Snatching Them From the Fire

But you, beloved arrives for the second time in four verses, and this time Jude follows it with something to do. What he gives them falls into two halves. The first half is about themselves and the second half is about other people, and the join between the two is the interesting part of the passage.

But you, beloved, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God as you await the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you eternal life.

Keep yourselves is the instruction. It is the same word this letter opened with. In verse 1 they were kept in Jesus Christ and in verse 6 the angels were kept in chains, and both times the keeping was something done to somebody. Here the word turns around and becomes something they are told to do, and Jude sets the uses down side by side without explaining how they fit together.

Around the instruction sit three activities. Building yourselves up in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, and awaiting the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Not one of the three has anything to do with keeping an eye on somebody else. The third is a waiting rather than a doing, and the mercy being waited for has not arrived yet.

And indeed, have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; and to still others show mercy tempered with fear, hating even the clothing stained by the flesh.

Then the letter turns outward, and it does not hand out one instruction to cover everybody. Doubters get mercy with nothing attached to it. A second group gets speed, because snatching is not a careful word. A third group gets mercy as well, and this time fear comes with it, along with a line about clothing that has been stained. Jude does not smooth the third one down to match the first.

Mercy is the word running through the last three of these verses. They are waiting on mercy from the Lord, and by the end of the passage they are handing mercy to two of the three groups in front of them. What they are told to give away is the thing they are still waiting to receive.