The Sin of Angels and the Sin of Sodom: Why Jude’s Triad Should Not Be Collapsed
Readers often assume that Jude links the sin of fallen angels with the sexual immorality of Sodom and Gomorrah. The claim usually rests on Jude 6–7, where the two examples appear side by side. But a closer reading, along with the parallel passage in 2 Peter 2, shows that Jude is not equating their sins. Instead, he is building a structured triad of distinct historical judgments to warn the church about false teachers.
The Structure Jude Uses
Jude uses three examples, each representing a different domain of created beings:
Israel in the wilderness
Saved out of Egypt, yet judged for unbelief.Angels who abandoned their proper domain
Heavenly beings who rejected the authority and role God assigned to them.Sodom and Gomorrah
Human societies judged for sexual immorality and pursuing what Jude calls “unnatural desire.”
These form a deliberate triad. Each example is different in nature, but all share the same outcome: judgment for persistent rebellion.
The logic is simple. Unbelief is judged. Vocational rebellion is judged. Sexual immorality is judged. Jude is not describing the same sin in three forms; he is surveying three kinds of agents who violated God’s ordered design in three different ways.
The Angelic Sin Is Not Sexual
Jude 6 emphasizes two ideas:
“did not stay within their own position of authority” and
“left their proper dwelling.”
This is about angels rejecting the boundaries of their assignment and vocation. Jude never says anything about sexual misconduct. In fact, he never implies angels took human partners or committed embodied sin. His focus is authority and domain, not desire.
The Sodom Sin Is Explicitly Sexual
By contrast, Jude is very clear about Sodom:
They “indulged in sexual immorality” and “pursued unnatural desire.”
The text identifies sexual sin directly and exclusively with Sodom and Gomorrah, not with angels. Collapsing the two categories blurs Jude’s distinctions and disrupts the logic of his triad.
The Parallel Passage Confirms This
Second Peter 2.4–10 uses the same triadic pattern:
Angels who sinned
The ancient world under Noah
Sodom and Gomorrah
Peter never describes the angels’ sin as sexual. He only says they “sinned” and were cast down. Then, like Jude, he uses Sodom separately to illustrate sexual immorality. This clarifies that even the earliest Christian writers saw these as distinct examples, not overlapping ones.
Why the Distinction Matters
Jude’s argument gains its force from contrast, not uniformity. He is showing:
unbelief within God’s covenant people
rebellion among heavenly beings
moral collapse among human societies
Different realms, different sins, same principle: God judges willful rejection of His order.
Equating the sins of angels with the sins of Sodom undermines the structure Jude intentionally built and obscures his warning to the church.
The Bottom Line
Jude is not teaching that angels committed sexual immorality.
He is teaching that no realm of creation is exempt from accountability.
Israel, angels, and Sodom each rebelled in their own way and serve as reminders that rejecting God’s order - whether through unbelief, abandonment of role, or sexual distortion - leads to judgment.
This reading honors the text, respects its structure, and aligns with the broader witness of Scripture.
Soli Deo Gloria