What are the metaphors for apostasy in Jude 1:12-13, and what do they mean?
Jude 1:12 - 13
ESV - 12 These are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted. 13 Wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.
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Asked July 19 2020
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Jack Gutknecht
Supporter
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Tim Maas
Supporter
The people about whom Jude was speaking in the cited verses regarded the fact that forgiveness was available by God's grace through faith in Christ as granting license to sin, and involving no effort to conform actions to God's moral standards in gratitude to Him. Such people were therefore totally without personal discipline or restraint (particularly in regard to sexual morality). All of the metaphors and imagery employed by Jude vividly express this lack of self-control and its extent -- to the point where such people (contrary to their supposed belief) were actually spiritually dead, expressed by concepts such as complete selfishness (pictured as shepherds feeding only themselves instead of their flock), instability (barren clouds blown by the wind), total darkness, absence of any restraining influences (wild waves and wandering stars) and spiritual unproductivity (fruitless, uprooted trees).
Jack Gutknecht
Supporter
I'll answer only with the one metaphor, "raging waves of the sea." I have been to the ocean several times in my life. Once I won a trip from Arizona where we lived to the west coast Pacific Ocean (California) as a grade school boy selling newspaper subscriptions for my paper route. Another time was when we took a family vacation to California to show our kids the ocean. Our College & Career group from Dallas, Texas, took a trip to Galveston, Texas on the Gulf of Mexcio, and at least 2 of us went sailing but capsized the sailboat! The Gulf is a part of the Atlantic Ocean and is considered an ocean basin and marginal sea. Since that first trip, I had become a Christian and even memorized the book of Jude (only 25 verses). The metaphor “raging (wild) waves of the sea” in Jude 1:13 carries a vivid picture with deep Old Testament and cultural background. Jude uses the Greek ἄγρια κύματα (“wild waves”) to show the very nature of these false teachers: restless, uncontrollable, and destructive. Isaiah 57:20, also another good Bible memory verse, says, “the wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt.” That’s the idea here: their lives are not ordered by God’s Spirit but are turbulent and dangerous. And just like violent surf that throws garbage onto the shore, Jude says they “foam out their own shame.” Their words and actions expose their inner corruption, and instead of bearing fruit, they leave nothing but disgrace behind.
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