Unexpected Closeness

Jude 1

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James,

To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ...

The first verse of Jude continues to surprise. If we’ve been reading the Bible for a while we may smooth over the surprises in our minds replacing unexpected words with expected ones, but it is the unexpected that brings new ways of seeing things. Here is another unexpected: Jude tells us that we are “beloved in God the Father”. Our expected reading is, “We are loved by God the Father” (the NIV smooths over this unexpected by translating it that way). What does it mean that we are beloved in God the Father? Most likely Jude is upping the intimacy level between God and the body of believers. Those whom God loves are taken into an intimate fellowship with him, the community is embraced and enfolded by God’s love. This kind of embracing has echoes of Paul describing the church (not individual believers) as the bride of Christ in Ephesians 5.²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, ²⁶ that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, ²⁷ so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. ²⁸ In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, ³⁰ because we are members of his body. ³¹ “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” ³² This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. The profound mystery is not only the unity of husband and wife becoming one flesh, but also how Christ and his bride, the church, are one.

The intimacy of the Father and the church and the intimacy of Christ and the church startle us because of the closeness and because the intimacy speaks to the importance of the church. In our culture the church is seen as an optional, voluntary organization that we join for what benefit we can get and leave when it no longer suits us. But what if being a part of the body of believers means being brought into intimate fellowship with God, that it is in this body that we are embraced and enfolded by God’s love?