Appeal to Defend the Faith and Condemnation of False Teachers
Jude 1:1-16
1Judas, slave of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those called, loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ.2May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.3Beloved, although I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you and to urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.4For certain people have slipped in secretly, who long ago were designated for this judgment, ungodly ones who turn the grace of our God into debauchery and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.5Now I want to remind you, though you once knew all things, that Jesus, having saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.6And the angels who did not keep their own position of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling he has kept in eternal chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day.7Likewise Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, which in like manner committed sexual immorality and went after other flesh, are set forth as an example, undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.8Yet in the same way these also, dreaming, defile the flesh, reject lordship, and blaspheme glories.9But when the archangel Michael contended with the devil and disputed about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, "The Lord rebuke you."10But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.11Woe to them! For they walked in the way of Cain, poured themselves out for the sake of Balaam's wage into error, and perished in Korah's dispute.12These are reefs in your loves, feasting with you fearlessly, shepherding themselves; waterless clouds carried along by winds; autumnal trees, unfruitful, twice dead, uprooted.13Wild waves of the sea, foaming up their own shames; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of darkness has been kept for an age.14Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied to these, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with his holy myriads."15To do judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly concerning all their works of ungodliness that they committed and concerning all the hard things that ungodly sinners spoke against him.16These are murmurers, malcontents, walking according to their desires, and their mouth speaks boastful things, marveling at faces for the sake of advantage.