What Jude 20 Really Means
There are multiple possible interpretations of Jude verse 20.
Jude 20:
But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,
But which, if any of them, can we support if we study out this verse? We need to answer three key questions.
1. What is praying in the Holy Spirit?
A. Praying in other tongues.
B. Praying under the influence of the Holy Spirit, not in tongues.
C. It can include both (A) and (B) above.
2. Does “praying in the Holy Spirit” CAUSE you to be built up on your most holy faith?
A. No, there are two distinct commands, one to build yourselves up on your most holy faith and one to pray in the Holy Spirit. The second does not cause the first.
B. Yes, praying in tongues charges up your spirit as you would recharge a rechargeable battery.
C. Yes, praying in the Holy Spirit builds you up on your most holy faith because it takes faith to pray in other tongues and/or let the Holy Spirit lead your prayers. But it is your inner man (soul) that is built up, not your spirit.
3. What does “building up yourselves on your most holy faith” mean?
A. Each individual should build on the foundation of his faith.
B. Each individual should do what he must to build his faith.
C. People should build up each other on their most holy faith.
D. Each individual should build himself up on the doctrines known as his most holy faith.
Most denominational people are sure that (1)(B) and (2)(A) are correct and could split on the answer to (3). Many modern charismatics are sure that (1)(A), (2)(B) and (3)(A) are correct. We need to find out who’s right so that we can apply this verse properly to our own lives and preach it properly. As always, that means doing our own studying rather than blindly accepting our favorite preacher’s word for it, no matter how popular his interpretation has become.
Question 1
So let’s start with praying in the Holy Spirit (Question 1). Jude 20 is one of only four verses in the KJV that contains the phrase “in the Holy Ghost.” Here are the other three:
Romans 9:1:
I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost,
Romans 14:17:
For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.
1 Thessalonians 1:5:
For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake.
Given that that Paul’s conscience did not bear witness in tongues, Paul did not refer to joy in other tongues, and the gospel Paul preached was not spoken in other tongues, we have no support for “in the Holy Ghost” meaning “in tongues” elsewhere in the Bible.
When Paul meant “in tongues,” he used the phrase “with the spirit” – not even “with the Holy Spirit,” interestingly enough! He was referring to his own spirit praying and singing in tongues as the Holy Spirit gave him utterance:
1 Corinthians 14:15:
What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.
This makes sense, as the Holy Spirit does not speak in tongues; He gives you the utterance so that you speak in tongues.
Certainly, the Holy Spirit can give you tongues as you pray, as evidenced by the verse above. But given the use of “in the Holy Ghost” above, I think we have to select choice C. Praying in the Holy Ghost could include praying with your spirit (in tongues), but we cannot prove that praying in tongues is exclusively what Jude meant in verse 20.
Question 2
So on to question 2. If you have been around “faith circles,” you have probably heard Choice B presented as the sure explanation – you are charging up your spirit the way you would charge a battery when you pray in tongues. But we need to consider in the light of other Scriptures whether your spirit needs to be recharged all the time. This would imply that your spirit leaks or uses up its spiritual charge! We cover the fallacy that the anointing leaks out of you over time in the answer to the question Does the Anointing Leak out of You?, which you may click and read separately. This seems to be a similar issue.
This leakage idea gets more disturbing in the light of the following verse:
1 John 4:17:
Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
So how did Jesus walk on the earth? He was not able to pray in other tongues “to charge up His spirit man!” Was His spirit man weak and in need of frequent recharges? There is no evidence for that. And as He is, so are you.
It gets worse! We’ve already determined that “praying in the Holy Ghost” is not necessarily speaking in tongues anyway. Does praying in your native language recharge your spirit like a battery? We don’t see any other Bible verse that supports that idea.
Based on this evidence, we have to reject the “faith circles” explanation that praying on tongues charges up your spirit like a battery. (If you’re a “faith person,” I hope my assault on your battery theory doesn’t offend you.)
This leaves us with the question of whether the two phrases are connected so that the second causes the first, or whether these are two separate commands. This will let us determine whether A or C is correct.
The first “brute force” method is to look at a large number of translations to see whether any of them say that we should build ourselves up on our most holy faith by praying in the Holy Ghost. Hardly any do. The NET Bible and the Lexham English Bible were the other two I found, and the latter italicizes the word by to indicate that it is not present in the original Greek. No major translation uses the word by, with good reason, given the lack of the word by in the Greek. So we cannot make a dogmatic statement that the Greek text says that you build yourself up by praying in the Holy Spirit.
The next “brute force” method is to see whether any translations put an AND between the two phrases, which would clearly indicate answer (A); or alternatively, word things in such a way to indicate two separate thoughts. Some popular translations do exactly that. The NIV and ESV use the word and explicitly. The RSV and AMP use a verb form that indicates a list, not one thing causing another. And even the most Greek-faithful translations put a comma between the phrases, including the KJV quoted above.
What about the original Greek (which was unpunctuated)? It can be transliterated, “Ye but beloved the most holy on your faith building up yourselves in ghost holy praying.” (You can see why I don’t recommend that a Greek Interlinear Bible be your child’s first Bible.) This actually could give some credence but not absolute proof that the two thoughts are connected.
We should look at the next verse:
Jude 21:
Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
The fact that multiple phrases are together does not prove that one causes the other. One could just as easily assert that you keep yourself in the love of God by praying in the Holy Ghost if we are going to assume that having two phrases together mean that one causes the other.
Thus, I consider (A) the only solidly defensible answer – the idea of praying in the Holy Ghost does not CAUSE you to be built up on your most holy faith, though you should do both.
You could defend (C) (praying in the Holy Ghost builds you up on your most holy faith) by pointing out that verse 21 says “keep yourself in the love of God, not “keeping yourself in the love of God” the way verse 20 says “praying in the Holy Ghost.” So I can’t say that (C) is a definitely wrong answer either; it’s just hard to defend, though I admit that the Greek seems to allow for that possibility.
At least (C) admits correctly that your soul could be energized as opposed to your spirit. Paul prayed for the Ephesians that they would be strengthened with might “in the inner man” by the Spirit (not strengthened with might by praying in tongues). The inner man here must refer to the soul, as we do not see Scripture supporting the idea that your born-again spirit needs to be strengthened with might. You can see that this is a “soul” strengthening and not a “spirit” strengthening by reading the entire passage (Ephesians 3:14-19). Paul prayed that they would be able to comprehend and know things (this seems to refer to the mental realm) and that Christ would dwell in their hearts. He was already in their spirits! So this is talking about a renewing of their souls to reflect that Christ dwelled in them.
Does this mean that praying in the Holy Ghost does not build you up? On the contrary, Scripture says that it DOES, just not in this particular verse.
1 Corinthians 14:4:
He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church.
Even then, there is no indication that you keep getting worn down so that you have to build yourself back up to where you were before you wore down, as the “battery” option suggests.
Before we finish, there is another serious issue with (C). If Jude had only said, “Building yourselves up, praying in the Holy Ghost,” (C) would be more defensible. But Jude qualifies the “building up” as “building yourselves up on your most holy faith.” So you are not just to build yourself up in a general sense; Jude tells you what you’re building on. I won’t say you’re a hopelessly bad Bible scholar if you like answer (C), but it’s hard for me to see how praying in the Holy Spirit would build you up “on your most holy faith,” given that faith for specific things comes by hearing the Word of God (Romans 10:17), definitely not by praying in the Holy Spirit.
One more issue becomes important when look at Question 3. The only other time Jude mentioned “faith," it referred to WHAT we believe, not the ABILITY to believe. I think this stacks things even more firmly in favor of answer (A).
So I think (C) is hard to defend, but (A) is easy to defend, so my choice is definitely (A).
Question 3
We should reject the weakest answer (B) out of hand because Jude did not talk about building your faith; he talked about building yourself up on your faith.
Now we should consider whether the Greek word for yourselves (heautou) means “each other” so that we can make a decision on (C). Unfortunately, that same Greek word is used both in cases where people talked among “themselves” (meaning each other) and where multiple people individually did something “themselves.” (There are far too many cases of both usages to be worth listing here.) So that Greek word won’t settle this question.
The only thing left from the text is the context. So let’s look back at verse 21 again, where it says
“Keep yourselves in the love of God.” This wouldn’t appear to be something you could do for anyone else. I can’t make you walk in the love of God and you can’t make me do it. While verse 21 doesn’t prove anything about verse 20 conclusively, if the two verses are consistent, verse 20 is talking about something you do yourself, not to other people. This makes sense, as it is unclear how I could build on your faith for you.
Thus, choice C does not make sense, leaving A or D. We need to determine whether you must build yourself up on your believing or build yourself up on the principles of Christ.
It seems like a good idea to read the entire book of Jude, which doesn’t take long, to get the broader context. Suddenly, a couple things stand out.
First, the main theme of the book is contending for “the faith” that was once delivered to the saints:
Jude 3:
Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.
Does this mean contending for the ability to believe God? No, that makes no sense. You HAVE faith in the sense of the ability to believe God (Romans 12:3). There is no need to contend for what you already have! Also, Jude cannot be saying that we have to contend for an ability to believe God that was once delivered in the past but somehow is getting corrupted now.
Therefore, when Jude used the phrase “the faith,” it refers to the doctrines we believe. Most of Jude is about defending what we believe from doctrinal error that encourages sin and pollutes the holy message God sent.
In over 20 other cases in the New Testament, “the faith” means what we believe. (See What Galatians 2:20 Really Means for a list.) It would be overkill to list them all in full, but if we just look in the book of Acts, there are several such cases.
Acts 6:7:
And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.
Acts 13:8:
But Elymas the sorcerer (for so is his name by interpretation) withstood them, seeking to turn away the deputy from the faith.
Acts 14:22:
Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.
Acts 16:5:
And so were the churches established in the faith, and increased in number daily.
Acts 24:24:
And after certain days, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, which was a Jewess, he sent for Paul, and heard him concerning the faith in Christ.
So Jude is about contending for what we believe, not contending for the ability to believe.
The second thing we noticed was that the word faith only appears twice in the entire book, in verses 3 and 20! Both instances are in the context of “the faith.” If Jude meant what we believe in verse 3, it is logical that he meant what we believe in verse 20 as well. There is nothing in Jude even loosely related to the ability to believe.
If faith means believing, building yourself “up on” your most holy faith doesn’t even make sense logically or grammatically. But building yourself up on what you believe does make sense. The more we mull this over, the more obvious it becomes.
We’ve finally settled what Jude meant in verse 20!
What Jude 20 Really Means
You should build yourself up on the doctrines we believe – the actual means by which you would do that are not specified in the verse – AND you should also follow the Holy Spirit’s leading when you pray, which could include praying in tongues, though that would not have to be the only way the Holy Spirit leads you in prayer given that He leads you to pray both “with the spirit” and “with the understanding.”
Practical Implications
You realize that your prayer life should be Spirit-led. This is drastically different from mechanical praying for the same things the same way every day or for the same people every day. You can remind yourself that you need to maintain “ears to hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Don’t leave an omniscient Helper out of your prayer life by doing all your praying in your own strength with your limited understanding. Spirit-led praying will include, but not be limited to, praying in tongues.
You realize that you have to build yourself up in the doctrine of Christ, as others cannot do it for you, any more than others could build for you upon the foundation of Christ gold, silver, previous stones, wood, hay or stubble.
1 Corinthians 3:12-15:
Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;
Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.
If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward.
If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.