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
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Tim Maas
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).
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