Contend for the Faith

"Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." (Jude 3-4)

The book of Jude has been one of great encouragement and yet strict warning for me. As I have studied the book and gained more and more insight into its meaning and importance, I have found myself plumbing the depths of weighty matters.

Jude is a concise book written to warn and call those in the faith to contend for that very faith, although originally intended to encourage about our common salvation, We are challenged to be alert, to be quick to recognize, and to discern frightening realities within our own churches as the audience of Jude's letter was too. Apostasy was very real, and easily overlooked. It had become a 'Truth War', as John MacArthur likes to refer to it. There has been in infiltration in the church of people who turn the grace of God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. And although apostasy was nothing new, Jesus himself discussed it in the Gospels with the parable of the seeds, it was a burden on the heart of Jude, and a threat to all believers.

In order to really understand what Jude is getting at, one must understand what he means when he speaks of apostasy. Apostates were not those people who had never heard the truth and lived their day to day life in sin. John MacArthur explains it well, "When you talk specifically about an apostate, you're talking about someone who has received the light but not the life, the seed but not the fruit, the perhaps the written Word but not the living Word. It is a willful and deliberate rejection of the truth after the truth has been heard." What is frightening about these people is that they get into Christianity, they get into the church, and they hide themselves, often unnoticed. Apostle Paul tells the people in Acts 20:28, "Be on guard for yourselves and all the flock." You've got to be on guard. Why? "Because after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock." And here's the danger. "From among your own selves men will arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them and therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I didn't cease to admonish each one with tears."

But how do they defend themselves from this dangerous enemy? How do we? Well he says, "I commend you to God and the Word of His grace which is able to build you up." The only way one is going to be able to discern an apostate is if they are in the Word, and know it. "Apostates go away from the truth, they don't necessarily go away from the church. Apostasy has plagued the church not only in individual situations, but in massive ways. Roman Catholicism is an apostate form of Christianity. Liberalism is an apostate form of Christianity. Neo-orthodoxy is an apostate form of Christianity. And every cult and ism and chism that's come along in the name of Christianity that deviates from the true gospel is an apostate form. Every preacher who doesn't preach the truth is an apostate preacher."

Jude loved the people whom he wrote to, calling them beloved, and because he loved them so, he was willing to tell them the truth. A much needed warning, a great exhortation, and a compelling for each one and us today. So, because of the danger of apostasy, Jude says, "I have to write...I have to write." The question is will we obey? Will we take heed? Will we do the hardwork of diligently studying the Word of God and become experts in the truth so we might contend for our faith!