Albert Barnes Commentary Jude 1:15

"to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which they have ungodly wrought, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him." — Jude 1:15 (ASV)

To execute judgment upon all. That is, He will come to judge all the inhabitants of the earth, good and bad.

And to convince all. The word convince we now commonly use in a somewhat limited sense, meaning to satisfy a person's own mind either of the truth of some proposition or of the fact that they have done wrong; in this latter sense, it is synonymous with the word convict. This conviction is commonly produced by argument or truth and is not necessarily followed by any sentence of disapproval or by any judicial condemnation.

But this is clearly not the sense in which the word is used here. The purpose of the Lord's coming will not be to convince people in that sense—though it is undoubtedly true that the wicked will see that their lives have been wrong—but it will be to pronounce a sentence on them as the result of the evidence of their guilt. The Greek word used here occurs nowhere else in the New Testament.

All that are ungodly among them. All who are not pious; all who have no religion.

Of all their ungodly deeds, etc. This refers to their wicked actions and words. It is the common doctrine of the Bible that all the wicked actions and words of people will be called into judgment. In regard to this passage, thus quoted from an ancient prophecy, we may remark the following:

1. The style bears the marks of being a quotation, or of being preserved by Jude in the language in which it had been handed down by tradition. It is not the style of Jude; it is not so terse, pointed, or energetic.

2. It has every probable mark of having been actually delivered by Enoch. The age in which he lived was corrupt; the world was ripening for the deluge. He was himself a good man and, as it would seem, perhaps, almost the only good man of his generation. Nothing would be more natural than for him to be reproached with hard words and speeches, and nothing more natural than for him to have pointed the people of his own age to the future judgment.

3. The doctrine of the final judgment, if this was uttered by Enoch, was an early doctrine in the world. It was held even in the first generations of the human race. It was one of those great truths early communicated to humankind to restrain them from sin and to lead them to prepare for the great events that are to occur on the earth. The same doctrine has been transmitted from age to age and is now one of the most important and most affecting that refers to the final destiny of people.