19 cause divisions. Division in the church was an inevitable result of the false teachers’ arrogance (v. 16) and their claim, against the church leadership and ordinary Christians, to possess the Spirit. The false teachers may have been classifying people as the later Gnostics did into the “spiritual” (themselves) and the “natural” (ordinary Christians).

worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. Against his opponents’ claims, Jude argues that the false teachers themselves are the ones who live entirely at the level of natural, earthly life (v. 10).