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Jude 1:3-4

Well, let me invite you to take your copy of God’s Word and turn with me to the little letter of Jude. If you weren’t here last week, you can find that little 25-verse letter immediately before the book of Revelation. I’m sure you know where to find Revelation, and Jude is immediately before that. Let me offer a brief recap from last Sunday as you’re finding your place.

We were introduced to Jude, the half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ and brother of James, the church leader in Jerusalem. We noticed that Jude doesn’t capitalize on his family relationship with Jesus when introducing himself but uses language to identify himself as a servant of the Lord Jesus. And that gives us an insight into the kind of person he is. He’s humble. He’s a servant. He’s not out for himself – to gain notoriety or popularity.

Next, we were introduced to the readers, to the audience, to the recipients of this little letter. And although we aren’t told specifically where these folks are – for example, the letter isn’t written to a specific city like Ephesus or Philippi or Corinth – Jude did see fit to give us a description of the kind of people he was speaking to. They’re “called,” “beloved in God,” and “kept for Jesus Christ.” And if that describes you, then Jude is writing to you as well. So, this is a general epistle. It’s a general letter, written to a general audience of believers who are likely scattered throughout a broad region. Where? We’re not exactly sure, but that’s the audience.

Finally, we considered Jude’s opening prayer, where he prayed for “mercy, peace, and love to be multiplied” among them. Who doesn’t want that, right? As we say in the “pastor world,” that message will preach. Those aren’t just words on a page. That’s powerful. That’s meaningful. To be reminded of God’s mercy, peace, and love when you’ve been separated from your family and community due to growing persecution is tremendously refreshing. To be reminded of God’s mercy, peace, and love when you find yourself in uncharted territory – the loss of a loved one, the dissolution of a marriage, the unemployment line, the doctor’s office, the discouraged, the hurting, the lonely, the lost – a prayer for mercy, peace, and love are life-giving in those situations. Jude wants his readers (and you and me) to know that’s his prayer, that’s his heart, as he’s writing. And that’s important, because we’re going to notice a shift today.

Well, that was last week’s introduction to the author, the audience, and the prayer. Let’s read verses 3-4:

3 Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. 4 For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

And, if I may, let me also read it to you from Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase, The Message:

3 Dear friends, I’ve dropped everything to write you about this life of salvation that we have in common. I have to write insisting – begging, in fact! – that you fight with everything you have in you for this faith entrusted to us as a gift to guard and cherish. 4 What has happened is that some people have infiltrated our ranks (our Scriptures warned us this would happen), who beneath their pious skin are shameless scoundrels. Their design is to replace the sheer grace of our God with sheer license – which means doing away with Jesus Christ, our one and only Master.”

“Father, as we turn now to the Bible, may the Spirit of God quicken our minds, stir our hearts, direct our wills, turn us afresh to Christ and to all that He has accomplished once for all. For we offer this prayer in the name of Jesus. Amen.”

One of the privileges and challenges of pastoral ministry is the opportunity to spend time in hospitals. Outside of those who are doctors and nurses, I think pastors and clergy spend more time in hospitals than anyone else. And no matter how many times I visit a hospital, I’m always alarmed by hearing “Code blue.” (Most hospitals rely on a standardized coding system that alerts the staff to specific emergencies.) A “code blue” usually comes with a warning sound, and then a voice that identifies the location and room number requiring an urgent response – a response to be made in hopes that the patient will survive.

And the more I read Jude this week, the more I said to myself, “You know, this transition here from verses 1-2 to 3-4, is in some ways a spiritual code blue.” It’s as if Jude said to himself, “You know, I was intending to write to you in a more leisurely fashion about all that is ours by way of common salvation, but I’ve dropped everything, because what I want to say to you is a matter of urgent necessity.” (That’s why I read Eugene Peterson’s Message paraphrase, because that’s the language he used, “I’ve dropped everything…”). Jude is sounding a wakeup call to the church, to people who have, half-asleep, allowed people to creep in unnoticed into their congregation; not just “certain people” but “ungodly people” who, Jude says, have an evil agenda.

Last week, you might recall, I told you that the entire letter of Jude could be summarized with one word. Do you remember the word? (Contend.) The main point of the book of Jude is found in verse 3. And so, I want to make it the main point of today’s message, namely, it’s the duty of every genuine believer to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

Former pastor and theologian, John Piper, put it this way. He writes, “Just because the brilliant Commander in Chief promises victory on the beaches doesn’t mean the troops can throw their weapons overboard. The promise of victory assumes valor in battle. When God promises that His church will be kept from defeat, His purpose is not that we lay down our sword and go to lunch, but that we pick up the sword of the Spirit and look confidently to God for the strength to fight and win. Wherever the promised security of God is used to justify going AWOL, we may suspect there is a traitor in the ranks.”

This morning, I’m going off script a little bit and offering you four points (instead of three) as we try to unpack verses 3-4, and the first is:

There Is A Faith Once for All Delivered to the Saints

Often times, we use the word faith as a verb. When Jesus curses the fig tree in Matthew 21 he says, “And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” And Paul writes, in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” In that sense, faith is a feeling of trust in God, trusting in the completed work of Christ Jesus. We say things like, “Just place your faith and trust in Jesus.” But other times, like here, faith is used for the truths we believe about the One we trust. In other words, sometimes faith is used as a noun. That’s why we read the Nicene Creed this morning. That’s not something we normally do, but it’s a good general summary of our common salvation as Christians. It outlines “the faith” that Christians claim to have in common. But there’s a balance here, right?

One of the problems with reciting the Creed, as helpful and accurate and meaningful as it may be, is that no one is saved by believing a set of ideas. Remember, the devil believes most of the truths of Christianity too. James 2:19 says, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe – and shudder!” So, we need to stress that unless a person has a living trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord, all the orthodoxy in the world will not get them into heaven.

On the other hand, if our stress on the personal relationship with Jesus leads us to deny that there is a set of truths essential to Christianity, then we make a grave mistake. There are truths about God and Christ and man and the church and the world which are essential to the life of Christianity. That’s why most churches, including ours, include a “What We Believe” section that outlines those issues of utmost importance. If those things are lost or distorted, then the result will not be merely wrong ideas but misplaced trust. When doctrine goes bad, so do hearts. There is a body of doctrine which must be preserved.

“What is that body of doctrine?” you ask. Well, most fundamentally, it’s the gospel. It’s the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s the fact that Jesus came to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins, and that by believing in the person and work of Jesus and placing trust in Christ’s work on Calvary, our sin has been covered by the blood of Jesus and we have been made right with God. Ultimately, that’s “the faith,” but it’s more than just the gospel. Matthew 28:19-20 gives us what we call the Great Commission and it reads, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, [listen] teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” In Acts 2 we read, “And [the believers] devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

So, “the faith” is more than the gospel, but it’s certainly nothing less than the gospel. And the faith – according to verse 3 – was “delivered to the saints.” You might recall Paul’s testimony to the churches in Galatia, he writes, “For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:11-12). Anyone who comes along and claims to have a new word from God to add to the faith once for all delivered to the saints is against Scripture. There is an apostolic faith. There is a body of doctrine that hangs together and is called the faith. We should not add to it or take from it. It’s a faith that’s not manmade, but given directly to the saints from Jesus Himself.

This Faith Is Worth Contending For

I want to illustrate again the importance of using Spirit-guided discernment, because there’s another tension here. While we have a faith that’s worth contending for, we need to remember that not everything about “the faith” is worthy of the same level of contention. Does that make sense? It’s like gathering all of the Norris Family for a holiday and saying, “The Norris Family is worth fighting for.” What I mean is that what we have and what we represent as a family unit is worth the struggle. What I’m not saying is that every single member of the Norris Family be the exact same in every detail.

Let me show you what I mean in the Bible. In Romans 14, we read, “One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. [O]ne person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God” (Romans 14:2-3, 5-6). So, the Bible speaks about issues that ought not cause division. In other words, there are some things about “the faith” that should be left for individual choice and application. But make no mistake about it, there is truth worth contending for. There is a body of truth worth dying for.

The faith we cherish today was preserved for us with the blood of hundreds of martyrs, beginning with Stephen in Acts 7 and continuing with Peter, Paul, and the other disciples. You can study church history and discover that literally hundreds of Protestant reformers were burned at the stake – men like John Rogers, John Hooper, Rowland Taylor, Robert Ferrar, John Bradford, Nicholas Ridley, Hugh Latimer, and Thomas Cranmer. Why? Because they stood by a truth – the truth that the real presence of Jesus’ body is not in the Eucharist but in heaven at the Father’s right hand. For that truth they endured the excruciating pain of being burned alive.

The blood of the martyrs is a powerful testimony that the faith once for all delivered to the saints is worth contending for. And when “the faith” is at stake, our salvation is also at stake. That’s what verse 3 says. If the truth is lost, salvation is lost. The apostles and reformers were willing to die for the sake of the faith because they cared about whether the message of salvation would be preserved – they cared about people and about the glory of God. We need to gain a whole new sense of the preciousness of biblical doctrine. We need to know, as a church, the depth and beauty and value of doctrinal truth.

The Faith Is Continually Threatened from Within the Church

As much as I’d like to say that our primary threat is the world or politics and government or education or culture or whatever, the fact of the matter is that the worst enemies of Christian doctrine are professing Christians who don’t hold to the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

In his last message to the pastors of the church of Ephesus, in Acts 20, Paul warned that after his departure “fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29-30). The wolves are professing Christians. They’re pastors and church leaders and seminary teachers and missionaries.

Schools like Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Yale once began, at the very core, with the training of ministers for the gospel, for the one gospel, “the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” That’s where they began. Today, without being unkind in any way, they’re so far removed from their roots in historic orthodoxy that you would never know their true history. And how does it happen? Someone, generally on the inside says, “We don’t have to be so bold. We don’t have to be so firm. We believe in the resurrection, but we don’t need everybody to believe in the resurrection. We believe in the purity of the Scriptures, but people have various ideas of the Scriptures.” And so, it goes on. And any part of the overarching truth of the gospel that is embarrassing in a culture will – unless people are absolutely convinced and prepared to contend – gradually slip away.

It’s happening even at this moment in every Christian denomination, in some form or another, over the issue of gender and sexuality. The faith that was once for all delivered to the saints is being tested, is under attack, is being suppressed – not primarily by those outside the church but by those clergy and churchmen and members on the inside. And that’s the way it’s been ever since the first century. Paul said it would happen. Jude saw it happening. He saw it as a fulfillment of the apostles’ predictions. If you still have your Bibles open, look at verses 17-19: “But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, ‘In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.’ It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit.”

As many tears as it may have cost Paul, virtually all of his letters have to do with contentions that he was having with professing Christians. So, it shouldn’t surprise us if today much of our contending for the faith will be with professing Christians who teach and write things which (at least from our perspective) are contrary to the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

The plain New Testament teaching is that the faith will be repeatedly threatened from within. Which leads finally to our last point.

Every Genuine Believer Should Contend for the Faith

Remember who Jude’s audience is. It’s not (primarily) pastors but “those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ” (Jude 1:1). The duty to contend for the faith is not just the duty of the ordained ministers of the Word, though they do have a special responsibility. It’s the duty of every genuine believer.

Verses 20-21 tell some of the things we should do to prepare ourselves to contend for the faith. “But you, beloved, build yourselves up on your most holy faith; pray in the Holy Spirit; keep, yourselves in the love of God, wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.” The best thing we can do to become a church that is effective in contending for the faith is to become a church well built on the faith. Study! Meditate! Build! Grow! There’s so much wonderful truth about God to learn. And the best defense of the faith is to know it and love it.

Prayer is an indispensable part of contending for the faith. “Pray in the Holy Spirit.” Unless we seek the mind of the Holy Spirit in prayer, we will not grow in our grasp of the faith and we will be weak contenders.

And verses 22-23 tell some of the ways to contend for the faith. “And convince some, who doubt; save some, by snatching them out of the fire; on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.”

At least two things are evident here. One is that contending sometimes involves an intellectual effort to change the way a person thinks: “Convince some, who doubt.” The other is that contending sometimes involves moral reclamation: go after them into the mess where their perverse ideas have taken them, and snatch them back to safety even while you hate what they are doing.

In reality these things always go together: an effort to change the mind and an effort to change the morals. Contending for the faith is never merely an academic exercise. It’s never merely mental. Because the source of all false doctrine is the pride of the man’s heart not the weakness of his mind.

This is why Jude tells us to grow and pray and stay in the love of God and depend on His mercy before he says anything about how we should contend for the faith. The best argument for the faith is when the saints live it. May we live the faith once for all delivered to the saints. May we contend for the faith. May we grow in our knowledge and love of the faith. And if you’ve never experienced the faith once for all delivered to the saints, recognize your state as a sinner in need of God’s grace, repent of your sin and freely receive His grace and forgiveness in Jesus Christ.

“Father, thank You for Your Word. Help us not to make application of this that takes us beyond the boundaries of our own lives. We are susceptible to denying You as our Master. We routinely seem to find it intriguing that we might be able to just minimize some of Your straightforward demands in order that we might be able to justify our experience. Lord, grant that in tackling these issues, or being tackled by these issues, that we may have the gentleness and meekness of Christ and yet the boldness of those who took their stand in their day. For we pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”