EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/03/2025 9:11 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “Jude’s
Background”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Jude 1a
Message of the verse: “Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James,”
It is my desire to finish this section in my
Spiritual Diary this evening as it is important to understand the background of
Jude, for not much is said about him in the New Testament other than he is the
half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the full brother of James, the one
who headed up the church in Jerusalem for a fairly long time.
Now
once again look at how Jude introduces himself in this section: a bond-servant
of Jesus Christ. There is a very good
reason what both he and James did not introduce themselves as the half-brother
of Jesus Christ and as we look at this section from Jude 1a we can see that it
indicates that the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ had transformed
his heart. Now remember when the Lord
was on the earth talking at times to his earthly family his half-brothers did
not believe He was the Messiah. I have
never read anything about His half-sisters as to whether they finally believed
in Him. Jude went from being an
unbeliever (cf. John 7:5) to being a bond-servant (doulos, “slave”), one who
trusted Christ as his Lord and Master.
Now let me give you a list of verses that MacArthur puts into his
commentary that go along with this. (“cf.
Matt. 24:46; Luke 2:29; Acts 4:29; Gal. 1:10; Col. 1:7; 2 Tim. 2:24; Rev. 19:5”). “Accordingly, his saving relationship to
Christ became more important than family ties (cf. Mark 3:31-35).” Let us take a look at those verses: “31 Then His mother
and His brothers arrived, and standing outside they sent word to Him and
called Him. 32 A crowd was sitting around Him, and they said to Him,
"Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are outside looking for You." 33
Answering them, He said, "Who are My mother and My brothers?" 34 Looking
about at those who were sitting around Him, He said, "Behold My mother and
My
brothers! 35 “For whoever does the
will of God, he is My brother and sister and mother.’”
“Thus Jude
chose to humbly call himself Jesus’ bond-servant rather than not the more
impressive fact that he was Jesus’ half-brother.”
A fairly long time ago I read a book
written by John MacArthur as he discussed the meaning of doulos, which is the
Greek word for slave, and yet in one looks at a concordance of the Greek found
in the Bible they will see that words like “bond-servant” actually mean
slave. Jesus Himself is also called
slave in the Word of God, but when it comes to the English translations the
authors do not want to offend anyone by using the word slave where it should be
used.
MacArthur concludes “In the
Greco-Roman world slavery was widespread, making the familiar New Testament
designation bond-servant (cf. Rom. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; 2 Peter 1:1) very significant. It denoted being owned and rendering
absolute, selfless submission to someone, in this case to Jesus as Lord. In this letter such identification is
especially fitting because it sets Jude in sharp contrast to the
apostates. He was a grateful, willing
slave of the Lord Jesus Christ, whereas the apostates denied Christ’s lordship
through their overtly sinful lifestyles (v. 4; cf. 2 Peter 2:1).”
All I can say that the same thing
goes today in so-called churches and it will continue to get worse the closer
we get to the Rapture.
7/3/2025 9:36
PM
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