Who was Jude in the Bible?

The author calls himself "Judas, a servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James." Jude describes himself as a bondslave of Christ… If, as is commonly deduced from the biblical evidence, he is a half-brother of the Lord, he takes no advantage of this relationship when addressing his readers. The reference to the apostles seems to imply that the writer was not one of them, though modesty could have led him to write as he did.

The writer's name, essentially the same as Judah, or Judas, means praise. There is nothing worthy of praise found among men, yet this writer concludes, as we shall see, with a triumphant doxology of praise.

One of the apostles, brother of James. Luke 6:16; John 14:22; Acts 1:13. Called JUDE in Jude 1; and apparently the same as "Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus." Matt. 10:3; Mark 3:18.

Of the last of these, only one saying is preserved, his memorable question to our Lord about how He would manifest Himself to His disciples and not to the world (John 14:22), and it is he who has given us by the Holy Spirit that short but remarkable letter known as the Epistle of Jude.

There is only one Jude in the New Testament matching this description, one of the brothers of the Lord Jesus. The brothers of the Lord are mentioned by name in Matthew 13:55 and Mark 6:3: James, Joseph or Joses, Simon and Judas… At first the brothers (and relatives) of the Lord did not believe in Him (John 7:5; Mark 3:21). But after His ascension we do find them with the other disciples in Jerusalem (Acts 1:14).

Had there been any self-seeking he would have been the one to say, "I am the Lord's brother! You must not forget I am the Lord's brother." But that would have been anything but of the Spirit of God, because when he was the Lord's brother, he was an unbeliever… He, therefore, with beautiful grace, never brings up what was his shame — that he was the Lord's brother after the flesh… Here then Jude was glad to say, not that he was the Lord's brother, though he was, but "a servant of Jesus Christ."

But in genuine modesty these two men do not refer to themselves as the Lord's brother but as "servant" or "slave" only. The less known Jude however mentions the fact that he was a brother of the more well-known James. As we learn from 1 Corinthians 9:5, both were known to the apostles as servants of the Word.

As one taught of God, able to judge things as they are rather than as they may appear to ordinary observers, he would have written about the common salvation, but saw it was necessary to write to them, and to urge them to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. The evils that will end in the open apostasy of Christendom, he saw, were already among them, brought in by some who had come in unnoticed and were feasting with the people of God.

Jude does not urge us to contend against the evil. That cannot be stopped. He tells us to contend earnestly for the positive faith in its original perfection. Many are wasting their time and energy in vainly fighting the evil instead of fighting the fight of the faith.