“Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, To those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ: Mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ” (Jude 1:1-4).

Jude will often refer his readers back to their position in Christ as their best defence against false teaching. In fact, Jude was so excited about salvation, so enthused about the Gospel, that it was his original intention to write a letter about the Gospel.

II. Jude’s Exhortation

“Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I was very eager, giving all my energy to the project of writing to you about the salvation we share” (Jude 1:3a).

Jude wanted to bless his readers with something like Paul’s letter to the Ephesians – a rejoicing in the unsearchable riches of Christ. And who wouldn’t want to do that? As a pastor, I identify with Jude. I would much prefer to encourage the saints with their position in Christ than talk about almost anything else. But sometimes the urgent has to intrude. Something interrupted Jude’s plans, and caused him to change topic.

“I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3b)

That’s our main verb of this section: it was necessary. “Needful it was for me”, instead of doing what I’d have preferred to so, I chose to write what was urgent. I chose to write to encourage and strongly urge you to do something. I would have enjoyed reviewing our treasured salvation, but there is an action needed from you, and I had to exhort you to do it.

What was this urgent exhortation? Jude wanted to exhort his readers to contend earnestly for the once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints faith. Contend earnestly translates a word found only here in the Greek New Testament. It has athletic imagery in it, picturing an athlete straining. It has military imagery in it, picturing going to do battle. The idea is Christians must militantly defend and struggle on behalf of the faith. Christians can find themselves swept up in the spirit of the age, which is pluralism, inclusivism, relativism. The world is happy for us to believe what we want, as long as we are not dogmatic, as long as we do not call other beliefs errors, call other religions false. But if Christians do that, they are hiding their lamp under a bushel, they are refusing to be salt.

Christianity is always just one generation away from extinction. All it takes is for one generation of Christians to not earnestly content for the faith, not defend sound doctrine, not preach a true Gospel, and then Christianity will die with that generation. Christianity must be passed on. That’s why Jude uses a very interesting set of words here to describe the faith. He calls it the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. That’s really one phrase. It’s a body of orthodoxy, orthopraxy, orthopathy, that was delivered by Christ and His apostles to the church, and has now been handed down. Once God had spoken through the apostles and prophets, and inspired all 66 books of the Bible, the once-for-all-delivered-to- the-saints- faith. Paul often enough speaks to Timothy and Titus about what he had entrusted to them, which they must now entrust to others. One of the marks of false teachers is that they claim to have special revelation, a special direct message from God, a prophecy not yet recorded in God’s Word.

But the old saying is, “if it’s new, it’s not true, and if its true it’s not new.” Jude wants us to take the whole counsel of God represented by the 66 books of the Bible, and defend that, and teach that to others, who will teach others also. This is the right sense in which to speak about tradition. When biblical teaching is handed down from one generation to another, it is a biblical tradition. This is the sense in which we the word conservative. When we say we are conservative Christians, it means we believe we are commanded to conserve the whole faith that was once delivered to the saints, and hand it down unedited, not adding or subtracting from it. Once Christians begin innovating, adding unbiblical practices, or claiming that God’s once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints message is not complete because they have a new prophecy, and message from God, those Christians are not conserving the faith, not contending for the faith. They become part of the problem.

That leads us to Jude’s explanation for his exhortation…

  – David De Bruyn, Professor of Church History, Shepherds’ Seminary Africa