Jude 1

1Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, to those who are called, who are loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:

2May mercy, peace, and love be yours in full measure.

3Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I found it necessary to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all handed down to the saints.

4For certain people have slipped in among you unnoticed, people who were marked out long ago for this condemnation. They are ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

5Now I want to remind you, though you already know all this, that the Lord, who once 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 home, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness for the judgment of the great day.

7In the same way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and went after other flesh, serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.

8Yet in the same way these people, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority, and slander the glorious ones.

9But when Michael the archangel was contending with the devil and arguing about the body of Moses, he did not dare to bring a slanderous judgment against him, but said, “May the Lord rebuke you!”

10But these people slander whatever they do not understand, and the things they do understand by instinct, like irrational animals, are the very things that destroy them.

11Woe to them! For they have walked in the way of Cain, they have abandoned themselves for profit to the error of Balaam, and they have perished in the rebellion of Korah.

12These people are hidden reefs at your love feasts, feasting with you without fear, shepherds who care only for themselves. They are waterless clouds swept along by the winds, autumn trees without fruit, twice dead and uprooted,

13wild waves of the sea, foaming up their own shameful deeds, wandering stars for whom the gloom of darkness has been reserved forever.

14It was also about these people that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Look, the Lord comes with tens of thousands of his holy ones

15to execute judgment on all, and to convict every person of all the ungodly deeds they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the harsh words that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

16These people are grumblers and complainers who live by their own desires. Their mouths speak arrogant words, and they flatter others to gain an advantage.

17But you, dear friends, remember the words spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.

18They told you that in the last time there will be scoffers who follow their own ungodly desires.

19These are the people who cause divisions, unspiritual people who do not have the Spirit.

20But you, dear friends, 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 that leads to eternal life.

22Have mercy on some who are wavering;

23save others by snatching them out of the fire; and to still others show mercy with fear, hating even the clothing stained by the flesh.

24Now to the one who is able to guard you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, blameless and full of joy,

25to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority, before all time, now, and for all the ages. Amen.