commitments are not fresh articulations of the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3) but departures from it. Pneumatology has been the doorway for declaring that people of non-Christian faith traditions can be saved apart from faith in Jesus Christ.[1] Others have posited pneumatology as the way to know the feminine side of God, a kind of balance to the masculine names of the Father and the Son.[2] Still others have seen the ongoing work of the Spirit to be a kind of liberating of the people of God from the strictures of the cultural ethos that dominated the human authors of Scripture.

Thus, for some, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, emphasis on holy, bears unholy fruit (see Gal. 5:22–23). Rather, such pneumatology becomes the theological justification for a sexual ethic that celebrates gay, lesbian, transgender, and polyamorous sexual expression.[3] If a tree is known by its fruit, the tree on which much contemporary pneumatology grows has a bad root—Satan masquerading as an angel of light rather than the Holy Spirit manifesting his presence and power (2 Cor. 11:14).

So, I ask again, do we run the risk of neglecting the Holy Spirit because of our worshipful obsession with the person of Christ? To borrow the Apostle Paul’s favorite negation, “May it never be!” The problem in our lives, our churches, and our society is not that we focus on the Lord Jesus too much but that we focus on him too little. In fact, if our doctrine of the Holy Spirit is regulated by holy Scripture (which the Holy Spirit inspired) rather than by the imaginations of men, we will see that the individuals, churches, and traditions most in step with the Holy Spirit are those who emphasize Christ most! The reason for this is straightforward. Jesus said, “When the Spirit of truth comes… he will glorify me” (John 16:13).
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In light of the damage done by the false teachers, Jude exhorts the members of these churches to “have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.” It was the sacred duty of the pastors, elders, and members of these churches to resist these false teachers, and at the same time to be compassionate towards all those whom the false teachers have duped. Since God’s judgment upon these men was inevitable, Jude’s plea is that Christians snatch the wandering sheep back from the edge before it was too late. Indeed, our common salvation teaches us that we are saved by God’s grace–specifically Jesus’ death for our sins and his righteousness being imputed to us through faith–nevertheless, Christians must be warned that if they trust in Christ, they cannot continue to seek to live so as to gratify the desires of the flesh.

A First Century Sermon
Have you ever wondered what a sermon would be like in one of the churches founded during the time of the apostles? How did those in the apostolic circle preach? Since the New Testament was not yet completed, how did they utilize the Old Testament, so as to show forth Christ? In verses 5-16 of the Epistle of Jude we find such a sermon (or at least a portion of such a sermon) which serves as the main body of Jude’s epistle. Citing from both the Old Testament as well as apocryphal Jewish writings, Jude is able to remind his readers that God has a long history of dealing with false teachers and apostates, and those men who were currently troubling the churches to which Jude is writing, face certain judgment. Even as Jude’s readers are to earnestly contend for that faith “once for all delivered to the saints,” they are to also build themselves up in the most Holy faith, and to pray in the Holy Spirit.
In part one, we dealt with introductory matters and the first four verses. Recall that this epistle was written by Jude–the brother of James and Jesus–as early as the mid-fifties of the first century. While Jude doesn’t give us any of the specifics about the churches to which he is writing, there is enough information here to gather that Jude is writing to a church (or churches) which was composed largely of Jewish converts to Christianity. The members of these church were steeped in Jewish mysticism and end-time speculation–we’ll see why that is important momentarily. Jude has learned that these unnamed churches were facing a very serious internal crisis, prompting Jude to write this epistle which is an urgent warning to his brethren.
Apparently, Jude was planning on a writing a letter to these churches about “our common salvation,” when word reached him that a group of traveling prophets and teachers had crept into these churches, introducing the dangerous heresy of antinomianism. Antinomianism is the notion that since we are saved by God’s grace and not by our works, Christians are not in any sense bound to keep the law (the Ten Commandments). This particular group of false teachers had infiltrated their ranks, and were men who were using the grace of God as an excuse to engage in all kinds of sexual immorality. Furthermore, these men were claiming that God was revealing himself to them through dreams and visions, which, supposedly gave great credibility to their deceptive message. Upon learning that this was indeed going on, Jude sends this epistle to these churches exhorting them to deal with these men before they can do any more damage.
The Old Testament Background
Although quite short, this epistle is packed with content. In the first four verses, Jude exhorts his readers/hearers to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. In verses 5-16, Jude makes his case that the actions of these false teachers was foretold throughout the Old Testament. In these verses, we find a sermon of sorts, drawn from a number of Old Testament texts as well as the apocryphal Book of Enoch. Jude demonstrates that the history of redemption indicates that God’s judgment will certainly befall upon these men now plaguing the churches. And then, in verses 17-25, Jude concludes by reminding his beloved brethren that this was the very thing the apostles (whom many in the congregation had heard preach with their own ears) warned them would happen. Even as they are contending for the faith once for all delivered, these Christians are to use this time to build themselves up in the most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit, while they wait for the coming of the Lord.
We turn to the first part of our text, verses 5-16 of Jude, which is, in effect, Jude’s sermon on the threat to the churches to which he is writing. In verses 5-7 of Jude’s sermon, Jude gives us three illustrations drawn from the Old Testament and Jewish apocalyptic sources regarding those who claimed to be servants of the Lord, but whose conduct proves them to be anything but. Before setting out his case, Jude issues an important reminder in the first clause of verse 5– “Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it . . .” a statement which I take to be a reference to the fact that Jude’s readers already have been thoroughly instructed in “the faith” at the time they came to faith in Christ.
Since many of these people received their initial instruction in Christian doctrine (catechism) directly from the lips of apostles, Jude has no need to instruct his readers in that doctrine. Rather, he is writing to exhort them to put into practice what they have already learned.[1] This also implies that the apostles have already taught us everything we need to know about the gospel, and the person and work of Jesus. If that is the case, could anything possibly be missing from that doctrine taught them by the apostles, which God was supposedly revealing to these false teachers through their dreams and visions? Of course, not. Jude speaks of a “common salvation,” and “a faith, once for all delivered.”
Jesus and the Exodus from Egypt
Jude’s first illustration is taken from one the most famous episodes in Israel’s history. It is noteworthy that Jude tells us that it was Jesus who called the Israelites out of their captivity in Egypt, “that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” Anyone who knows the Passover/Exodus story as found in the Book of Exodus knows that it was YHWH who killed the firstborn males of Egypt, and who delivered the people of Israel on the night of the Passover. It was YHWH who then led the people through the Red Sea on dry ground. After Jesus died and then rose again from the dead, and after Jude came to faith in Christ, Jude now looks back at the Old Testament through the lens of Christ’s fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. No question, the apostolic church believed that since Jesus was God in human flesh, Christians can properly speak of Jesus as YHWH, the one who rescued Israel from the clutches of the Pharaoh.
After the Israelites left Egypt, Moses warned them that the unbelievers and grumblers among them were rejecting God’s covenant promise to grant them the land of promise. Even after seeing YHWH’s awesome power first-hand, these Israelites still doubted whether YHWH was actually capable of defeating the Canaanites. They began to grumble against the Lord, and would come under God’s covenant curse. They would be forced to wander for forty years in the wilderness of the Sinai until their entire generation died off. All of them, except the families of Joshua and Caleb, died in the desert.
Remarkably, Jude ties all of this directly to Jesus. The implication is that preachers in the apostolic circle, like Jude, were led by the Holy Spirit to read the Old Testament through the lens of the person and work of Christ–the very thing which our dispensational friends say should not be done. Jude also has no trouble in applying an Old Testament example of Israel’s disobedience directly to the situation then facing the churches when Jude wrote his epistle. And so in his sermon, Jude argues that it was Jesus who rescued Israel from Egypt. And it was Jesus who allowed the faithless grumblers to wander in the desert for forty years until that entire first generation of Israelites was wiped out. Jude’s readers were, no doubt, very much aware of the story of Israel’s disobedience and God’s judgment. No doubt, they also fully understood Jude’s application of this account from Israel’s history directly to the disobedient and faithless individuals then creeping into the churches. As God had done with Israel, so now he does with his new covenant people, the New Israel. He dealt with apostates then. He will deal with them now.
The Book of Enoch?
Jude’s second illustration comes from a Jewish legend found in the Book of Enoch about angels leaving heaven and then inter-marrying with women so as to corrupt the human race. A number of Jewish writers living before the coming of Christ interpreted the account of the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:1-4 precisely in this manner. Although by the end of the first century, most Rabbis, as well as most subsequent Christians writers rejected this idea–instead seeing the “Nephilim” as fully human thugs and warlords building harems, not the product of sexual relations between women and fallen angels–the notion of angels supposedly procreating with humans is quite prominent in the Book of Enoch, a Jewish apocryphal book then popular in both Jewish and Christian circles.[2]
Even though the Book of Enoch is apocryphal, Jude utilizes Enoch’s legend to make a point. In verse 6, Jude is clearly alluding to a passage in Enoch, “And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.” Without comment upon the erroneous nature of the interpretation held by those in his audience who were influenced by the Book of Enoch, Jude reminds his readers that those angels who followed Satan, and who fell from their place in heaven (“did not keep it”), have been “kept” in chains until the day of judgment. Whatever we make of Jude’s use of an apocryphal source like the Book of Enoch, Jude sees nothing wrong with alluding to it to make an important point–those angels, who according to Enoch, abandoned their place in heaven so as to engage in sexual relations with women, were immediately subject to God’s judgment. Therefore, in his “sermon,” Jude uses Enoch’s legend to make the point that while the angels did not stay (“keep” their place), the Lord now “keeps” them in chains until the time of the end. Jude reinterprets Enoch’s legend in light of the truth of the gospel.
In verse seven, Jude takes up the account of Sodom and Gomorrah, cities well-known to every reader of the Old Testament as places characterized by their open and rampant immorality.
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He cried out to the Lord and then lay down and slept. “But You, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the One who lifts my head. I was crying to the Lord with my voice, and He answered me from His holy mountain. (Selah … pause and think about that). I lay down and slept. I awoke, for the Lord sustains me. I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me round about.” (Psalm 3:3-6) If you’ve never been through a battle or been there and never trusted in God, this will seem foolish.

All of us face enemies in life. The immediate response if an enemy is strong enough and the siege long enough is to lose all hope. If we listen to the prognosticators, they all tell us it’s useless. And even if we are trusting in God, they will proclaim that trusting in Him is fine, but it will not deliver us.
The Veteran Warrior
David was an old man when his son, Absalom, came against him and drove him from his own home and city. While others were fearful and doubting, David was at peace. His prayer reflects what others thought about the situation.
O Lord, how my adversaries have increased! Many are rising up against me. Many are saying of my soul, “There is no deliverance for him in God.” (Psalm 3:1-2)
But they did not reckon with a wise warrior who’d been through many battles. He knew God was sufficient.
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