Contending for the Faith: Introduction - Part 2. Jude 1-2
We have seen that the main
idea in Jude was to contend for the faith. This is his main message, verse 3. Everything
that he says comes back to understanding why it is important for us to contend
for the faith. The Greek word translated “contend” was a word that was often
used in the context of athletic contests where there was a challenge or some obstacle
that needed to be overcome. So what we see is the importance that is stressed in
the Word of God for maintaining doctrinal accuracy and purity because there are
always those who come into the congregation, into any sort of theological group,
and have ideas that aren’t orthodox and don’t stay with the Scriptures. There
is always a challenge to the sufficiency of Scripture, sufficiency of grace and
the sufficiency of the cross; there are always challenges to how we understand
the Scriptures. Hermeneutics are a tremendous battlefield today, so we are to
always contend for the faith. This is part of the area of theology that is
usually referred to as apologetics. It doesn’t have to do with apologizing for
something but it has to do with giving an answer for the hope that is in us,
why we believe something is true.
What we have to contend for
is the basic propositions that are fundamental to Christianity. We can even
divide these into different levels of significance. There are the primary
truths such as the Trinity, the infallibility and the authority of Scripture—because
without that we have nothing. If there is anything in there that is fallible
then what is and what isn’t, what is the criterion for determining what is
wrong and what isn’t, what is the ultimate arbiter of truth? It has to be God,
and to be God by very definition has to be able to preserve and keep His Word
accurate. Coming from Him it has to be inerrant to begin with and even though
it comes through fallible, fallen human writers God is able in His omnipotence
to preserve and protect the writing of Scripture. This gives us the body of
faith. So we talk about God, the authority of Scripture, who Jesus Christ is—the
eternal second person of the Trinity, the Son of God—and what He did on the cross
in terms of dying for our sins as our substitute, and that salvation is not by
works but by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. We don’t add anything to faith;
we don’t add anything to the work of Christ upon the cross. These are
foundational, fundamental beliefs that make up the faith.
Then there are many other
doctrines that are just a shade less foundational than those and that are also
extremely important to maintain related to doctrines of the church, the body of
Christ, the distinctions between Israel and the church, many other doctrines
that come along, and that all makes up the faith, the doctrine that has
been passed on down through the centuries. When we talk about the development of
doctrine we are not talking about the fact that the body of truth changes or
evolves over time but that our understanding and clarification of what the
Bible teaches is refined or clarified from generation to generation. But we are
to contend for that body of doctrine.
So the main idea is that we
are to contend for the faith. Those who maintain the purity of faith in terms
of belief and application then run the race well, and they receive the prize. That
focuses us on the judgment seat of Christ. Those who do not run the race well,
those who fail, those who fall by the wayside don’t win the prize. It doesn’t
mean that they are not saved but it means that there is a loss of reward at the
judgment seat of Christ.
In verse
Jude also wrote to show
believers how they could grow even in the midst of apostasy. Though everything
around us seems to be falling apart, even though as we in our day look around
and see churches that are departing from the faith, teaching many things that
are not biblical, that nevertheless, even though our numbers dwindle and those
who contend for the purity of the faith continue to do so, we can still grow
spiritually despite the fact that we are living in a spiritually regressive
culture and church culture.
He wrote to assure believers
that God would continue to protect them even in the midst of apostasy. Even
though we see many churches, many pastors drifting off course, losing sight of
grace, teaching Lordship salvation, Reformed or Covenant theology, these things
that get away from the truths of Scripture and we wonder what the future is for
sound biblical teaching, God will preserve the truth. God is in charge, Jesus
Christ is the head of the church and so the truth will never be completely
lost.
To whom does Jude write?
Three things we should not about this. First of all he addresses these as
believers—“beloved” or “sanctified.” Either word only refers to believers in
the rest of the New Testament. They are “kept” for Jesus Christ, which clearly
indicates that they are believers. Secondly, they are Jewish believers. He
assumes that they have a thorough knowledge of the events that he is describing
from the Old Testament. Third, we know that they must be in the diaspora. They are not in
Another thing to note here is
that historically Jude, I & II Peter, James and Hebrews have been
classified as the general epistles. They are not Pauline, not Johannine. They are sometimes called the “catholic”
epistles because they don’t have a specific set group, like Paul writing to the
church at Colosse or to Philemon, Titus or Timothy.
There is not a specific audience stated, they have a universal audience and so
they were called the catholic [i.e. universal] epistles. But these are not
really catholic or general epistles, they are Jewish epistles. All are written
to Jewish believers in the early church. The early church into the early part
of the first century still had a predominantly Jewish membership. It was more
and more Gentile, especially the further away from
Canonicity
How do we know this is part of the canon? One
of the rules for determining canonicity in the early church was apostolic
authorship, but we have two epistles and two other books that were not written
by apostles. Luke was not an apostle. To be an apostle one had to be chosen by
Jesus Christ, commissioned by Jesus Christ, and also gifted with the spiritual
gift of apostle. Then they were sent out to the church as a whole. But there
was a second classification of apostle and the distinction is
understanding who commissioned them. Barnabas and some others are
mentioned as apostles, but these were those who were commissioned by local
churches and send on specific missions by a local church; they weren’t commissioned
by the Lord Jesus Christ. Jude, James and Luke were not apostles but they
operated within the apostolic community so that what they wrote had the
authority and approval of either an apostle—Luke was a travelling companion of
Paul; another was Mark who wrote the Gospel of Mark who was not an apostle, but
was a companion to Peter. What Mark wrote was ultimately Peter’s account. Jude
and James were both associated with the church in
In terms of the canon Jude’s biggest
challenge was that it seemed to be repetitive in relation to 2 Peter. They
covered the same things and so there is a question there about redundancy. But
once the two epistles are studied together it is realized that 2 Peter is
warning about a coming apostasy and Jude speaks of the fact that it is already
present.
Similarities between Jude and 2 Peter
In Jude 3 there is a similar parallel with
2 Peter 1:5, mostly focussing on just striving for the faith or pursuing
spiritual growth.
In Jude 4 there is the mention of the apostates
as ungodly men who deny the Lord; in 2 Peter 2:1 they are represented as those
who will deny the Lord who bought them.
Jude 6 mentions angels held in eternal
chains until judgment day. This is also mentioned in 2 Peter 2:4.
Jude 7 mentions the judgment of God on
Jude 8 talks about how they are defiled, reject authority, slander dignitaries, characteristic
of false teachers. This is parallel to 2 Peter 2:10.
Jude 9 mentions Michael; also mentioned in
2 Peter 2:11.
Jude 10 talks about the false teachers as “brute
beasts that speak evil.” This is parallel to 2 Peter 2:12.
Jude 11 compares them to following Balaam’s
path. Cf. 2 Peter 2:15.
Jude 12 speaks of them as clouds without
water carried about by the winds—empty of content/truth. 2 Peter
Jude 16, they grumble, complain, lust,
flatter people. This is a parallel of 2 Peter 2:18.
Jude 17 states that this was predicted by
the apostles of the Lord. That parallels 2 Peter 3:2.
There is another way to view this: Jude 3
is seen in 2 Peter 1:5; Jude
How do we explain this similarity? Among
the students of these two books there are three ways to try to explain it. The
first explanation would be that both authors just coincidentally, accidentally
wrote similar epistles. But if we believe that there is a divine plan behind
the content and organization of the New Testament then this can’t be an
accident. There are no accidents in the plan of God. Under the ministry of God
the Holy Spirit as the one who is inspiring the writings of Scripture we must
be confident that He guided both writers, and therefore it is improbable that
they just accidentally wrote about the same things. There was an intentional
reason in the mind of God for why there is such similarity between these two
epistles, and that is something we need to think about. Why do we have two
epistles that are so close to one another? What are the differences? That is
what God the Holy Spirit wants us to learn. The second way of explaining this
that we find is that both writers drew on a common source. This is a typical
way of trying to explain things: that there was some source that we don’t know
anything about that influenced both Jude and Peter. But since there is no
evidence of that kind of a document anywhere that is just really an argument
from silence, speculation, and so that falls short of being a good explanation.
Then the third is that one was influenced by the other. In other words, either
Peter read Jude or Jude read Peter and that there is a relationship to the
other epistle—an intentional relationship in the mind of the writer. So the two
options are that Peter borrowed from Jude. That is, Jude would have written first
and then Peter came along and wrote second, having read Jude’s epistle, and in reading
Jude’s epistle he tries to expand on what Jude has said. In this scenario Jude
would have been written early in the decade of the 60s, somewhere between
60-65, and then 2 Peter would have been written later, somewhere about 65 or
66. That falls into a problem there; there isn’t enough time because of when
Peter was martyred in
The arguments for 2 Peter being first and
Jude second, is indicated by the fact that Jude in verse 3 states, NASB
“Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common
salvation …” In other words, he shows that he had an original intent to write
about their common salvation but then he changed the plan suddenly. “…I felt
the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the
faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.
A third reason why Jude follows 2 Peter is
that Jude refers to prior apostolic warnings concerning false teachers (vv. 17,
18) and that could easily refer to the warning that Peter gave in 2 Peter
3:2-4. Jude is well-read. He cites other sources, for example, from the book of
Enoch which makes it likely that he would have read 2 Peter and possibly cited
from 2 Peter as well. Then a rational argument: if is more likely that a
prominent apostle would be cited in a latter than someone less prominent than
the other way around where a prominent apostle would be citing from someone who
was less well-known.
Style and language
Jude has an interesting style. He is
obviously Jewish but he writes well in Greek and is very comfortable in the
Greek language. He has some interesting characteristics. He uses triads or
triplets; he groups things in threes. There are fourteen groups of threes in
this epistle. For example, in the first verse: called, sanctified, preserved. In verse 2 this is the only epistle that uses
three characteristics in the salutation: “mercy, peace and love be multiplied to you.” Then there are various other groupings,
judgment of God upon sin in the past—the exodus generation, fallen angels,
He uses fifteen words in this epistle that
aren’t found anywhere else in the New Testament. A few of them are found in the
Septuagint and some of them are found in the more classical Greek writers, but
he has a unique vocabulary. His style is definitely distinct; he is not simply
copying or regurgitating something he has read from Peter.
Certain key doctrines are emphasized here.
The first is the importance that he places upon contending for the faith. This
is so important. Believers need to take a stand for doctrinal accuracy and
doctrinal purity and not just slide to the lowest common denominator, which is
the tendency of our age. Second, there is an emphasis on accountability before
God for sin and for false teaching. There will be a judgment some day. Third,
that doctrine related to the angelic invasion of the earth with the intent to
destroy the genetic purity of the human race is mentioned in Jude 6. There is
also an emphasis on eternal security, as stated at the very beginning, that we
are kept or preserved in Jesus Christ, and then at the end, v. 24, “to Him who
is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of
His glory blameless with great joy.” A fifth has to do with representing the
fact that these false teachers would come up from within the ranks and that
they would have an appeal to the sin nature of believers to lead them to
distraction. But the solution is that believers are to build themselves up on
our most holy faith. So we contend for the faith and we are built up by the
faith.
Exposition
A
lot of what we see in the first two verses we have already covered in the
introduction. The first verse talks about Jude as “a bond-servant of Jesus
Christ, and brother of James.” So there are two parts to the opening. The first
is the identification of the writer and the second is the identification of the
recipients which is simply state as “those who are the called, beloved in God
the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ.” This is really an interesting way in
which he begins this introduction, and it applies to most of the other
introductions that we have in the epistles of the New Testament. Jude simply
identifies himself as a servant of Jesus Christ. He is a doulos [douloj],
a slave. We have a cultural problem with the word “slave” coming out of our
history, and slavery in our culture, as in the Roman culture, is the lowest
rung on the social ladder. But this is exactly what the word doulos indicates, it is a word that
doesn’t carry with it any honor or respect in and of
itself. Jude calls himself a slave of the Lord Jesus Christ. He uses the phrase
in a way that is similar to other apostles such as Peter and Paul who did this
as well. It may appear at first glance that this kind opening address in these
epistles is something which is just a formula, just the way they wrote. But that
is not precisely true. When this is compared with other letters that were
written at that time there are similarities but there are also important differences.
When we look at this “slave” terminology
we come to understand something about slavery in the
There is a precedent for this in the Old
Testament. The Old Testament slavery as identified and regulated in the Torah
was not a slavery like that in the