Jude 3-4

³Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. ⁴For certain men whose condemnation was written about [or men who were marked out for condemnation] long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

Jude wanted to write about salvation, but he couldn’t. There were more pressing matters that needed to be addressed in this letter. Namely, Jude had to urge his audience to contend for the faith. “The faith” in this circumstance doesn’t refer to their subjective trust in Christ who is the object of faith. “The faith” refers to Christian doctrine, the apostles’ teaching, Jesus’ teaching given to the apostles, the divinely inspired doctrine given by God to the apostles. Jude wants them to cling to that faith and to contend for that faith, the apostles’ teaching, sound Christian doctrine. His audience needed to go to war on behalf of truth – the truth. And notice that they weren’t being urged to defend their faith against assaults from outside their beliefs. Rather, the assault was coming from within their own assembly! Apparently, folks had secretly infiltrated the Christian group and influenced it slyly toward antinomianism – that teaching which declares that living in sin is fine since grace is greater than sin. This is the very teaching that Paul silenced in Romans 6, with his rhetorical questions, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid! By no means!” Contend for the Faith Once Entrusted to the Saints. God is saying in Jude 3-4 that He wants you to be greatly concerned about the purity of biblical teaching in the church. Do you see it as your personal responsibility to uphold historic, biblical, Christian doctrine? Jude says it is. Are you aware of the false teaching that even goes on in the evangelical churches today? Everything that Jude says in this letter presupposes that it is every Christian’s important duty to know the truth of the faith, to care about it, and to protect it in the congregation.

Jude gets into an area that makes many people very uncomfortable. We live in a day and age where people say things like this: “Let’s not get caught up in all that doctrine. Let’s just share the gospel.” “Doctrine divides; witness unites.” “Don’t get all hung up about the minute details of truth. Christianity isn’t a belief or a doctrine; it’s a way of life.” Those kinds of ideas pervade even the evangelical church today. And so when someone like Jude comes along and his big message is this, “Be orthodox and care about the doctrines of the faith,” immediately we think, “This guy is a control freak, or a legalist.” But that is simply not true of Jude. Here’s how we know that: First, he addresses this congregation as beloved. He cares about them. Second, he says that he’d rather not talk about this; he’s not into controversy for the sake of it. He’d rather rejoice in the salvation that unites; but instead he’s got to deal with doctrine. Third, Jude wants them to contend for doctrinal purity, for the truth, so that they would grasp the faith. For Jude, maintaining sound doctrine is not something peripheral and minute, but it keeps the main thing the central thing, which is the faith that has been handed down. Allowing false doctrine to corrupt the truth destroys the faith. And so this issue is no small one.

Furthermore, the faith that Jude speaks of is an unchanging one. It was once for all entrusted to the saints. The inherent truths of Christianity do not change. But our culture of relativism doesn’t buy that. And postmodernism says that truth, even if it does exist, doesn’t matter. Today’s Christianity falls into that at times. The truth is absolutely essential to life. The truth is for life. Truth is good for people. It makes their lives better. We can’t grow in grace apart from embracing the truth ourselves, knowing it and embracing it ourselves. It’s essential for Christian health and growth. It’s essential for salvation. Jesus is the Way and the Truth and the Life.

So it’s essential to care about the truth and to stand on the truth. But why? For this audience, it’s because there were false teachers in their midst. And for us, it’s because there are false teachers in our midst. Jude is saying, “Here’s why I’m writing to you. There are people in your own congregation who have the name Christian, who say that their teaching is Christian, but they’re leading you astray. They’re teaching you false things. They’re teaching cheap grace and denying Jesus Christ.” And, of course, that fulfills what Jesus Himself said to His disciples. When you look around and see false teachers in the church today, rejoice! It’s a proof that Jesus is divine. Jesus told His disciples that there would be false prophets in their own midst. Paul told the elders in Ephesus that wolves, ravenous wolves would come up even from their own number who would try to lead astray the people of God. And so Jude reminds us of this. He says, “Look, there are godless persons already among you. They’re subtle, so be on the lookout. And these godless persons are pre-condemned. God’s already passed His verdict on them long ago. So you look at them from God’s perspective. Yes, they’ll say that what they’re teaching is true and good and helpful, but it’s not in accord with the apostles’ teaching. It’s not in accord with Scripture, so you be on the watch.”

These false teachers that Jude warns of do 2 things: they use grace as an excuse to live a life of indifference and sin, and they deny Christ, what the Bible teaches about His person and work. They say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter how you live as long as you’re sincere. It doesn’t matter what your life is like as long as you believe.” It’s antinomianism. But Jude says, “That teaching denies God’s grace, and its result – a transformed life. That teaching denies Jesus as Sovereign Lord.” And that’s exactly right; it’s exactly what antinomianism tries to do today, which is deny the Lordship of Christ as a necessary component of saving faith. So Jude urges us here to contend for the faith and to beware of false teachers who make grace into licentiousness and who deny the Lord Jesus Christ.