Jesus Saves—and Destroys from Among—the People

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. 

Jude 5

The Dordrecht Bible Commentary reminds us that this “temporal punishment was a representation of the eternal.”1 It then cites Hebrews 3:17, though some ambiguity might remain if all we did was to read that passage. Even expanding to the surrounding context, we read,

“For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief” (Heb. 3:16-19).

Even granting the exceptions of Joshua and Caleb, if all who left with Moses were judged, then we must conclude either that all were unsaved (i.e. that this temporal judgment is logically coextensive with eternal judgment), or else that the temporal and eternal are treated separately and stand in exactly that typological relationship suggested by the aforementioned 1 Corinthians 10 and Hebrews 10 passages.

But are there any other passages that might suggest that some were eternally saved even while being temporally judged? The answer is a resounding Yes. This is especially clear about Moses himself. Aside from the general declaration of him being “faithful in all God’s house” (Heb. 3:2), there is the case of the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17 and his mention in the “hall of faith” passage of Hebrews 11. These place Moses “in the land,” but in a different way that one might call eschatological. 

The Text-Critical Issue and the Reason for Using “Jesus”

Although both the earliest MSS reflected in Wescott-Hort, and that of the Textus Receptus, favor ὅτι Κύριος λαὸν ἐκ γῆς Αἰγύπτου σώσας (that the Lord saved a people out of the land of Egypt), yet two of earliest variants in the place of Κύριος use θεός, and one of those also includes Χριστός. Whatever reading one chooses, the more certain piece of evidence that gives more credence to the use of “Jesus” is how the word kurios is used in the New Testament very specifically to mean Jesus. It is also true that the link of often made more explicitly to point back to the LORD (YHWH) in Old Testament passages, often by direct citation of the Septuagint. Paul’s claim about Christ being the LORD present in the exodus in the 1 Corinthians 10 passage lends even more weight to this. 

Comfort adds to this, 

“Some scholars, such as Wikgren (1967, 147-52), have argued that Jude may have written Ἰησοῦς in Jude 5 intended ‘Joshua’ (see NEBmg), as in Heb. 4:8. But this is very unlikely, because Joshua led the Israelites into the good land of Canaan, but not out of Egypt, and Joshua certainly did not destroy those who did not believe (Jude 5b). This was a divine activity.”2

While later Barthians like Robert Jenson improperly root the essential identity of the Son of God in the historical narrative—specifically in the exodus and the resurrection3—nevertheless, it is still the case that it was the Son who acted in the redemption event that was the historical type of “the [ἔξοδον] which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Lk. 9:31). Jude flatly calls it here a salvation—Jesus (or, the Lord) … saved a people out of the land of Egypt. If we are settled on the specific meaning to “Lord” as equivalent to Jesus, what would be the significance of this usage rather than simply “God”? 

The significance is exactly in that method of placing the present crisis within the past pattern. If “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8), then He is the God who delivers and destroys, the One who came to bring a sword to divide even households (cf. Mat. 10:34). A sudden event like the striking down of Ananias and Sapphira may not be a norm, but what makes us think that God overlooks troublemakers in His church today? By using the name of Jesus, in other words, Jude is saying, “The Lord over that wilderness is the Lord who just redeemed you in Jerusalem. As His eye was on those rebels then, so He is watching right now, cleansing out of His people those who are not really His people.”   

Reorienting God’s People within the Ancient Pattern of God’s People

One might even take this beyond typology leading to Christ, and suggest that it is paradigmatic as an example for God’s salvation in other settings, as Towner does.4 While I think this is true in terms of exemplary reading and preaching, as to aspects of the exodus (e.g. 1. Passover foreshadows the Lord’s Supper; 2. We take the Lord’s Supper to this day), it potentially conflates the indicative with the imperative, or commits any number of part-to-whole (or whole-to-part) fallacies to simply call this paradigmatic in a blanket fashion. As long as we are clear how Jude is doing this, then we are in a better place to make such applications to our own present. A good rule of thumb in exemplary or allegorical readings is this: When doing what the Apostles did, do it how the Apostles did.

We can summarize Jude’s use of this first example in a way that links it within a string of the others to follow. Angels fell from heaven (v. 6) and pagans even from earth (v. 7). That the higher group is known as demons and the lower known as sexual deviants only accentuates the point that those who fall out of God’s house are, in this sense, no more immune from apostasy than those beings who stand at each concentric circle outward, whether on earth or in heaven. It is not only the ringleaders of the several rebellions against God, or against Moses, who were punished. The generation as a whole was said to be “overthrown in the wilderness” (1 Cor. 10:5). This explains the double-edged use of this word to the mixed body Jude addresses. The same warning can blind the reprobate with its light in the very form of those ancient rebellions which they presently carry out, and yet also shock the elect into an alertness and even repentance where that is necessary. 

Objection 1. “But how could any who are elect fall? And if they cannot, in what sense is the warning genuine? It seems that there is nothing substantial to which the warning can refer.

Reply to Obj. 1. On the contrary, true believers may relapse for a time and be brought back by God, as Peter denied the Lord yet was restored. So that “the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Pet. 2:24) who first “returns” us also says, “I should lose nothing of all that he has given me” (Jn. 6:39) and “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (Jn. 10:29). Moreover, there is a corporate apostasy, such as is represented by the removal of Christ’s lampstand from the churches addressed in Revelation 2-3. A true Christian ought also to be on guard against this, as even a true believer can waste years where his soul could be fed instead sitting under the ministry of those who Ezekiel 34 says feed their own flesh on the souls of God’s flock. Therefore the coherence of warnings against these two things is established. 

One last thing should be said about this first example, which will properly orient readers today to all of the examples used. When Jude says Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it (5a), he is not simply reuniting the Jews with their own past. He is challenging all Christian readers thereafter to remain connected to the salvation history that anyone who is a true believer simply is a part of, whether we remember it or not. Our trouble is precisely our forgetfulness.

More than that, those in our day who would “unhinge” the modern Christian life from that ancient people and “their book”—these have crept in to inject their historical chauvinism into the body of Christ. Among our criteria for being able to tell when a thing is true, or whether there is a clear and present danger to avoid, do we tend to include consulting the lessons of the past? Do we especially search out that wisdom from above that comes in the form of the specially revealed past? If not, then we have forgotten. We are thinking only in the present-tense, like the animals or even the vapors that Jude will compare the false teachers to.

________________

1. Dordrecht Bible Commentary, 354.

2. Philip W. Comfort, New Testament Text and Translation Commentary (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2008), 802.

3. Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology, Volume I: The Triune God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 42-45, 63.

4. Towner, 2 Peter and Jude, 185.