Jude--thinking out loud

I've been working in one of those shorter books of the Bible: Jude. It's a book that is filled with a bunch of interesting teaching and a few surprises. Over the next few weeks I'll be posting some of my thoughts along the way.

The first surprise of the book of Jude is its name. The name of the book is literally Judas (Greek ∆Iou/daß) The book was renamed Jude to distinguish the writer from Judas Iscariot. The second surprise is that Judas is brother of James which means he is also the brother of Jesus. Imagine having a brother whose name was the same as the person who betrays you. But in this we also see something else: Jesus' own family comes to recognize him as the Messiah. This is distinctly different than what we find the gospels. For instance in Mark 3 we read, Mark 3:20 Then he went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat. Mark 3:21 And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, “He is out of his mind.”

The change in attitude is seen as well in Jude designating himself as a servant of Jesus Christ (i.e. Jesus the Messiah). Jude/Judas no longer calls himself a brother, but rather a servant. A servant in this context is one who is completely controlled by another. The one who they thought was out of control is now in control of Jude's entire life.

This radical change of attitude reminds me of Joseph and his brothers. Joseph's dreams of his being a ruler and his brothers bowing down to him brought rebuke and hatred. The text says, 9 Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, “Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” 10 But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?” 11 And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind. (Remember how Mary stores up all of these things in heart in Luke 2?). While the family relationships start out ugly and get worse in the end the brothers do bow down. One wonders if this is a foreshadowing of Jesus and his family.

But the bottom line for me in this is that even Jesus' family recognize him as Messiah and honors him as such. They become completely controlled by him. Jude will make it clear as he writes that such total control of the Messiah in our lives is a must if we are going to live a life that is pleasing to him.