EPISODE 175 JUDE "Contending for the faith"

Welcome to Share the Word. The book of Jude, a short New Testament epistle, urges Christians to earnestly contend for their faith. The church continues to be attacked by false teachers, and even Jude chimes in against them. But Paul takes things two, maybe three steps further in this podcast. Listen closely. The Epistle of Jude: Contending for the Faith.

We have scores of two-lane roads where I live that crisscross the countryside. My kids always question me about why I drive in the middle of the road most of the time instead of staying in my own lane, like normal people, as they put it. Well, when there's nobody coming at me, I like to stay toward the middle because I think there's a better chance I won't hit a deer if one jumps out, honestly. In the middle, I have a little more space, you know, to my right, which means a little more reaction time when Bambi comes bounding out of the cornfield onto the roadway. I've hit deer three times in the years that I've lived here, so I'm constantly aware of that danger, especially at night. On the larger roads, the divided highways, of course, they cut down the trees on each side of the roadway to create more space and visibility.

They also put up guardrails to keep you from drifting too far left into oncoming traffic or too far right and off the road altogether. I'm not recommending you drive like me, by the way. I just thought of this in connection with today's big idea. One of my favorite verses in the New Testament, one of the most important to remember, in my opinion, is in this short epistle of Jude, a letter so brief it was likely written out on one sheet of parchment. But before we get to that idea, let me give you a little background information about this New Testament writing and its author, Jude, because it's certainly not one of the best known. He identifies himself in the opening lines as Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ and brother of James.

James, who also authored New Testament epistle one we've already studied, was well known in the early church. In fact, James was one of the three most respected leaders in the first Christian community at Jerusalem, one of the pillars, as Paul called them. Maybe part of that was due to the fact that James was Jesus' younger half-brother, which would make Jude also one of Jesus' younger half-brothers, since he says he's the brother of James. So both of these men were natural-born sons of Mary and Joseph. I don't know if I've mentioned this when we traveled through Mark's Gospel, but Jesus had younger brothers, and they're named in the Gospels. For one place, Mark 6, verse 3.

That chapter describes how Jesus, early in his popular Galilean ministry, returned to his hometown of Nazareth. Curious about reports of Jesus' ministry, the synagogue leaders invited him to speak one Saturday. The things he said in that service, as often happened, shocked and offended many people there. And that's when they whispered to each other, Wait a minute, isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And aren't his sisters still here with us? Jesus' younger brothers and sisters were still living in the hometown, probably, and the brothers are each named there, including James and Judas, as they called him.

It's obvious why later, as a member of the early church, Judas would not want to go by that name and instead use the variant Jude. During Jesus' early ministry years, these brothers, along with his hometown folk, did not believe he was the Messiah, much less the miraculously conceived Son of God. That's clear from John chapter 7, as well as from Mark chapter 3, where it says Jesus' family felt he had lost his mind at one point when he started making crazy claims. Remember how his mother and brothers came to Capernaum and found him there in a crowded house teaching. They sent word in that they wanted to see him, and Jesus' reply was, Who really are my brothers and mother? Looking around the room, he said, You are my mother and my brothers, meaning people who believed in him.

All I'm trying to say is that his family, at least most of them, didn't believe in him at that time. But Jesus' resurrection changed all that, as you might well imagine. And early in the book of Acts, in chapter one, after the ascension, when the apostles and other followers of Christ were in Jerusalem waiting for the promised Holy Spirit, Luke specifically mentions that Mary, along with Jesus' brothers, were there among them. The last reference to Jude, besides this epistle we're looking at now, is found in 1 Corinthians chapter 9. There the apostle Paul mentions that the brothers of Jesus were on the road sharing the gospel, obeying the Great Commission just as he was. We don't know where exactly, but by the middle of the first century, when Paul wrote that, as a result of ongoing persecutions by the Jewish leaders, most of the apostles had left Jerusalem, and Jude had too.

They were obeying Jesus' command to take the gospel to the whole world. Only James actually stayed behind, and James was martyred by the Sanhedrin in the year 62 A.D., according to Josephus, a Jewish historian. Unlike Peter, Jude does not tell us exactly who he was addressing in this letter, but it seems likely it was penned to early Christians in places he had traveled and ministered. One suggestion, with merit, is Alexandria in Egypt, but that's not certain. It's believed that Jude wrote this epistle late in the decade of the 60s A.D., after the death of his brother James and shortly after the apostles Peter and Paul were both killed in Rome. As I have explained previously, it would have seemed that all the martyrdoms of Christian leaders in that decade would have turned people away from Christianity.

But surprisingly, the persecution seemed to have had the opposite effect. Christianity kept growing, and in the late first century, the most dangerous threat to the churches was not from outside opposition, but from internal subversion, from a literal invasion of false teachers, false prophets, and false apostles the enemy enlisted in his cause. When you read chapter 2 of 2 Peter, where he is addressing Christians scattered across what is today Turkey, and then read Jude's letter to those he had influenced, it's not hard to imagine that Peter and Jude had had some conversations over the last several years about the effects the false teachers were having on the early churches. And that may very well be the case, because there are many similarities in what each of them wrote, as well as a very similar tone in which they wrote. In a word, scathing.

At the outset, Jude says he intended to write a letter about salvation, you know, how God has made it possible for us, the benefits of being in Christ, what it means for our future, and so on. But he felt compelled, he said, instead to address this problem of false teachers, who he described as men who crept into the early churches like termites, eating at their foundations. The fact that Jude felt the need to go after false teachers when both Paul and Peter had repeatedly already done so tells me just how much of a threatening problem this had become. The first generation Christian leaders were very concerned that false teachers could not only confuse people, but potentially derail the Christian movement. And so Jude, in this short but hard-hitting epistle, adds his voice to the now martyred apostles, taking up the call to address this very urgent problem.

Because we just focused on the false teachers a couple podcasts ago when we did 2 Peter chapter 2, I'm not going to go over exactly the same ground today. But before I get into what I really want to focus on in this segment, we need to give Jude the respect of at least briefly stating his charges against these people. And just like Peter's rant, Jude really expresses his disdain for these men who were worming their way into Christian communities, damaging young believers. Here's some of his charges made against them in his short epistle. In verse 4, Jude says, They pervert the grace of God into a license for immorality. That means these people were teaching the false idea that once we are saved by God's grace, since it's not by our own righteous conduct, how we live afterwards does not really matter.

God's grace will cover us. We focused on this wrong idea, I remember in episode 160 from 1 John chapter 2. I called it, Sin matters. If you're confused at all about the relationship between God's grace and our sinfulness, check out that episode. Also in verse 4, Jude says that they deny Jesus Christ, our only Sovereign and Lord. False teachers then and now are always off on the doctrine of the person of Christ, exactly who he was.

We've talked about this in many lessons already because it's so key. First century false teachers denied that Jesus was God, or others of them denied that he was truly a man. They denied Jesus' unique identity and so his authority, which is at the very heart of Christianity. In verse 8, Jude says their false teaching was based on dreams, or perhaps they claimed special revelation from dreams for the things that they had taught. And in 9 and 10, he puts the finger on something Peter also pointed out. In their arrogance, they don't respect authority, he says.

In fact, they blaspheme authorities, claiming to know things they did not really begin to understand. As I explained on the podcast in chapter 2 of 2 Peter, these false teachers apparently made themselves out to be spiritual giants, falsely claiming that they had special powers over the unseen world, over the powers of darkness, just to impress people, just to create a following for themselves. In a couple ways, Jude calls out the most predictable trait of all for spiritual deceivers, and that is greed. He says they flatter people for their own benefit, and then later, for pay, they have poured themselves into the error of Balaam. Balaam, remember, was an Old Testament prophet who sold out to Israel's enemies for money. These false teachers would tell people what they wanted to hear, promise things they could not ever deliver on, all cunningly to get a hold of people's money.

Also in verse 12, Jude describes them as clouds without water, carried along by winds, and autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead and uprooted. In other words, they promised a lot and delivered nothing. Nothing good grew from their ministries. No real fruit came from them. They were just a lot of hot air. And graphically, at verse 13, he goes on, they are like wandering stars for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever.

Their ministry, their presentation was like a meteor flashing across the sky. Impressive. Maybe they could make people ooh and ah. But remember, shooting stars burn out quickly and then disappear into the blackness, Jude is saying, into the black darkness these enemies of truth were heading. You get the picture. He summarizes by saying at verse 19, These are people who cause divisions, who are worldly minded, and who do not have the Spirit.

The false teachers were causing harmful divisions within the Christian community. They themselves were not genuine Christians at all. They were pretenders, impostors, using people and creating havoc. Nothing they were doing was the work of the Holy Spirit. But hey, apart from some faults, they were pretty okay dudes, no? Jude says no.

Behold, the Lord is coming with many thousands of His holy ones to execute judgment and to convict all the ungodly of their godless deeds. Just as Peter had written, God is coming for you, you frauds. The early Christian leaders had no patience for or charity toward the false teachers in their time. How could they? They confused and used sincere people. As I've said repeatedly, we shouldn't either in our time have any patience for them.

It's not being un-Christian to call out frauds and heretics. It's the example we have set for us in the New Testament by one writer after another. It's not being unloving to call out false teachers and spiritual deceivers. It's loving the truth enough to guard it, and it's loving God's flock enough to protect them. Which brings us to not only a big idea in this epistle, but one of the most important verses in the Bible, in my opinion. And it's verse 3.

Here's what it says in the very literal translation, the New American Standard Bible. 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. Jude intended to, he says, and would have preferred to write on another subject, but because he kept hearing about false teachers, spiritual deceivers, they're popping up everywhere, he felt impressed by the Holy Spirit and the urgency of the situation to send out a call to arms. I'm appealing to you, contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down. That imperative verb translated contend there means struggle with intense determination. He wanted, he urged the early Christians he had influence over to go to battle with these false teachers who were doing so much spiritual damage.

Not to physically attack them, of course, but to battle their wrong ideas and expose them as heretics and deceivers. When Jude uses the phrase contend earnestly for the faith, the faith with the definite article, he's referring to the whole body of truths taught by Jesus and his apostles. That is the Christian faith, the compendium of Christian doctrine and practice. By the time Jude wrote this, of course, almost all the New Testament scripture had been written. Why did it need to be written down? Because God knew that the truths that make up the Christian faith needed to be clearly defined, in black and white, as we'd say, literally, and firmly established for future generations.

Our faith, Jude says, was once for all handed down, insisting that those truths that make up the Christian faith, which were handed down by Jesus and his apostles, are a completed revelation from God for all time. Once for all. It's a very clear statement that the Christian faith, as recorded in the New Testament, would never need to be updated as time moved on or as circumstances changed. No, the Holy Spirit-inspired Word of God contains all the spiritual truths that God thinks we need to know. It is a finished product. It is settled.

It is sufficient. No one should add anything to it, and no one should take anything away from it. When Jude says the faith was delivered once for all to the saints, I don't want you to be confused by that. That just means God's people, Christians. The saints, the word is hagios, which some translations render holy ones, emphasizes that God sees believers as holy in Christ. He sees us that way because he doesn't look at our sins any longer.

He sees us through the lens of Christ and our relationship with him. I realize the term saints has been co-opted by religions to mean something different than that, namely a super class of Christians who are closer to God than the rest of us schmucks. But it's never once used that way in the Bible. In the Bible, it always means, as it does here, simply God's holy people, people who have been made holy through their relationship with Jesus Christ. I appeal to you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to God's holy people. That was an urgent and timely call to arms in the second half of the first century, because this army of false teachers were invading the early churches, threatening Christianity from within.

And this has not changed. It's been a needed battle cry in every generation since Jude's time. I enjoyed and learned an awful lot by studying church history when I was in college. I was challenged by heroes of the faith who stood unwaveringly for the truth in the early years of the church. We've talked about some of them, and by the reformers in the 16th century that had to do battle with churchmen who had driven Christianity well off course. But I was also very challenged to learn about heroes of the faith in modern times who have been willing to contend for the faith against those who were subverting it in their generation.

Men like J. Gresham Machen, a seminary professor at Princeton University during the first quarter of the 20th century. He was the last in a long line of biblical scholars and theologians at that school, which was founded back in 1812. Men who were true to the historic Christian faith, like Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield.

Princeton, since its founding and for a hundred years after, was best known for training ministers. Machen was a New Testament scholar on faculty there. It was during his tenure that modernism, theological liberalism, first gained traction in Europe and soon invaded American churches and seminaries, doing a great deal of damage to the Christian faith. Machen was one of the few who stood up boldly against that onslaught and led a revolt of sorts against the modernists who had creeped into Princeton and became embedded there. Men who denied the authority of the Bible and other essential doctrines of the Christian faith, like the deity of Christ or his bodily resurrection and his literal return.

Realize that iteration of false teachers which invaded the major Protestant seminaries and denominations in the first quarter of the 20th century was no different than the invasion of false teachers Jude and the other apostles battled in their time. I remember reading Machen's articles and speeches, calling out the false teachers at his university and in his own denomination. He and faithful Christian leaders like him were branded fundamentalists because they insisted the things taught by Jesus and the apostles and written down in the Scripture were non-negotiable truths fundamental to the Christian faith. Machen wrote in his influential book, Christianity and Liberalism, In the sphere of religion, the things about which men agree are apt to be the least worth holding. The really important things are the things about which men will fight. He meant, be willing to defend, to fight for.

In the same sense, Jude urged his readers to earnestly contend for the faith. Sadly, because so many were unwilling to join him in standing up against the tide of theological liberalism, Princeton and many other schools which were once trustworthy training grounds for pastors and Christian leaders are more likely to destroy someone's faith who goes there to study rather than to build it. Machen did his best, but ultimately he left Princeton and helped form a new seminary that would be faithful to historic Christian faith. He may have failed in his efforts to keep the false teachers from taking over Princeton Seminary. Nevertheless, he was right. Where he stood was right.

His life was marked by a deep faith and commitment to the truths of the Bible. He defended biblical Christianity without apology and exposed his opponents as modern-day false teachers, their ideas as merely warmed-over heresies. I'm pretty sure in God's book, J. Gresham Machen is a hero of the Christian faith. Remember my illustration at the outset about trying to stay in the middle of the road and about guardrails that keep us from running off the highway on one side or the other? I was thinking about that in connection to this challenge from Jude.

Some false religious teachers have veered off by adding things to the Bible, like claims that they have new revelation or by elevating their traditions as though they are equal with the Scripture. They've veered off on the other side by taking things away from the Bible, canceling the parts they no longer want to believe, as the theological liberals Machen contended with did. I pray that we at Share the Word will always have both the conviction and boldness to contend for the faith once for all handed down to God's holy people. It's every bit as urgent today as it was when Jude first penned and sent off this epistle to early Christians who were caught up in the battle for truth. Thanks for listening. This is Paul for Share the Word.

Wow, that was an incredible podcast. Thanks, Paul. It really made me think about the enormous amount of research that goes into each podcast. Paul, Margie, and all of those who have sat behind this microphone have and continue to bring you the truth and the good news of the New Testament, chapter by chapter. And I, for one, send my sincere gratitude to them all. Let them know their work doesn't go unnoticed.

Send them an email to info at sharetheword.org. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.