“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).

III. Jude’s Explanation

“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 1:4)

“For”= this is the reason we must earnestly contend. Certain men have crept in unnoticed. What did they creep into? They have crept into the church, into the fellowship of the saints. The words crept in unnoticed translate one Greek word which occurs only here in the New Testament. It means to enter secretly, to slip in unnoticed, to join a group unaware. Who was unaware here? Not the false teachers! They were fully aware of what they were doing! It was the church that was unaware, that was not vigilant where it should have been, awake, thoughtful, discerning. The church was not alert enough to see who and what had already entered in. The church has a peculiar vulnerability. Christians are so conscious of the importance of brotherly love, so sensitive to not being unkind, ungodly, that they often find their love turning into sentimentality, which is where we no longer love, we start to love our love, we start to love feeling that we are nice people, we start to love feeling that we are welcoming rather than extending love and welcome thoughtfully, deliberately, intentionally. And so too many churches, for fear of being harsh, unkind, ungodly, or worse, fear of being thought unkind, unfriendly, unwelcoming, leave their front door wide open, and allow all and sundry to comfortably dwell.

Let me tell you of two ways the church leaves its front door wide open. The first is when the church does not practice any form of membership. Membership is precisely where we make sure that we are dealing with people who have been humbled at the foot of the Cross – that we are dealing with fellow-Christians. Membership is simply where we take what is mentioned in verse 3 – our common salvation, found in the doctrine once delivered to the saints, and we simply ask a person to tell us if he or she has believed that Gospel, testified of it in believers baptism, and desires to identify with this church. When a church does not practice membership, and any and every person who attends on a Sunday is as much the church as anyone else, you have just extended an invitation for a wolf to come and ravage your church. You have just said to the very kind of men Jude was warning about, “come into our church, we won’t vet you, we won’t check you, we won’t require anything. And by the time we do, you will have already had your meal, licked your lips, while we scurry around trying to figure out what just happened. Just hang around and you’re pretty much in.”

The wolf is seeking every possible avenue to draw closer, to come in, to gain a platform, to build a following, to discredit and divide. He wants to be on your prayer chain, and on the Facebook group, and the mailing list, and the ministry team. He wants to find out if membership is really just an administrative detail in your church, or if there really are shepherds guarding the flock. And the problem is this: when you don’t practise membership because you want the nice godly nonmember to feel at home, and never feel excluded, you simultaneously allow in the wolf. So when the church collapses all those distinctions between member and non-member because it has adherents it loves dearly, it has said to the wolf, come into this pasture, and eat all you wish. There is no shepherd here. Because practically speaking, a church which acts that way, doesn’t have a shepherd, or he is asleep, or he’s a coward. These men creep in unawares when the church leaves its front door wide open. It makes no distinctions, doesn’t check or vet or ask for testimonies of salvation. I’m like you. I don’t want to exclude. I don’t like good people feeling excluded. But this is not about arrogant exclusion. It is about protective exclusion. I am charged to guard the flock of God, and that means guarding the front door. You are charged to earnestly contend for the faith, and that means likewise guarding the front door, listening to the testimonies of salvation when we read them out at the Lord’s Table.

The second way these false teachers creep in unnoticed is when they are publicly recognised as Christians, particularly in a global Christianity connected by mass media and the Internet. False teachers make their home in the church
when enough Christians keep calling them “brother” or “sister”. False teachers make their home in the church when enough Christian TV or radio stations broadcast their teachings, when Christian publishing houses publish their books, when Christian conferences invite them onto their platforms to speak, when churches invite them into their pulpits to teach. Every time this happens, those who invite these false teachers say the following: even though your words, or your deeds deny the Gospel, we still affirm you as a Christian. The boundary of the faith envelops and includes you. You are one of us, and you, too, are going to Heaven.

What does this mean? It means if someone denies one of the doctrines that are crucial to the Gospel, such as the deity of Christ, the Trinity, the resurrection, the virgin birth, salvation by grace alone through faith alone, then we do not recognise that person as a Christian. Churches must not invite into their pulpit or to their conferences those who deny the Gospel. Churches must exercise caution in which authors they recommend from the pulpit. Churches should not join groups or associations that tolerate apostasy. Para-church organisations like publishing houses and media groups must not endorse or promote false teachers.

We need to name and expose those men and women who are leading people astray. You see, unless you at some point name who you are talking about when speak about false doctrine and heresy, people don’t realise you are talking about some of the people they listen to or watch or read. Membership at the local church level, naming and exposing false teachers at the universal church level is part of how we contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. Who are these men, and what do they teach? Let me give you the flyover view here:

1. First, they deny Christ in some way, and they turn grace into license to sin. who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. (Jude 1:4) 2. Second, they live in immorality, and reject authority. 8 Likewise also these dreamers defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries. (Jude 1:8) Look out for the man who submits to no one else, who has no theological heroes he looks up to, who has no mentors he is thankful for.

3. Third, they try to turn religion into financial gain. 11 Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. (Jude 1:11) False teachers are drawn to money like bees to honey. If there is profit to be made, from even the poorest of the poor, you will find them there, selling their wares. 4. Fourth, they tell people what they want to hear to gain advantage over them. 16 These are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts; and they mouth great swelling words, flattering people to gain advantage. (Jude 1:16) False teachers are marketers. They know how to tap into human need, greed, and appetite, and turn the Bible’s teachings into a formula to get those things.

5. Fifth, they are worldly, unsaved people, who live for their appetites, and divide the church through their false teachings: 19 These are sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit. (Jude 1:19) Now some of them might get saved and leave, but the majority of them are simply unsaved. They do not have the Spirit, they are controlled by their appetites. They live only for self. These are the marks of the false teacher. But you do not have to go round hunting for them. Instead, you must busy yourself with becoming more and more familiar with the faith once for all delivered to the saints. You must know the boundaries of the Gospel. You must know Christian doctrine and practice well enough that you can sense when something is wrong. The training for those who identify counterfeit bank notes is not to expose them to all the counterfeits, because there are innumerable ways of counterfeiting. Instead, they have those people become so familiar with every details of the true bank note, so that they can instantly spot a deviation.

We must know our once-for-all-delivered-to-the-saints faith. We must know it and love it well enough to militantly oppose denials of it when we encounter them, so that those whom we disciple will receive the faith as we received it.

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