The Delivered Faith
W. Carl Ketcherside
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For quite some time I have been wanting to write about the letter which Jude sent to "the called who are beloved in God, and kept by Jesus Christ." My reasons have been varied and fluctuate from day to day as I meditate upon what is contained in the twenty-five verses into which we have sliced the letter like so many pieces of luncheon meat for sandwiches.
I suspect that one reason I wanted to write on the letter is that few others do so. It is small and squeezed in between the three letters of John and his account of the apocalyptic visions on the island of Patmos. Jude is sometimes treated like a little boy at a parade, pushed into the rear row where he has to peer between the big people to see the honor guard stepping it off. Actually, of course, Jude is one of the "big people" and deserves a lot better billing than he receives in a lot of places.
Jude needs to be studied because of the way in which he deals with a crisis situation. He implies that he had been quite eager to write another kind of letter altogether, and may have been doing that very thing when he was made aware of a situation which impelled him to write the one we now have. I'm not sure he ever wrote the other one, but it does not make a great deal of difference. The one he did write is a tremendous one and the four-fold appeal it makes to believers is so rich and full I cannot get it off my mind.
Letters which are written in the heat of circumstances which cry aloud for action must not be easily dismissed. Perhaps a mother sits down to write her son an account of what has been transpiring around the old homestead when she receives word that her husband, the boy's father, has been involved in an automobile accident and is in the hospital. The few words she hastily scribbles down are not at all what she had planned to write.
Perhaps a soldier sits down in his room in a foreign barracks on a Sunday afternoon to write the folks back home when the alert sounds and the shouting and fire of the enemy is heard downstairs in the street. His letter will be a different one than he originally intended. That is what happened in the case of Jude. His is not a serene little letter of thanks such as Paul wrote to the Philippians. It is an air mail, special delivery, with directions for dealing with an emergency.
I like to read it because it deals with the gigantic problems faced by the infant community of the redeemed. They make our little squabbles seem like heated debates over whether to use Dixie Cups to serve the Kool-Aid at a local farm club meeting. The early saints had to contend with massive attack by giant evils. We are in danger of being nibbled to death by ducks, or of being run over by snails.
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It was different in the days when Jude wrote. Satan signalled for the artillery to be brought up and the kind of opposition which the saints faced was something else. A lot of our brethren are not really using the sword of the Spirit anymore. The kind of war in which they are engaged can be fought as well with a dull paring knife. A lot of sermon outlines are like chasing butterflies with a peashooter. They seldom hit anything and when they do, it doesn't make much difference anyhow. Many of the saints are hardly conscious that there is a war on. They are living in peaceful coexistence with Satan and are so busy clobbering one another they think of the preacher "as their enemy. Sometimes that is nearer right than otherwise.
I take a lot of genuine comfort from the fact that a faith which, in its infancy, could survive an attack of giants will probably survive a bombardment of dwarfs. It would seem logical to conclude that if a herd of shaggy mammoths could not trample you under when you were a baby, you will probably survive against a swarm of guinea pigs when you've grown up. And most of our attackers today resemble termites more than they do eagles.
In any event, if you do not have a special television show that you just have to watch in order to survive, I want to share with you some of the things which run through my mind when I read what Jude wrote. This time I will use the rendering in the Revised Standard Version. It seems to be as good as any other and a whole lot better than most. As you read what Jude wrote you will probably remember that his little letter had a difficult time getting into the canon of new covenant scriptures at all. It was kept dangling and its right to be included was argued and debated, and even until the fourth century it was classed among the "doubtful" books. Finally, it won its deserved place and that is why I can now analyze it with you.
William Barclay wrote, "There have indeed been times in the history of the church, and especially in the revivals of the church, when Jude was not far off from being the most relevant book in the New Testament." Of course, when Barclay uses the word "revival" he is not talking about getting a high-powered evangelist to come in and shake the members and get them up and walking for a few months before they retire again. It is because I think the world could be on the verge of another great revival or reformation that I would like to study Jude with you.
A lot of folk think that I am a little balmy when I talk about another great reformation. They think that when Martin Luther and Alexander Campbell died, that the Holy Spirit said, "Well, that's it!" and folded his tent and abandoned the scene. I don't buy that. I am pleading for renewal through recovery of the apostolic proclamation, purpose and power. It is useless to dream of renewal upon any other basis. Our task is not to hew out cisterns but to return to the fountain. It is not to regale ourselves with thoughts of new sources of power but to return to the revelation of the Spirit. Unless we recover the dynamic of yesterday, we will not be able to face the demands of today, and for us there will be no tomorrow.
Jude identifies himself in two ways, describes the state of those he addresses in three terms and invokes a multiplication of three things upon them. He says a great deal in three dozen words. Jude was
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But the word used by Jude is doulos. That means a slave. It always speaks of a master-servant relationship, and not of an employer-employee situation. In a metaphorical sense doulos refers to one who surrenders absolutely and completely to the will of another. A household servant is hired, but a slave is bought. It is difficult to be a servant to another but it is infinitely harder to be a slave and know you can never "do your own thing."
In the final analysis, the whole thing is a matter of will. A man can say to God, "Not my will but thine be done." Or he can say, "Not thy will but mine be done." He cannot say both. The first is the foundation of the obedient life. The second is the basis of all sin in the universe, starting with the first one. If one seeks to be his own master he has a fool for a slave. He who wills to submit to God must submit his will to God. Unless Jesus is the Lord of everything. He is the Lord of nothing in your life. I wish I had always realized that. You do not get Thursdays off if you are His slave. You do not get Sundays off either. The one who wants "off" has probably never been "on."
Almost every commentator mentions that Jude is self-effacing and willing to be known by his relationship to his more prominent brother. Andrew was a little bit like that. Not long ago someone mentioned him as being a "second fiddler" to his brother, Peter. There is nothing denigrating about being introduced as the brother of one who is faithful to Christ. It is an honor to me to be associated with anyone who truly loves the Lord. I do not have to play on the varsity. I am perfectly content to be a "second-stringer" on the spiritual team or I will sit on the bench if I can just have Him for my coach. I will carry water for the other players if He will allow me to be on the field.
I like the way James describes what is involved in being a slave of Christ. Such a person is called. He is beloved in God. He is kept by, or for the Lord Jesus Christ. It is one of the many paradoxes of scripture that we are slaves but free! We are called, cherished and confined in Christ. I never read things like this without having an inner sense of exultation and genuine joy.
I am not here because I sneaked in under the tent. I was called. I heard the call and I knew I had to answer it. I came in through the front door. I know the very day that the call got through to me! I know how miserable I was until I said "I'm coming!" I know what a burden was lifted off when I came. All of this is important to me. I came because I was invited. I am not here because I was appointed to fill an unexpired term, or as the result of someone's influence peddling. I was elected! I am not in interim service, but I am here for the duration. I'm not quitting until I graduate!
It was quite awhile before I knew that the word for "called" was used at least three different ways originally. It didn't throw me when I learned it and I wasn't upset by my previous ignorance. I didn't go back out and ask heaven to repeat the call. I simply began to implement the divine purpose for my life as I learned it. I intend to do that until the "Great Call" comes through with such a clear channel that I will know it's for me and I will start walking down into the shady valley. I know a boy who has been baptized three times trying to answer the call and he is not satisfied yet. Every time he gets a new insight he thinks it is another call. He has the telephone receiver mixed up with a yo-yo string, and he is trying to bounce himself into the kingdom.
Men were called to fulfill a special responsibility or render a service to the community in ancient Greece. The same word was used to summon a man as a guest to a feast or banquet. Finally, it was employed to call one to judgment, to appear before the tribunal. The Holy
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I realize that everyone who answers the call is volunteering for service. It is service for life. That is why it seems a little ridiculous to try to get some of those who have been called to "volunteer for full-time service." There isn't any other kind. God has no part-time slaves, and no couple of days per week workers. No one is called as a decoration.
I am here to serve and I love it. I am also here for the feast and I love that also. The whole bit is one glorious good time, and I mean it. What a thrill it is to fork out a huge slice of love, garnished with the relish of joy and peace. I mean this is like Thanksgiving Day seven times a week. I'm glad I wasn't out when the invitation was delivered. I never intend to be out again.
I've been called to serve and to share in a feast, but I have also been called to judgment. That does not worry me since I have learned that I do not have to dig around and take a briefcase of my own good deeds and dump them out on the judge's desk as "Exhibit A." I've got my identity card with my name engraved on it by grace. It is signed by the One who settled for my sins with His own blood. He is now my advocate, pleading my case. I am not trusting in my own righteousness but in His. I do not intend to reject Him, leave Him or stray from Him. I need a Savior and I have one--the only One!
I am beloved in God. That's the basis for the call. And that one fact gives meaning to life. It accounts for all that is done. It explains the divine patience which is inexhaustible, the longsuffering which is incomprehensible except on the ground of an amazing depth of compassion. Leave the love of God out of it and life becomes a ball of knotted string which defies unraveling. Love is concern, a deep and vital concern for persons which assumes their burdens and appropriates their needs and freely gives to meet them without scolding or reprimand.
W. R. Nicholson says in his Popular Studies in Colossians that love is "the bond which holds all of the other graces together." Ragnar Bring writes in his Commentary on Galatians that "love is the perfection of everything spoken in Scripture." A. E. Brooke says, "Human love is a reflection of something in the divine nature itself." William Barclay writes in The Letters of John, "Love has its origin in God. It is from the God who is love that all love takes its source." By being beloved in God I have been made a sharer in the very life of God.
I am also kept for Jesus Christ. The King James Version has "preserved." Like a lot of words, the original term has an interesting history. It is tereo, which meant to watch. Out of this grew the idea of guarding from loss or injury by keeping an eye upon. It was not so much a matter of preventing escape, for which the Greeks had another word, but more a matter of maintaining or holding fast. To use a homely illustration, I can still remember my mother saying when someone brought us a quantity of fresh fruit, "I'll have to make preserves out of it to keep it from spoiling." Peach preserves represent peaches put into a condition in which they can be maintained for use.
That is what God has done for me. Left to myself I would become rotten and spoiled. But the care of God has been extended and I am preserved in love to be used by Jesus Christ. I am no longer in the natural state, the carnal state. I am now a partaker of the divine nature. I am on God's pantry shelf and I bear His label. I have been plucked from the world's
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Mercy, grace and peace! Mercy is the divine attribute which enables God to receive us in spite of the weakness and infirmity of our humanity. It is extended, not to those who deserve but to those who do not. Those who are perfect require no mercy and the fact that all of us require it is proof of our imperfection. It was mercy which put the robe around the shoulder of the prodigal and shoes upon his feet. It was mercy raised to the superlative degree which then placed the Father's own ring on his finger. Mercy does not stop with merely making us comfortable. It also makes us rich.
Grace is not so much God giving us something to meet our need as it is God giving Himself to share our lot. It is God moving into the earthly dimension, corrupted as it is by sin, and making life worth living by giving life worth. Grace is not paying us off or giving us what we have earned. It is handing out a gift which is so magnificent that it cannot even be contemplated in the realm of recompense. Grace is God opening up His arms and clasping us close, not because of what we are, but of what we can become in the everlasting arms. Anyone who talks about what we must do to merit grace reveals his ignorance of the nature of grace. That which is merited is not grace. Jonathan Edwards, the old Puritan proclaimer, said that "Grace is but glory begun and glory is but grace perfected." He also said, "As grace is first from God, so it is continually from him, as much as light is all day long from the sun, as well as at first dawn or at sun-rising."
Peace is the harmony with God which results from His bestowal of justification and our acceptance of it through faith in the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the beating of the human heart in perfect time with the divine. It is being in step with God and in tune with the infinite. It is freedom from fear, walking without worry, and attainment without anxiety. Peace is not the calm which follows the storm, it is the courage which makes the storm impossible. Peace is the quiet spirit which can honor God by life or death, and is willing to live or die by His orders.
I want to share with you the best statement I have seen concerning the meaning of grace and peace. It is from the pen of William Hendriksen, former Professor of New Testament Literature at Calvin Seminary. He writes, "Grace is God's spontaneous, unmerited favor in action, his sovereign, freely-bestowed loving-kindness in operation, and its result, peace, is the conviction of reconciliation through the blood of the cross, true spiritual wholeness and prosperity." Perhaps you ought to read that again, and then lean back in your chair, close your eyes, and let it trickle and seep down into your soul.
I share with Jude the hope that these three magnificent qualities be multiplied unto you. I would not have them dispensed with meager hand or doled out as if they had to be measured. As he wanted them multiplied to his readers so I want them abundantly bestowed upon mine. In this day I eagerly trust that my readers will also be readers of Jude. It is far more important that you read what Jude said than to read what I say about what he said.
The term "very eager" has to do with diligent or earnest application to a task. That is why the King James Version renders it, "when I gave all diligence to write unto you." Now this can mean that Jude had planned to write about the salvation which was shared by the called ones, and was actually engaged in doing so when he received information which caused him to alter his plans and write this letter to meet a desperate emergency.
William Barclay looks at it that way, and translates the passage, "Beloved, when I was in the midst of devoting all my energy to writing to you about the faith which we all share, I felt that I was com-
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Sometimes a crisis can change our whole way of life and the manner in which we react to that crisis may be more important than our original idea. When Ida Scudder was a girl in Northfield Seminary in Massachusetts she was emphatic in her declaration that she would never live and serve in a foreign country as her parents had always done in India. But before she graduated a letter came from her father informing her that her mother was seriously ill and asking for her to return to India immediately. In a single night there, three native men--a Brahman, a Muslim and a Hindu--came to knock on the door of the mission compound, each of them pleading for a woman doctor to save the life of his wife. These calls in the night drove Ida Scudder to become a doctor and to start the Christian Medical School which trained hundreds of young native women to become nurses.
In his address to the United Negro College Fund Convocation, in Indianapolis, Indiana, April 12, 1959, John F. Kennedy said, "When written in Chinese the word crisis is composed of two characters--one represents danger and the other represents opportunity."
If Jude was engaged in compiling material about the salvation common to all in Christ Jesus, we do not know if he ever finished, or ever returned to it, but the little letter he did write has encouraged millions to resist the erosion away of the faith and to stand fast for it. I find myself thrilled that Jude was eager to write of our common salvation. A brother recently called to my attention how difficult it is to interest modern saints in conversation about spiritual matters. If three or four brethren are talking and you inject a serious note about the common salvation, they either clam up or quickly change the subject. They will join in if you are criticizing a brother or finding fault with the congregation, and will chew on morsels of gossip, but there is no eagerness to continue exhorting or edifying one another.
Regardless of what else we share in our precious Lord we can be thrilled that we have a salvation which belongs to all of us. We might differ in ethnic backgrounds and in social status, but we are one in that salvation which is the gift of God by grace through faith. I am a lot like Jude. I am eager to write about that wonderful state into which we have been called by the Good News. It is my strength and my song. I am happy that you partake of it, like I do, as a recipient of His mercy. But if I am to review what Jude wrote I must follow where he leads.
His letter was an appeal. It was an exhortation. He uses the word parakaleo, which, in the King James Version is rendered beseech 43 times, comfort 23 times, exhort 19 times, entreat 3 times, and by a few other terms. The word literally means "to call to one's side," that is, to summon for a task or function. It conveys the idea of entreating or beseeching one to engage in an action or effort. I am fully convinced that when such circumstances exist as those confronting Jude, I am obligated to answer the call or summons he issued. I am one of the called and beloved. I share in that glorious salvation. I am obligated to answer the entreaty and so is every other person who is among the called ones.
For what did Jude entreat the beloved? The answer is simple. "To contend for the
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The saints are encouraged by Jude to pick up the glove flung down by a blatant challenger. To do so is to accept an invitation to a contest, not of skill but of perseverance and endurance. There will be no gong to end the struggle. It is a battle which must end in victory for one and defeat for the other. There will be no place for a truce or compromise, no cessation of hostilities. This is hand-to-hand combat. It is a struggle for survival. One does not "agonize" playing tiddlywinks or pitching horseshoes!
What is the issue? "The faith which was once for all delivered to the saints." What is the faith? It is here that men have been guilty of tragic error, as a result of which they have engaged in deadly combat with the wrong persons, and have slaughtered friends instead of foes. Some have assumed that the faith consists of the compilation of new covenant scriptures and have postulated that one is not in the faith who does not understand as they do every minute point of doctrine. In the final analysis this means that to be in the faith is equivalent to being aligned with the particular party, faction or sect growing up around a specific deduction from or interpretation of some scriptural matter. Anyone who does not conform to the official interpretation is accused of being a liberal, a traitor to God, a heretic and an apostate, even though his life exhibits much more of the fruit of the Spirit than do the lives of his accusers.
The new testament canon does not constitute the faith about which Jude writes. The new covenant scriptures had not yet been written and certainly not compiled into a single volume. It would be three centuries before the very epistle Jude was writing would be given canonical recognition and win an undisputed place. The new covenant scriptures had not been "once for all delivered," but the faith had. Those to whom Jude wrote and who were beloved of God were in that faith before they ever saw an apostolic letter.
This in no sense denigrates the scriptures. It does not say anything derogatory about their authenticity, genuineness or authority. It never defeats God's purpose to place His revelation in proper perspective. Certainly the new covenant scriptures reveal the faith to us. We would know little about it without the scriptures. They are not the faith, but the window through which we see the faith. They are the vehicle through which knowledge of the faith is transmitted to us in this generation, but there is a difference between a vehicle and that which it conveys. When I was at the Palace of Versailles I saw the ornate carriages of the kings, but I did not think I was seeing the kings. Our faith is actually a person. Jesus is our faith as He is our peace, our wisdom, our sanctification and our redemption. Our faith is our absolute trust in Jesus as God's Son and Anointed, and the scriptures constitute the testimony of that faith.
Recognition of this distinction makes a great deal of difference, and it is lack of such recognition which has caused us to "fall out by the way," and become a welter of warring and bickering sects. Men erroneously think they are "contending for the faith" when they engage in heated debate over some scriptural passage or intellectual apprehension of a controverted matter. One is not contending for the faith when he engages in debate over whether instrumental music in expression of public praise is acceptable to God. He is not contending for the faith when he argues the pro or con of a method of supporting a radio or television program. He is not contending for the faith when he
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Men may debate such questions all of their lives and never once contend for the faith, or they can contend for the faith all of their lives and never once debate about such subjects. One can contend for the faith once for all delivered and take either side of such questions, for the simple reason that the faith has no relationship to such matters. In the days of Jude the saints in Christ differed about circumcision, the eating of meats and the keeping of days, but such discussions as they had were not confused with contending for the faith, until Peter got the two mixed up in Antioch. Such things are not a threat to the faith, troublesome though they may be, unless ignorant and unstable persons confuse them with the faith and substitute arguments about them for contending for the faith. Jude did not summon the beloved to debate one another over the meaning of his sentences or the implications of his statements. I do not think he ever envisioned the called ones clobbering each other and justifying it by quoting his statement to "contend earnestly for the faith." We have come a long way when we take the letters intended to keep the saints from being divided over unscrupulous and unsavory characters and use those letters to split the body of our Lord into splinters and shiver it to smithereens!
We can tell what the faith is for which we are to contend by finding out what is espoused and advocated by those with whom we are to "agonize." Any honest person who reads what Jude says can readily determine that he is not advocating that we belabor one another in Christ over opinions, interpretations, deductions and inferences from the apostolic writings. Nothing could do more damage to the peace and serenity of the beloved in God than to twist and wrest the statements of Jude to justify the partisan gladiators who seek publicity for their peculiarities in the forensic arena. The rag-tag wrestling matches to which we have been subjected over every little piece of trivia disgrace the very faith which we profess to defend.
The faith was delivered to the saints. It is not something they invented or concocted. It is not something they discovered or arrived at by research. It is not a philosophy, a compilation of laws or a compendium of ethical precepts. The faith came. It is historical. It entered into the time-space spectrum in which earthly man dwells. There was a time described as "before faith came" (Gal. 3:23) and a time designated "after faith came" (Gal. 3:25). Faith came by the will of God. It came at "a time appointed by the father" (Gal. 4:2). Faith is both a gift and a response to that gift, and both the gift and the response are personal. Faith is news, good news, and that news was delivered, not in the form of a book, but in the form of a baby. The word was made flesh and dwelled among us. The faith was enfleshed and remains with us in our bodies, dwelling there as in temples of deity.
The faith was delivered once for all. It was a one-time experience for the world. It will not be repeated. The faith is unchanging. It is enduring. It is eternal. The event in which it was embodied, and the message in which it is to be conveyed, are not subject to recall, amendment or alteration. The faith was proclaimed fully and completely on the first Pentecost after the resurrection of our Lord from the dead. Not a word was ever added to the faith. Each generation must re-affirm the event, but the event remains the very core of the faith. Each generation must re-proclaim the message, but the message dare not be altered to suit the whims of any culture or race. As Paul put it, "I would remind you in what terms I preached to you the gospel, which you received, in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it fast." The gospel is the same! The terms are the same! The salvation is the same! The gospel is the proclamation of the event. It is as unchangeable as the event. The faith was once for all delivered to the saints. The re-proclamation of the saints must never change!
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Here we learn the reason why Jude wrote this letter under such pressure. The company of the saints was being infiltrated by fifth columnists who were bent on destruction of the faith. They were clever and avowed saboteurs whose objective was to undermine the whole plan of God and make out of it nothing but a smoking wreck. These men were not clever plotters on the outside. They were already inside scattering poison, planting incendiaries and getting ready for the take-over. And they had come in cleverly disguised to wreak their damage. Once when George Washington realized that some of those in his forces were sympathizers with the Tory cause he issued the order, "Put none but Americans on guard tonight." When the cause of Christ is in danger only those who are in allegiance to Jesus should be entrusted with grave responsibility.
The King James Version says these "crept in unawares." Barclay says they "wormed their way into the Church." The Authentic New Testament says they "managed to creep in." The New Testament in Modern English says "they crept in stealthily." Canon F. W. Farrar says "they slank in." All of this indicates an undercover action. It was deliberate and intentional. These men knew what they were doing. The community of believers was fair game for their insidious mission.
The word for their means of gaining access is one of those intriguing Greek terms with a history connected with it. It is pareisduein, and it was used to portray a great many cunning and stealthy intrusions, generally with an ulterior motive. It was employed to describe the means by which an undesirable alien who had been banished or exiled, slipped back into the country under the cover of night while wearing a disguise. It was used to describe the action of one who infiltrated a political party with the evident purpose of creating chaos and fomenting distrust, much like the "dirty tricks" perpetrated before our last national election. It was also used to describe an agent or spy who intruded himself into a military camp of a nation to disrupt the morale of the soldiers and undermine discipline.
My reason for spending so much time on proper identification of those whom Jude regarded as enemies of the faith once delivered, is because of the childish and immature projections made by the brethren with whom I have always been associated. To them, every child of God who questioned any traditional partisan inference or explanation was an enemy of righteousness. The quickest way to become a heretic in their sight was to faithfully study the Word of God until you learned something new. Every honest and conscientious deviation from the factional norm was considered rebellion against God. In the extreme legalistic stand to which most of the heirs of the restoration movement finally gravitated every child of God on earth was regarded as a heretic by some other. To debate those who differed over some of the trivia which obsessed us was to "contend for the faith."
It is absurd and silly to even suggest that sincere brethren who do not agree with us over some of the deductions we have made from the word are in the same class of persons about whom Jude wrote. We have been betrayed into a kind of self-righteousness which is more damning than the things about which we inveigh. We have reduced the kingdom of heaven in the eyes of many from the marvelous and universal reign of our blessed Lord into a minor fiefdom of narrow and intolerant individuals with whom "fellowship" can only be maintained at the expense of integrity and by abdication of the right to exercise your own rational powers. We have chosen foes worthy of our own mediocrity.
The infiltrators with whom Jude was concerned were the kind of men long ago designated for the condemnation which would be deservedly theirs. The word used was employed among the Greeks for a public notice warning certain char-
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Through the prophets God has posted ample notification that the kind of men Jude describes would not be tolerated. They would be cut off from among the people. Moreover, He gave a demonstration of divine judgment upon angels who sinned, the ante-diluvian population, and the wicked inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, to name a few. Those who fell in the same category could expect a like fate. This does not mean that long ago God determined that these individuals would become what they were, but rather, that any person who was that type would suffer condemnation.
What kind of men were these against whom Jude warned? They were ungodly men. And they manifested their ungodliness in two ways. They perverted the grace of God into licentiousness. This does not mean that they merely took advantage of the grace of God to practice vice. That would be bad enough. But they perverted God's grace itself into immorality. They not only suggested that grace condoned immorality but that by unrestrained sexual indulgence and deviation they fulfilled the purpose of God. Barclay uses the expression "blatant immorality" because he says the original suggests utter loss of a sense of shame and decency.
In addition, these denied the only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. A great many modern commentators think that these vicious and harmful men were Gnostics because of their attitude toward license in the use of the body, and toward Jesus. It is easy to believe this is so because of the nature of this destructive philosophy and because of the method employed to insinuate its adherents into the camp of the faithful. If these were Gnostics we can understand more fully the urgent need to "contend earnestly for the faith."
Many older commentators tend to think Jude was referring to the Nicolaitans, a sect which apparently advocated that liberty constituted license to gratify lust and passion without moral restraint. This would present no real contradiction since the Nicolaitans seem to have laid the foundation in the congregations for the inroads of Gnosticism. It is not necessary that we know the particular brand-name borne by these men. We know what they promulgated and promoted and we know the danger involved.
The infant communities of believers were surrounded by threats upon every side. False accusations were hurled at them and they rested under a cloud of suspicion which could break out in frighful persecution at any time. Danger lurked so close that Paul could write that he died daily and stood in jeopardy every hour. In our day, and especially in the western world, the crude and barbarous attacks upon the persons of believers are barred by law. In the beginning it was often the legal authorities who led the persecutors.
The change in climate may lull us into a sense of security in which we conclude the faith is safe because we are. We may think that the enemy has retired because we have. Nothing could be farther from reality. "The wisdom of the passing age" as Paul refers to the specious philosophy which is always present and always dedicated to diluting and weakening the divine witness, is ever active. The danger to revealed truth may be more acute in a time when men are not required to die for the faith and thus not be called upon to make the supreme choice. Those who are deceived by relativism may think there is nothing worth dying for, and this inevitably leads to the conclusion there is nothing worth living for.
In a certain sense the Gnosticism of yesterday has been replaced by the Humanism of today. Of course there are differences. Some of them are great. But
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Like the apostle of old I want to be "set for the defense of the gospel" (Phil. 1:16). It is the gospel of my salvation which enabled me to be sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, my guarantee of the inheritance until I take possession of it (Eph. 1.:13, 14). That gospel is God's dynamic to make whole every person who trusts in it with obedient surrender. The gospel is the historical fact of Jesus and what He accomplished for me, and will accomplish in and through me. I regard as an enemy every theory which ridicules the cross of Christ and every thesis which rejects the resurrection of my Lord from the dead.
I am summoned to do battle against every such foe at home and abroad, by tongue and by pen. I intend to wage relentless war on whatever ground the enemy chooses, because truth is never allowed the luxury of selecting the battlefield. It goes where the foe chooses to take his stand. I want to be in the thick of the fray, to hear the clang of weapons against each other, and to experience the sweat and grime and dust of the combat field.
That is why I have little time to devote to childish arguments among the king's troops in the mess hall or lolling about in the shade. I have no time to chase brotherhood fireflies while the real enemy is at the gate. I can distinguish the faith once delivered in the presence of celestial angels from the opinions of those who have nothing better to do than irritate and aggravate one another by working out all of the angles.
We face a real enemy. It is not merely an enemy of "The Church of Christ" or any other historical party crystallized around an ideal voiced by men, but an enemy of the faith once delivered to the saints. The faith itself is being assaulted, and the battle must be fought by all of the saints, by those who have been washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. I recognize no rivals among those who have been born again and are now a part of the new humanity. "Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love...the former proclaim Christ out of partisanship...What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in that I rejoice."
Christ is proclaimed! In every way! No man who proclaims Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords in this universe is my enemy, although he may count himself as such. But the enmity and hostility will be in his heart. It is not in mine. There is no room for it! Anyone who, without reservation or qualm, subscribes to the once great mystery of the faith, expressed in the terms, "He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory," is fighting on the side I am on. I will stand by his side while he contends for the faith once for all delivered.
The faith is historical fact. Therefore, it is not negotiable. There is no ground for compromise. No peace pact can be entered with those who deny it. When I meet with those who reject the advent of Jesus in the flesh, or who dispute His claim to be the Son of God, or His right to be Lord of the universe, I meet to fight and not discuss possible terms of peaceful coexistence. My oath of allegiance to the King makes me the sworn enemy of every system of thought which would topple Him from His throne or effect a coup for a take-over by any rebel force. I intend to slug it out with the enemy as long as my lungs can gasp air and my heart continue to beat. I want to die with the armor buckled on, the shield of faith held high, the sword cleaving to my hand, and my face toward the walls of the New Jerusalem.
If God wills, I shall continue, in our next issue, with a discussion of the little
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