Two Sides to Contending for the Faith

Progressive Christianity and its appeal to social justice, as it is currently defined by our most dangerous institutions, challenges us to heed the message of Jude.

You and I, like Jude’s audience, need to be the lookout for error.

There are only two possibilities about Christianity:

It is true or not.

It is something specific or not.

It is either objectively defined or it is subjectively defined.

This has long been exploited by those who have sought to challenge Christianity from within.

God is the authority through His word.

This authority pervades this part of the letter. Jude is quite clear that he is not writing about something he made up. It is all objective and established by the authority of the word of God.

Jude’s Pastoral Care (Jude 3):

We may interpret his initial statement in one of two ways:

Either Jude had an urgent need to write to his audience while he made every effort to write to them of the common salvation, or he had an urgent need to write to them although he made every effort to write to them of the common salvation.

Jude focuses on his own, personal responsibility toward his audience.

Note that after the necessity statement, he describes himself as “one encouraging...”

What is clear, then, is that Jude understood that he bore personal responsibility for his audience. He recognized that a situation had arise among them that they needed to take seriously.

We do not know the precise nature of Jude’s relationship with his audience.

He, like Paul, models behavior for them (slave of Christ compared to the denial of Christ’s ownership).

He encourages them to something consistent with word of God rather than something that has been changed.

The Faith’s Objective Reality (Jude 3b):

Remember that Jude encourages them to “struggle fully or completely.”

What they are to struggle for is “the faith.”

It is a set of authoritative teachings.

It is a way of life consistent with the nature of the God who has given those teachings.

Does our generation have the capacity for recovering this?

Jude describes the faith in two important ways:

“having been passed down.” This is an important word:

1 Corinthians 11:2

1 Corinthians 11:23

1 Corinthians 15:3

It suggests the preexistence of an authoritative word which has been carefully passed down in order to preserve its accurate and truthful form.

We could also understand ourselves to be curators of the authentic and authoritative teachings whose ultimate source is God.

Once and for all.

There is permanency here.

There is finality here.

Jude did not understand himself or his audience to be anything more than those who had the responsibility to struggle for the true faith.

It is a body of information.

It predates us.

Saints could be understood as believers in Christ alone.

It could also compel us to see ourselves as belonging to a long line of “holy ones” who were also entrusted with God’s truth.

The False Teachers’ Real Danger (Jude 4):

Jude knew of the conditions among his audience even if they did not.

He attributes to the false teachers the cowardly action of “sneaking in...”

Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament based on Semantic Domains 34.30 παρεισέρχομαι; παρεισδύω

παρεισέρχομαι; παρεισδύω: to join surreptitiously with evil intent—‘to slip into a group unnoticed, to join unnoticed.

Paul wrote of similar individuals in Galatians 2:4.

Two things motivate false teachers:

Money

Power

He describes the false teachers as “ungodly.”

He initially describes them as those “having been previously informed with respect to this judgment.”

It also seems to be Jude’s intention to say here that the judgment about which he will write is not a new one but one that has, for a long time, there has been a public notice.

He then portrays them as those who are “changing the grace of God...”

Into licentiousness.

He finally portrays them as those who are “denying the only master, even our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Progressive Christianity is similar to this. We should heed Jude’s warning. We should remain close to the Word of God. Denying the authority of God and His Word will lead us away from the faith. It will be a dereliction of duty not the fight we are to engage in.