3 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. 4 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 3-4
We saw last week that Jude began his letter by describing both himself and his audience in terms of their relationship to Christ. Because He is their Lord, they are to see themselves as His servants who have been called and are therefore loved by His Father and kept for Him. As Jude transitions to discuss the purpose of his letter, he speaks to the churches about the importance of how they conduct themselves as Christians. To live as servants of Christ means that we believe the things which Scripture teaches and also that we live our lives in accordance with these things. It is this latter point which will be the focus of Jude’s letter from this point forward because of the presence of certain false teaching which has become a threat to the churches.
Moving on from his greeting (vs. 1-2), Jude informs his audience that he had initially intended to write to them concerning their common salvation. Instead, however, he was force to write and to appeal to them to contend for the faith (v. 3). His use of this term (parakaleo – “appeal”) shows the deeply personal nature of this letter and reveals Jude’s heart for his readers. It is the faith “once for all delivered to the saints” that they must defend because it is under assault from false teaching. As well shall see, the danger is not necessarily one of orthodoxy, such as the questioning of the deity of Christ or the denial of the Trinity, but it is instead a refusal to recognize the Lordship of Christ over the life and conduct of a believer.
This is demonstrated clearly in Jude’s description of the threat to the churches (v.4). Here, he warns them that “certain people” have come into their midst who “pervert the grace of God into sensuality.” The result of this is that, in terms of how they conduct themselves, they “deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” While it is hard to know the specifics of what these false teachers believed, it is possible to infer from how Jude describes them that they had a misunderstanding of God’s grace. They perhaps had encountered the teachings of Paul and had either misunderstood them or intentionally distorted them, believing that they could sin in order that grace might abound, something the apostle Paul had specifically denied in Romans 6:1. In all likelihood, these teachers were traveling preachers or “prophets” which seem to have been common within the early church. Having claimed the name of Jesus, they were brought into the fellowship of the churches. Although they seem to have proclaimed the grace of Christ in some sense, the fullness of their teaching brought about a functional denial of Christ as Lord.
For Jude, Christians must contend for the faith on both a doctrinal and practical level. Knowing and believing the truth about Jesus should lead us to recognize Jesus as Lord and to live our lives accordingly. Christians must always be aware of false teachers who may claim to be Christians, but whose immoral conduct serves as a practical denial of Christ’s lordship. We must also be aware of our own sinful tendency to pervert the grace of God into a license to sin. We must therefore seek to worship Christ and to know Him better through His Word. As we do this, we grow in our understanding that He is both our Lord, and also our source of life as a believer. As we trust in Him, we will walk by faith and live our lives in accordance with His Word.
Join us this Sunday as we gather together to worship Jesus as our Savior and Lord and to enjoy our Fellowship Sunday!
Soli Deo Gloria.
-Thomas