Contend For the Faith
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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. 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.
Jude is writing to contend for the faith. This word appears only here in the NT but in other literature, it describes the intense conflict of an athletic contest.
We are to defend our faith like we would defend our most expensive or treasured possession. We are not to just be content with the mercy, peace, and love we have received from Christ. We have to contend!
Certain people have crept in unnoticed. These were the Gnostics. Scholars think these were itinerant teachers who looked like the average people in the assembly. They were made up of people who were either part of the church but left, or they strangers who came with the intention to deceive. In either case, John addressed the problem in. 1 John 2:18-19 “Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”
20 years ago, this would have been the Emergent Church, who asked a lot of questions without answering them. Remember Rob Bell’s book “Love Wins?” It never answered anything confidently; it just asked questions to get people to doubt orthodox Christian doctrine. Since then, the Emergent Church went underground and now has resurfaced as progressive Christianity. They have no converts from other religions but all their followers come from Evangelicalism. This is deconstruction. People look back on their experience in the church and pick it apart, either something that was taught, some church hurt they went through, and they reject the Bible. And instead of leaving questions unanswered, they answer them by redefining words. This is their reconstruction (Jude 4).
This is more confusing since evangelicals and progressives are using the same language but mean totally different things behind them. This makes Progressive Christianity worse than Atheism. At least atheists are honest about what they do not believe in!
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