You're called to contend for the faith, patiently yet aggressively.
Jude (NIV)
3 Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. 4 For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
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20 But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
22 Be merciful to those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.
Listen to passage & devotional:
Belgic Confession of Faith, Article 29: The Marks of the True Church
The true church can be recognized
if it has the following marks:
The church engages in the pure preaching
of the gospel;
it makes use of the pure administration of the sacraments
as Christ instituted them;
it practices church discipline
for correcting faults.
As for the false church,
it assigns more authority to itself and its ordinances
than to the Word of God;
it does not want to subject itself
to the yoke of Christ;
it does not administer the sacraments
as Christ commanded in his Word;
it rather adds to them or subtracts from them
as it pleases;
it bases itself on men,
more than on Jesus Christ;
it persecutes those
who live holy lives according to the Word of God
and who rebuke it for its faults, greed, and idolatry.
These two churches
are easy to recognize
and thus to distinguish
from each other.
Summary
Jude, who is a younger half brother of Jesus, opens his letter stating that this isn't the letter he had planned on writing to celebrate the salvation that Christians share. Instead, his letter urges readers to contend for the faith (literally: 'to exert intense effort on behalf of something' (v3).
The young Christians and churches Jude wrote to were already under attack from ungodly people who had secretly slipped in among them. They were perverting the grace of our God into a license for immorality. Jude doesn't provide the details as to exactly how they were doing this, but since we also live in a day and age in which this happens all around us, it's not hard to imagine.
Jude frames it in a way that demonstrates these people's regression. They first pervert God's grace, not by necessarily taking away from it, but rather by attempting to add so much to it by falsely inflating God's love and grace to cover all sorts of unrepentant ungodly behavior.
In making nearly every obscene behavior good and acceptable, they end up eliminating any sort of need for repentance. Ultimately, a person who has nothing to repent of has no need for a Savior, and ends up denying Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
Dig Deeper
Thankfully Jude gives us instruction as to how to defend ourselves and the Church from these insidious attacks. It begins, Jude writes, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith. He uses a word that emphasizes building a strong roof over a house. You do this by doing exactly what you're doing right now: learning from scripture.
Secondly, Jude instructs you to pray in the Spirit. Certainly you can and must do this on your own, but both prayer and Bible study must also be done corporately alongside the saints God has place you with in your local congregation.
Jude writes that when you build yourself up in your faith and pray in the Spirit, you keep yourself in God's love. This seems like an odd way to phrase things, because so much of the New Testament reminds us of how you're preserved in God's sovereign hands by His might, not yours. But Jude doesn't mean that your salvation is completely dependent upon your effort and strength, he simply means that you can and must actively fend off temptations that pull you away from fully enjoying God's love.
Finally, Jude slows you down a bit as you contend for the faith. You're at war, but it's not a scorched earth battle in which you aggressively blow away any 'enemy' that at the moment is wandering from the truth. Twice Jude implores you to show mercy to those who are doubting or mistaken. But mix your mercy with fear, by using your 'sanctified common sense' to know when to exercise patience and when to snatch them from the fire.
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who entrusted faith once for all to His saints;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that you will be equipped to both patiently and aggressively contend for the faith you've been entrusted with;
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
Read the New Testament in a year! Today: 1 John 5
