Jude 1:13

raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

The apostle now applies the lesson of the examples quoted by him to the false teachers: Now, in spite of all, these visionaries also defile the flesh, repudiate lordship, blaspheme the dignities. The false teachers might and should have known these warning examples; but they calmly disregard them, and follow similar courses. They are dreamers, visionaries, whose own imagination deceives them; in their delusion and blindness they take the unreal for the real. They become guilty of the most outrageous crimes of sensuality, not only in thoughts and desires, but also in deeds. At the same time they repudiate, reject, the heavenly lordship; they refuse to accept and bow down under the rule of God; and they blaspheme the dignities, the angelic orders, and everything that has majesty and glory before God.

This insolence is all the greater since, as the apostle writes: But Michael, the archangel, when, disputing with the devil, he debated concerning the body of Moses, did not dare to bring upon him a condemnation for his blasphemy, but said. The Lord rebuke thee! An angel of the very highest order, Michael, had been commissioned by God to bury Moses, Deuteronomy 34:5, and was challenged by the prince of the evil angels who wanted the body for himself. It was during this debate that Michael, although fully in the right, yet abstained from pronouncing the sentence of condemnation upon the powerful fallen angel. Instead of that he placed vengeance and punishment into the hands of God by calling out over Satan that the Lord should rebuke him.

The insolence of the false teachers, by contrast, has no bounds: But these men, on the one hand, scoff at what they do not know, and, on the other hand, what they do understand by instinct, like the irrational beasts, in these things they are ruined. That is a characteristic attitude of the false teachers. The truth they do not understand, their carnal mind is blind to all true wisdom; and therefore they scoff and jeer at it, Colossians 2:18. On the other hand, they do understand some things by nature, by instinct, just like irrational beasts, like animals, namely, the things pertaining to their fleshly lusts. But their understanding, instead of teaching them the proper care of themselves, is forgotten in their senseless lust, and they ruin themselves, body and soul, 2 Peter 2:12.

The apostle now pictures the fate of the false teachers: Woe to them! For the road of Cain they walked, and in the error of Balaam they rushed headlong for reward, and in the rebellion of Korah they perished. The apostle describes the punishment as having already taken place, so certain it is, so surely the woes will come upon these deceivers. Just as the entire conduct of Cain, even to the murder of his brother Abel, grew out of a cursed selfishness; just as Balaam permitted himself to be blinded against better knowledge by the bribe of Balak, king of the Moabites, Numbers 25:1; Numbers 31:16, for the sake of filthy lucre; just as Korah rebelled against the Lord in refusing obedience to the Lord's representative: so these false teachers of whom Jude here speaks are guilty of the same transgressions, selfishness, avarice, disobedience. Note the climax in the arrangement of the examples.

The apostle's righteous indignation now breaks forth in his description of the false teachers: These are hidden rocks in your love-feasts, carousing together without fear, feeding themselves, clouds without water driven along by winds, autumnal trees, unfruitful, twice dead, uprooted; wild billows of the sea spewing up their own disgraces, wandering stars for whom the gloom of darkness is reserved eternally. Just as the hidden or sunken rocks endanger every boat that comes into their neighborhood, so these deceivers are a constant menace to the believers because they skillfully hide their true nature. They attend the love-feasts of the Christians, such as they celebrated in connection with the Holy Communion, not, however, in the spirit of Christian fellowship, but for the purpose of carousing, without the slightest regard for the reverence which propriety demands, of gorging as true servants of their own bodies. They are like fog-clouds that are driven in from the ocean, but never yield one drop of fructifying moisture. They are like trees in the late autumn, devoid of foliage and fruit and thus doubly dead, uprooted at that. They are like the waves and billows of the great sea, whose very foam brings out the impurities that are carried along by the ocean currents. They are like shooting stars, which rush from their sphere into darkness, never to be seen again. All these comparisons, jumbled as they purposely are, apply to the false teachers. They came into the assemblies of the Christians and were unduly prominent in everything they did. They presumed to be pastors, but they lived off the people whom they swindled, and waxed fat off the spoils, Ezekiel 34:8. In great, swelling words of vanity they promised new wisdom; however, they produced nothing but the old foolishness, Colossians 2:8; 1 Timothy 4:7; 2 Timothy 2:16. They professed to lead the real Christian life, but they showed nothing but hypocrisy. They were altogether carnal, without one spark of true, spiritual life. Their end would therefore be everlasting disgrace in the darkness of hell. The same description applies to false teachers in our days and to the end of time.