Jude 3-4          Contending for the infallible Bible

There is a body of teaching which can be called "the faith," that is, the thing to be believed. Christians cannot be indifferent to religious truth. In other matters we know that truth may be one thing while people’s opinions about truth may be a very different thing.  Christian truth is not a matter of human opinions but of Divine revelation. It was delivered By God through faithful men. It is not a matter of intuition or opinion. Intuition and opinion do not form a basis for the common practices of morality far less for the truths of religious faith. It is not a matter of philosophical speculation. It is final, and it is authoritative.

It was delivered "once," once for all. Twenty-first century sinners are the same as the sinners of all the preceding centuries, and twenty-first century salvation is the same salvation as Paul preached.

IT WAS "DELIVERED TO THE SAINTS."

The Faith has come down the line of evangelical succession ever since. The Church and the family have been God's appointed agencies for perpetuating and spreading far and wide His truth. We may trust the Church to act as trustee of the Bible without accepting doctrines which it teaches outside of the Bible.

What are we to understand by the faith which was once delivered to the saints?

The faith mentioned here is Divine in its origin. And it is a faith which meets man's moral and spiritual needs.

Three truths become important to us when we study man in his moral relations.

(1)      The sense of guilt and moral weakness

(2)      The liability to temptation and trouble.

(3)      The certainty of death and a future state.

These exist in all men everywhere. The faith responds to the sense of guilt and moral weakness.

  The faith is complete in its contents. It was “once delivered”, and nothing can be added. Astronomy may discover worlds of light in the heavens, but it does not add to the universe. Every star was there before astronomers lifted their telescopes skyward. Astronomy may enlarge our knowledge of the heavens and thrill us with new views of heavenly beauty, but it cannot create a new star. Music cannot add a new tone to the scale. The octave is the final measure of possible tones. So with the faith. Theology cannot add to it. The Bible will gain in interpretation, but no new principles can be added to its contents.

Believers are the depositaries of the faith and believers are the disseminators of the faith.

We must hold the faith experimentally and consistently, not only in theory, but also in practice. Faith is not only a matter of doctrine but it teaches salvation as a blessed reality.

We must hold it with courage and resolution and we must stand up for it with simplicity and sincerity.

This passage describes this as “Contending for the “Faith”.

  WHAT WE MUST CONTEND FOR.

We must contend for every truth of God. There is nothing superfluous in the canon of Scripture. Better heaven and earth should be blended together in confusion, says Luther, than one dust of God's truth should perish. If the Lord calls us out to the defence of them, whatever comes of it we must be faithful. A man may make shipwreck of a good conscience in small matters. Listen to Satan, and this will be a little one, and that shall be a little one, till we have littled away all the principles of faith. All this is not spoken, of frivolous controversies about trifles, such as have no foundation in the Word nor to justify the breaking of Church fellowship and communion, and making rents in the body of Christ, because of difference of opinion in smaller matters, while we agree in the more weighty things. We are to "walk together as far as we are agreed" (Phil 3:16); and externals wherein we differ, lying far from the heart of religion, are nothing to faith and the new creature wherein we agree (Gal 5:6; 6:15). The most weight should be pitched upon the fundamentals and essentials of religion, and when there is an agreement there, private differences in smaller matters should not make us break off from one another.

CONTENDING FOR THE FAITH ONCE DELIVERED TO THE SAINTS IMPLIES:-

 Defending the faith delivered to the saints is to maintain the ground that the Bible is not only an authentic record, but that “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God”. “holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” There is no firmer ground on which to rest our religious belief and our hopes of salvation.

We are to contend for those principles of interpretation which will lay open to our view the true meaning of the Scriptures, and not bring to them a meaning derived from our own preconceived opinions.

 Contending for the primitive Christian faith implies a defence, not merely of what is expressly stated in the Scriptures, but also of what may be clearly inferred from the truths revealed.

Defence of Scriptural doctrines does not imply that we prove them to be true by a course of argument independent of revelation. The evidence on which they rest is this, that God, who does not lie, cannot err and will not deceive, has caused them to be revealed to us as true. While others may not admit the authority of the Bible it is not necessary on their account to prove everything to satisfy the reasoning, of those who do not believe. If all the truths of Scripture can be understood by a course of reasoning independent of Divine testimony then there is no need of inspiration?

Contending for the faith delivered to the saints does not imply that we undertake to free it from all the difficulties which may be connected with the truths revealed and does not imply a defence of all the additions which have been made to the faith, with a view to supplying supposed deficiencies in the Scriptures.

We must contend for the faith because of the secret enemies in the Church. The writer says that certain men have crept in unnoticed. They are already in the Church because they crept in craftily and were not immediately recognised. There is no greater danger to the Church than that of a subtle enemy, who is not immediately spotted. The danger of such people is difficult to see and rarely avoided.  The danger is less when the enemy is known. Now craftiness is the Scriptural characteristic of all heresy (Matt 7:15; Eph 4:14; 2 Cor 11:13). The word which the apostle uses to describe this method of entrance is one which supposes that they had recourse to certain fraudulent means. It literally means, “getting into a house underground”, or by means of some clandestine and unsuspected entrance.  One method is to keep back the full meaning of their doctrines. Things that are to be really believed are only partially discovered, the rest being wrapped up in skilful ambiguities.  These will only be revealed when they have gained some credibility. Only then will they press their doctrines to their legitimate consequences. This may mean either that the parties in question assumed the office of spiritual teachers without the knowledge or consent of the brethren, or that they contrived by false professions to induce the rulers of the Church to admit them to that office.

Another of the byways by which false teaching creeps into a Church is by a skilful mixing up with it a good deal of sound and wholesome doctrine, which is always paraded with a great show of orthodoxy. The apostle therefore in the text exhorts us to see that we look to a man's teaching as a whole. He may teach truth in regard to, some things and yet distort or keep back other truths.

These adversaries cast doubt on the faith; therefore the saints must stand up for it. The Church has many adversaries; therefore we must be ready to defend it. They are here described by the life they live. Jude says that they were without God and without faith.  They deny God the only Lord and our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul said (Eph 2:12; Phil 3:17,18). Their lack of faith is demonstrated by the way they behave. They are recognised by their carnal behaviour. They turn grace into wantonness and they deny God and the Lord Christ Jesus.

They "turned the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denied the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ”. The grace of God in its primary meaning means favour, goodness, and benefit. It is something whereby one is spontaneously moved to do an act of kindness for another. The word is used as a comprehensive title for all the blessings of the gospel. These doctrines of grace the false teachers were seeking to abuse, in order to justify their own licentiousness and sin. They turned the grace of God, the free mercy of God offered to us in Jesus Christ, into a pretext for any and all forms of self-indulgence and self-pleasing which might minister to the gratification of the carnal mind. Examine any system of error, and you will find that it more or less resolves itself into some form of experiment on the Divine mercy. It calculates upon God's willingness to do those things which He has said He never will do. It is a presumptuous expectation that we may make as wide as we want that gate which God has declared to be narrow. It is belief without a changed heart and without anything that could come up to the Scriptural notion of that holiness without which it is impossible for a man to see the Lord. The apostle said that this turning the mercy of our God to their own worldly, selfish and unrighteous purposes practically amounted to a denial of “the only Lord God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ.”

The false teachers wanted a humanistic religion based on human reasoning that did not require the mercy of God. Little has changed in the meantime. On the other hand the grace of God in Christ Jesus still offers forgiveness and cleansing from sin to those who trust Him.