Oecumenius, on Jude 1:3

“Dearly beloved, taking all care to write unto you concerning your common salvation, I was under a necessity to write unto you: to beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.”

“My dearest, I have had such a strong desire to write to you about our common salvation that I could not cease from writing to you: urging you to contend again for the faith once delivered to the saints. For certain ungodly men have secretly entered in, who were long ago marked out for this condemnation: who turn the grace of our God into vileness and deny the only Master God and our Lord Jesus Christ. Through this, the argument of the epistle is hinted at, which, for the providence of their salvation, is now presented to prevent them from being ensnared by the most wicked heretics due to simplicity: it renders their speeches as if marking and making them obvious to the ignorant through the exposure of their lustful lives. Peter also spoke about these matters, but here it is stated more openly and extensively. Jude describes them as abandoned: because both Peter and Paul spoke of those who will be such seducers in the last times. And before these, Christ himself said: "Many will come in my name and will deceive many: therefore do not follow them." (Matt. 24:5) For claiming to be Christians, they deceive many in this name. He mentions Nicholas, Valentinus, and Simon, and those who followed them, the most wicked and impure. For being gluttons and lustful, they pretended to teach, so that under this pretext they might gain a hidden entrance into homes and lead captive women burdened with sins. (2 Tim. 3:6) For they have given themselves over to nighttime mysteries in their beds and lasciviousness (Rom. 13:13). What he says, "They turn to lasciviousness," means that they corrupt themselves, twisting away from abstinence to lasciviousness; therefore they even deny our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, how do they not deny Him, who, through the impurity of life, reject the Teacher of all temperance with a vulgar and loud voice? For what unity is there between light and darkness? (2 Cor. 6:14) "urging you to contend again." Jude urges those who have once received Christ the Savior and believed in Him, to continue striving or to endeavor, that is, not to be affected with a disheartened mind, but to contain themselves and embrace even greater zeal regarding this. For we have received the incarnate Word; if we were to say that there is another who was with the Father before the ages, and another who was born in His own hypostasis (ὑπόστασιν) from the Mother in the last times, would we not deny that there is one Lord and Master? For there is one Lord Jesus according to a certain privilege of union. For the Word and God before the ages, having assumed flesh for the glory of divinity, which He received from the divine Virgin from the moment of conception, is one and the same Lord of all. "turn the grace:" that is, they transform, corrupt.”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.