Jude 1

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

² May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

³ Beloved, although I was making every effort to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God's holy people.

⁴ For certain people have slipped in among you unnoticed—those who were long ago written up for this condemnation. They are ungodly, twisting the grace of our God into a license for sensuality and denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

⁵ Now I want to remind you—though you already know all this—that Jesus, having once saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

⁶ And the angels who did not keep their own position of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these he has kept in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day.

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

⁸ Yet in the very same way these dreamers also defile their flesh, reject authority, and slander glorious beings.

⁹ But even the archangel Michael, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said, "The Lord rebuke you."

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

¹¹ Woe to them! For they have taken the way of Cain, rushed headlong into Balaam's error for profit, and perished in Korah's rebellion.

¹² These are the hidden reefs at your love feasts, feasting with you without the slightest fear—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are waterless clouds carried along by the winds, autumn trees without fruit, twice dead and uprooted;

¹³ wild waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the deepest darkness has been reserved forever.

¹⁴ Enoch, the seventh from Adam, also prophesied about them: "Look, the Lord is coming with his countless thousands of holy ones

¹⁵ to execute judgment on everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly deeds they have committed, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him."

¹⁶ These people are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own desires. Their mouths spout arrogant words, and they flatter others to gain an advantage.

¹⁷ But you, beloved, remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.

¹⁸ They said to you, "In the last time there will be scoffers who follow their own ungodly desires."

¹⁹ These are the ones who cause divisions—worldly people who do not have the Spirit.

²⁰ But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit,

²¹ keep yourselves in the love of God as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you eternal life.

²² And have mercy on those who doubt;

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

²⁴ Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before his glorious presence with great joy—

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