Jude 3

Well, good morning. 

We are here because, and only because, Christ is our sure and steady anchor. Now we turn to God’s Word. We turn to the first chapter of the book of Jude, which is simultaneously the last chapter of the book of Jude. One chapter, one incredibly powerful letter, when we were together last we looked just at the first two verses closely where Jude writes to the church: “Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. May mercy, peace and love be multiplied to you.” Rather than rush by that greeting in haste, we took the time to look at those words and understand what Jude by the Holy Spirit is telling us. Jude, this half-brother of Jesus, writing to a church, a church he describes as those who are called beloved and God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. We are not those who call ourselves, we are not those who keep ourselves. We are the called and we are the kept. And then for this church, for us, for the church, Jude prays, “may mercy, peace and love be multiplied to you.”

I said at the time that my temptation was to rush past those first two verses to get to verse three and of all the five messages that I’ll be preaching on this book, this is the one that takes not two verses, but simply one. You can do the math on what remains; the book falls out. The letter is arranged quite naturally in a way that it falls even to the eye with the greeting and the initial exhortation and then the description of the problem and then well, as we shall see, continuing through four movements until the fifth movement of the letter is a call to persevere with an absolutely glorious benediction. 

But it’s Jude 3, this key verse for today, that has been for me a foundational verse, a hinge verse, one of these verses on which I hang my entire theological understanding because, in my own Christian pilgrimage, it was one of a few verses and in particular the short summary verse, that clarified so many massive theological questions for me. Jude verse three, “Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” That phrase, the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints is a game changer in just the economy of a few words is an absolutely astounding theological clarification. Is Christianity many?

Johnny Cash once sang a cover of another group’s song entitled Your Own Personal Jesus. Is that what Christianity is? Do you just get your own personal Jesus? Is Christianity just your own personal? — Yes, I did quoteJohnny Cash but— shows you the urgency of the hour. Is that what we have our own personal Jesus, our own personal Christianity? Do we walk up to one another and say, “Hey, what’s your doctrine?” Let me tell you my doctrine. Are we just having our own personal Christianity? How do we deal with all the rival claims— to what amount to different Christianities? Not just different understandings of particular doctrines but different Christianities, or what about the argument that Christianity, regardless of how you know yourself or label yourself in the 21st century, is an evolutionary product of Christianities that had existed before? 

This phrase, the faith once and for all delivered to the saints, it’s just incredibly clarifying. Notice how he begins in verse three. He addresses the church as beloved. It’s a very sweet word. He’s writing to his fellow believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and what marks our fellowship is the fact that we are mutually loved. Beloved, first of all, means very clearly loved of God. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever perishes— That is, whosoever believes shall not perish but have everlasting life. Not perish, everlasting life.

For God so loved the world. We are beloved because God the Father loved us he loved us in the Son. “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.” We’re beloved. We’re beloved just in the fellowship of Christ. We love each other. There is the fellowship of the saints, the love that we share, philos: love of brother, love of sister. To be in the church is to be in the beloved. 

My boyhood pastor would often refer to the church and he would say, “Beloved” and it was just a wonderful pastoral greeting that demonstrated not only the love of God in the love of Christ but also his love as a pastor for the congregation. In a similar way, Jude is writing this way to the church, “Beloved,” and then an unusual phrase, “Although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you” and what follows is to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” 

Jude writes of his eagerness to write this letter and then there is a translation and interpretation issue. It doesn’t matter greatly. It’s just interesting for us to pause for a moment, take a look at it. I’m reading from the ESV, “Although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation.”— More on that in just a moment. “I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.” So here’s the question. It’s just an interesting question looking at the words. Is this a letter other than the letter Jude intended to write? Is Jude telling us here, “I’d intended to write another letter but the urgency of the Holy Spirit in this message has required this letter”?

That’s one way to read it. Some translations would translate it virtually in that way. Or is he writing “I wanted to write this letter but given the circumstances, I really wanted to write this letter”? Is it explaining why it’s this letter rather than some other letter or is it explaining why this letter is so emphatic? The fact is we don’t know and it doesn’t matter. It’s just interesting that Jude had written this particular phrase because it at least tells us that Jude is aware of the emphatic tone of his letter. He is aware. He wants the congregation receiving this, the church receiving this letter also to be aware of the fact that there is an emphatic urgency that drives him to call the church to stand in this common faith and to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. 

In any event, we feel that emphatic tone, we understand Jude is telling us “I am writing with intensity. I’m writing with this emphasis. I am writing with this sense of apostolic priority because so much is at stake.” What’s at stake? The faith wants for all delivered to the saints in the passage that will follow, Jude will describe those who’ve come into the church who have infiltrated the church preaching false doctrine and corrupting the common faith. The faith wants for all delivered to the saints. He will speak of them, he will speak of their morality, he’ll speak of their theology, he will speak of the church’s remedy, but we’re not there yet.

We need to look at those other two words that we passed rather quickly. “Beloved, although I was eager, very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary,” he writes. Our common salvation. We share salvation by the same Christ, by the same gospel. The faith that we hold is the faith of our common salvation. Sometimes, Jude is described rightly as one of the Catholic epistles, meaning it’s not written to a specific congregation that is named, but rather it is intended for the church as a whole. Every one of the books of the Bible in the Old and the New Testament is for the church today, the church holding to the faith. Jude writes with that very much in mind, our common salvation. 

But, then he goes on to write about his urgency. “I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Well again, just notice how he’s been writing here. He’s writing to those who are saved, to those who are being kept for Christ, to those who are beloved in God the Father, to those who stand together in our common salvation and then he’s writing an appeal. “I found it necessary to write appealing to you.” Another sense of urgency. This is moral urgency. If someone’s making an appeal to you, it is on the basis of a need and on the basis of shared truth, on the basis in this case of a common faith. Jude is appealing to the church to contend for the faith. Paul will appeal to Christians, “I beseech you brethren by the mercies of God that you present your body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” In 2nd Corinthians chapter five verse 20, Paul writes, “Therefore we are ambassadors for God, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” God making his appeal through us, a beautiful picture of evangelism. This is what God is doing. It is not that we are making an appeal, it is that God is making his appeal through us. Jude writes appealing to the church giving a moral charge that there is a need. The appeal is meet that need. The church is vulnerable, make it strong. The faith is being subverted, contend for it. Contend for the faith once we’re all delivered to the saints. 

Well, this is a revolutionary text. Just think of how the world thinks of Christianity and how so many think of not just Christianity but Christianities. What about the three major branches, the Orthodox Churches, the Catholic Church, and Protestantism? One faith? Three faiths? One Christianity? Three Christianities? And that’s just a hint. Just consider the city of Louisville, Kentucky. You want a picture of the problem? Just drive around Louisville. The Catholic Church, as we shall see, claims an Episcopal succession, apostolic succession going all the way back to Peter and James and in particular Peter

After the Great Schism, the great split of the church between the East and the West, in which you had the Orthodox churches in the East and Catholic Christianity in the West, the Orthodox made a claim to an even greater historical primacy, primarily because they claimed to go all the way back, as even their territory and legacy would point, all the way back to say Jerusalem and Antioch. And so they claim to be historically prior to Catholicism. There are Orthodox Churches here in Louisville, most importantly on Hikes Lane. If you drive down Hikes Lane, you will see an Orthodox Church. Now in Louisville, Kentucky, there aren’t that many Orthodox but nonetheless concentrated, actually, in that part of town, there is a citadel of Eastern Orthodoxy right here in Louisville, Kentucky. 

Then of course Catholicism, the Catholics were here very, very early first coming as fur trappers to this part, of what was later known and is known as the United States, and following the river systems it would be quite natural that there would be be Catholic movement and Catholic peoples who would come into the area. Protestants, however, were primarily responsible for the peopling and the congregationalizing of the city of Louisville, from the time of about the American Revolution and through the 19th century there were tremendous strains, but there was also an enormous growth of the Catholic population and especially German and later Irish Catholics moving into the area. And as you drive around Louisville, you can see so many of the spires and some of the big buildings. You can see so many of the churches named for the saints and you will see some of them very German, some of them very Irish. We also have two boys’ high schools in Louisville to maintain that rivalry. The more Irish-inclined Trinity High School, the more German-inclined Xavier and Brothers. Yes, here we have European Catholicism just about everywhere you look in Louisville, Kentucky, a bishop, by office Archbishop, a cathedral, and then Protestantism. And in that term, I’m including some who cantankerously don’t want to be considered as Protestant and perhaps actually don’t have much of a genetic tie to the Protestant reformers of the 16th century. But nonetheless, let’s just say we have the Orthodox and we have the Catholic and then we have the Protestants here in Louisville, Kentucky. Some of the first Protestants to come into this area were Lutheran and Reformed churches and that had to do with the other patterns of immigration. Lutheran you could quickly understand was the German influence that came in. And so you can look around and you can see a fairly unusually large number of Lutheran churches for a city in the South. But of course, this was right here on the Ohio River, sort of the South sort of not the South and you had very strong Lutheran presence larger than would be in most cities of this size.

The Reformed in this case were most importantly the German-speaking Reformed who came in. And so as you’re downtown and you’re looking around Market Street and you see these churches now aligned with a very liberal UCC or United Church of Christ and you can see the influence of so many of the German Reformed and the others who came in. And then of course there were the Presbyterians. The Presbyterians came quite early in terms of the Scottish Presbyterians coming mostly at a progression westward coming through the mountains in the east and coming into the Ohio Valley. And they came with such eventual strength in numbers that they started a seminary that is now located over here on Alta Vista Road. And it would come to be that even claiming that history, when the two mainline Presbyterian denominations merged, came together were reunited in the 1980s, they chose as their headquarters Louisville, Kentucky, and thus the Presbyterian Center down on the river, that leaves a lot. That leaves the Methodists and the Baptists. 

The Baptist came in because the Baptist would come in. The fact is that the Baptists came in fairly large numbers. Francis Wayland, the president of Brown University, and a cantankerous conversation with an Episcopal bishop who was outraged that the Baptist beat his people to every town and said to Francis Waylan, “Why is it that the Baptists are there before we get there?” And Francis Waylan said, “Quite practically as well as theologically, we don’t ask anyone’s permission,” we don’t have to write anyone’s permission in order for a Baptist to go there and evangelize and congregationalize. So they are everywhere and all kinds of Baptists too. Then along came the Methodist as well, especially driven by massive Methodist expansionary spirit in the early 19th century and then the Second Great Awakening and then right on through the time. And so as you drive around Louisville, you will see a good number of Methodist churches and a good number of Baptist churches.

And then there are some other churches because also in the 19th century the movement led by Alexander and Thomas Campbell, the Restoration Movement as they called themselves, they started churches and this got really messy because many of the churches that became Christian churches of one sort or another, later Disciples of Christ or the Churches of Christ, and most of those were not taken by the way, they were not formerly another church. They were established as churches of Christ and then independent Christian churches, they emerged all over the area. And that led to a real question, a very deep definitional question. You drive down just you leave the seminary, you take Lexington Road, and you make the curve you get on Shelbyville Road, one of the first major churches you see is Beargrass Christian Church. Okay, now we’re in sensitive territory, because that was Beargrass Baptist Church and thus you see some of the dynamic that was going on during the period, especially the late 19th and the early 20th centuries.

And so one of the distinctive teachings of the claim of Alexander Thomas Campbell was the restoration of the church. In other words, the true church, the New Testament church was not now an appearance. It must be brought back into appearance. It was a restoration movement and it was a form of what theologically we would call Primitivism, which is to say the goal was to go back to primitive Christianity. The Churches of Christ took that a little more seriously than some of the other branches of that movement. But nonetheless, we go back to primitive Christianity and that’s when the Baptists, the Baptists got mad. Walnut Street Baptist Church, by the way, was the merger of First Baptist Church and Second Baptist Church when both of those churches split over the same questions and they established a church on Walnut Street. It’s no longer on Walnut Street and there isn’t even anymore a Walnut Street, but that’s the history nonetheless. 

So Baptists just decided we needed our own form of Primitivism. We needed to make our own claim. And this gets back to the fact that there are limited ways to make the argument that your church is right. There are limited ways to make the argument that your understanding that might be collectivized into a denomination. There are limited ways to say, “Here’s how we know we’re right.”

And the Baptists decided in the 19th century, some of them and the some of them were primarily located in first of all in Lexington, Kentucky, in a church where Hershael York would later serve as pastor. There came something called the Trail of Blood, an argument of Baptist secessionism arguing that it was indeed in Jerusalem that the First Baptist Church was established. But then you have to track church history as best you can do, because it’s messy, and you have to avoid more than you can claim. And so the Baptist argument was here’s a succession you fall through. Eventually, you get people like the Waldensians in your trail of blood. That means faithful Christianity even to the point of death and martyrdom. I mean you track it through and then you understand, well, we have a problem. The problem is not just historical, although it is that, the problem is more urgently theological. 

So what is the argument for your Christianity? What is the argument for your understanding of how we find the faith, the church? What kind of argument are you going to make? There is that primitive argument, there is that historical argument, but let’s just turn to Orthodoxy. How are you going to make the case for the fact that the Orthodox Churches are the vessel of Christianity? What’s the argument made? The argument that is made is apostolic priority. The argument made is pointing back to James and to Peter and saying that they’re, and in the succession from them defined by the faith of the first seven councils of the church and continuing on, that’s where you find true Christianity and it is ontologically organizationally tied to a succession of Episcopal authorities— eventually known and represented by the patriarchs of Eastern Christianity. The Catholic argument is “we’re the Catholic Church.” The Catholic Church defines itself also by apostolic succession. The succession is primarily seen through the Pope and through the bishops of the church later in its development seen in the magisterium or the doctrinal authorities of the church of which the pope is the earthly head, the prince of the church, the Vicar of Christ. Here’s the amazing thing. Before we leave the Orthodox and the Catholics, let’s at least concede something and that is that antiquity is a powerful argument. It’s a very powerful argument. But, before we leave Orthodoxy and Catholicism and explain our own understanding, let’s just pause to affirm that antiquity is of essential importance. The question is where do we find the right antiquity? That’s where the Protestants found themselves affirming Sola Scriptura, yes, we need a church that is so primitive it is indeed based upon the foundation of the prophets and the apostles going back before all preachers, before all priests, before all bishops, before all councils, before all creeds and the diet of orders. What was it that Luther said? He said, “Popes may err, councils may err, but the word of God cannot err.” Just to make the point, there is no Christian authenticity without that concern for getting back to apostolic Christianity.

A lot for us to consider here. By the time you get to the end of the fourth century, we have a summary of Christianity, the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. So it became known as the Apostles’ Creed. It was certainly based upon earlier apostolic testimony, a way of summarizing the faith, but again, you see the need even in early Christianity. We knew that already because of events even in the second and third centuries that called for this kind of definition. How do we know? Vincent of Lerins prominent Christian theologian, in the year 495 he died, we don’t know when he was born, but we do know roughly when he died, he came up with an understanding of how to find rightful, truthful, biblical, orthodox doctrine with the three ubies (every) he said that the true faith is that which Christians have held everywhere, always, by all. In other words, you look for a theological consensus of Orthodox Christianity, of true Christianity throughout time with all the vicissitudes of time, with all the changes that come with all the doctrinal challenges to be faced. Where is that doctrinal consensus? Where is the Christianity, the singular Christianity held by all people, everywhere, always? There’s real logic to Vincent of Larens what became known as the Vincentian Canon. There’s a real logic to that because that is what we’re looking for, right? We’re looking for the faith held by all Christians everywhere, always, by all. Problem is that’s a lot easier said than done. Frankly, it was a lot easier said than done in the fifth century and we’re now in the 21st century. The Almanac of American Denominations, which probably isn’t even published anymore in the digital age, but it grew from this to that in the 20th century. We got groups coming up everywhere. 

Again, how are we going to answer the issue of apostolic succession? The Catholic and the Orthodox answer to apostolic succession and there are variances, but basically they stand with this common definition in rival claims. They basically say the apostolic succession is through bishops. Through bishops. That’s how you track it. It’s not through individual Christians, it’s not through Christian congregations. It is through bishops that the apostolic secession is to be found. The Protestant answer is “Where is our apostolic secession?” How do we answer that if that’s the question that wants the answer?

The Protestants had to think this through very hard and they came to the conclusion that we must also claim apostolic succession. If it’s true Christianity, it’s going to be the faith that was handed by Christ to the apostles and by the apostles taught to the church. But how do you find that? And once again, the Reformer said, “This is our access to apostolic Christianity. Again, it comes back to the Scripture, and by the way, Luther and Calvin, the other magisterial reformers and later the Baptists and others with them, were saying, “Look, what we are seeking is reformation by the Word.” We are seeking the reformation of the church by the apostolic teaching on apostolic authority. “Creeds may err, counsels may err, but the Word of God cannot err.” 

But, that raises the problem of doctrinal development and you’re saying “this is getting kind of deep,” well, it is deep. How do you get to, say, the Baptist Faith and Message or the Abstract of Principles from the New Testament? Well, the answer is that the church has had to define the faith in ways that were pressed upon it by circumstances internal, sometimes circumstances external. The classic example that you’ve already imagined is the doctrine of the Trinity. The word Trinity isn’t found in the Bible, but it became necessary to the Christian faith, not to Christian faiths, but to the Christian faith. It became very necessary, very early, in order to be able to say simultaneously that God is one and that the Father is God and the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God. Eventually, the church had to figure out, we believe led by the Holy Spirit, most importantly upon the clear teachings of Scripture, what it meant to identify false heretical claims of Christianity on the one hand, an authentic New Testament, apostolic, orthodox Christianity on the other hand.

This issue of the development of doctrine became very, very crucial for me. I arrived as a seminary student here in 1980 and I had just become really awakened to the problem of doctrinal development. It hit me squarely before the eyes I perceived it, but I perhaps hadn’t even named it for what it was, but it hit me squarely between the eyes. Eight o’clock on Wednesday morning of my first weekend class when Timothy George, professor of Church History in Norton 195 walked up to the podium and he introduced himself this way, he said, “Hello, my name is Timothy George. I’m here to teach you Church History, which means I’m here to convince you that there is someone between your grandmother and Jesus and it matters.” Well, there was someone between my grandmother and Jesus and it does matter and I was hooked, but the problem of doctrinal development is seen and just asking yourself the question, would a believer in Antioch recognize translation allowable? What was preached in your church this past Lord’s day? Would the apostles recognize the faith as presented by your church? The doctrine and teaching of your church is the doctrine that they had received from Christ?

We’re all conditioned by history. There’s no way around that. We are, we human beings, we congregations, we denominations, we’re buffeted by all kinds of questions that come to us. The church is always having to answer new questions. A part of what even we see here in Jude is that the church is always having to address heresies. Most of them very old, but some of them occasioned by something new, sometimes a combination of both. The Protestants did not reject apostolic authority as the issue. They pointed back though, beyond the history of Medieval Christianity or even of ancient orthodoxy to the Scripture. Luther didn’t begin with the principle of Sola Scriptura of the authority of Scripture alone. He was forced there by the logic of his own argument. Just as with Sola Fide. The modern era, is all we have a picture of evolutionary diversity from primitive Christianity to the multi-form, pluriformity of Christianity in the modern era? So we’re doomed. If what’s being taught down the street at the UCC congregation is supposed to be the same faith we are teaching, we are in big trouble.

These lines of division aren’t new, but boy, they certainly are made more urgent in our time. It’s not like we’re all of a sudden in some part of the Balkans where you might have some Protestants and some Catholics and some Orthodox in an uncomfortably small territory. That’s not it. We’re in a place like Louisville, Kentucky or wherever we are in the larger western world. We’re in a situation in which there are Anglicans and Episcopalians and who by the way make their own apostolic claim of succession succession through bishops, which is one of the reasons why they have someone to ask permission, as Francis Wayland dismissed. And nonetheless, you’ve got all these groups, you have all these churches who have all these brand names. Are we just left with the inevitability that historical conditioning and different circumstances will just lead to different Christianities and they can all just use the name, we can all just share the name and that’s the end of it? I think not.

Liberal Christianity is represented by someone like Adolf von Harnack in his Development of Doctrine said that the church is simply evolving doctrine all the time. Let’s just be honest about it. And this came by the way, Darwin’s evolutionary theories gave a very, very convenient intellectual structure onto which to put an understanding of how doctrine changes it evolves, it gets more complicated. Harnack said that primitive Christianity had been lost throughout the creeds and councils and the doctrinal development of the church so that the apostles would not recognize Christianity if they were to walk into a German church in the 19th century. But of course, Adolf Harnack was no orthodox evangelical Protestant. He said that in order to get back to what the apostles would recognize as the simple worship of Jesus and a simple Christian morality. Basically it, you get rid of all these claims about omniscience and omnipotence, all these Greek accretions, he said.

The Germans were extremely unhelpful in this regard. Walter Bauer, along came what was called the Bauer Thesis, and the Bauer Thesis, and you’re saying, “I’m getting a little hungry and we’re in the Bauer thesis.” The Bauer thesis suggests that there is no such thing as orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is just what the powerful called their clarification of Christianity for their own purposes. So there is no orthodoxy, give up trying to find orthodoxy, heresy precedes orthodoxy and it’s the heresy that is basic, not the orthodoxy. A pivotal point in my thinking was this, I am looking at the liberal arguments. The liberal arguments are “just give up on orthodox Christianity, give up on a faith once for all delivered to the saints, recognize there’s an evolutionary process, doctrine evolves and just get used to it.” You can go back and use as much of the language as you want, which is why liberal churches can always read the creed. That’s what people once believed. That’s that’s reflective of that era. But, doctrine develops and once the modern scientific age comes, we don’t believe in a virgin birth anymore. We don’t believe in a bodily resurrection anymore. We don’t believe in those biblical definitions of sin anymore. We don’t believe in anything like substitutionary atonement but, be at peace because it’s all just evolving anyway. 

By the time you get to the late 19th century, and this is where my intellectual juices, this is where my calling as a theologian, got really, really clarified. I came into conversation with a man by the name of John Henry Newman. And John Henry Newman was an Anglican in the 19th century and he understood that the Anglican claim to doctrinal authority was looking pretty weak partly because of the liberal theology that was coming in so fast, and you had so many Anglicans who were simply saying, “okay, we can do that. Yesterday we believed the creed today we don’t believe it anymore. We just still say it, we don’t believe it.” And John Henry Newman, he first tried this very high church tractarian route. Some of you’ll know about this in which they tried to make the Church of England far more like the Catholic Church in order to emphasize the sacraments so they could kind of avoid the theological questions, but it didn’t work. And eventually, John Henry Newman converted and became the most famous convert from the Church of England to Catholicism in the 19th century, and he eventually became St. Henry Newman, because he was a big get, okay, John Henry Newman was a big get, that was a big trophy to put on the Catholic wall. So he’s now a saint. And you see lots of things named for him. The student centers and a lot of universities are Newman centers for John Henry Newman. But John Henry Newman said, I had to come to terms with doctrinal development and here’s what I came to terms with. “You’ve got to have a pope and a magisterium because somebody’s got to handle this and the church can’t handle it. I mean you’re going to trust church members with trying to figure out what’s orthodoxy and heresy?” And frankly, evidently, the Church of England couldn’t handle it. But then again, it was a denomination started by a guy who was divorcing his wives and that’s why he wanted to, as Newman actually said at one point, you can only look for so much orthodoxy in a church that was established by so much confusion. So we got to be Catholic, we got to be Catholic, and then we trust the Pope and the magisterium. That’s what we do. And then he gave some principles whereby the doctrinal development was to take place, but at the end of the day he had no argument against the Pope just determining with the magisterium of the church what Christianity is and it sticks. And Newman lived long enough to sort of, in a weird way, regret that when the Pope would declare himself by his own infallible teaching infallible. And John Henry Newman was in a quandary because he really hadn’t wanted to go that far, but he gave the Pope that authority in his own system, and the Pope went that far. So guess what? You got a pope, he popes. 

So where does that leave us? The great clarifying issue to me, as an evangelical, as a Baptist, yes, but as a Christian, the great clarification came to me in Jude three, the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. This is written for the church throughout all time. It’s not just for the church in the first century. It’s not just the church in the first century. That is to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. It is we who bear this and until Jesus comes, this is the church’s charge: to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. So where are we going to find it? I can find no more faithful answer to that question than the answer given by the Protestant Reformers in the 16th century. And that is that we drive back to Scripture. We are indeed driven back to Scripture and then based upon the soul normative authority of Scripture, we find where faithfulness tracks throughout the history of the church. Sometimes the faithfulness is thin, sometimes it’s thick. That means we come to a year like 325 in the Council of Nicea, where there is going to be a definition adopted. That definition will either be consistent with biblical truth or not. It’s not just Christology that’s on the line, whether Jesus is very God and very man, it’s whether or not the Son is of the same substance as the Father. And that may sound technical, but it comes down to whether or not Jesus is actually the son of God in every way. 

And the church, the church gathered together and the bishops who were there in the year 325 and there wasn’t anyone who was called a Baptist there, but orthodoxy was there, the Christian faith was there. The Christian faith was defined there. The Christian faith was defended there. We stand here not upon the authority of the Council of Nicea, but we stand on the authority of the Scriptures. But, Niceaea stood on that authority and that’s one of those turning points in history where we simply have to say orthodoxy prevailed and heresy was exposed and that was the church’s responsibility to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. 

And then we tracked through the history of the Christian Church and based upon the scriptural norm and based upon our understanding that yes, the church has had to come to a deeper understanding of these things, the church has had to apply biblical truth to challenges and to questions that were not directly addressed in the New Testament. The church is assailed by those who would seek to come in and preach false doctrine and sometimes, yes, sometimes the ears of the faithful are actually alerted to the necessity to define doctrine rightly and biblically. Not by hearing the orthodox biblical expression and saying, “I agree with that,” but hearing heresy and false teaching and saying, “That can’t be right.”

Unapologetically, the church’s responsibility is then both positive and negative. But then that drives us into the text. Just look at it with me. Paul has made very similar statements but now comes Jude. He appeals to us to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. To contend. Just think with me for a moment. To contend that’s to be ready to make an argument. To contend means to understand that sometimes this means an intellectual battle. Sometimes this means theological argument. Sometimes this means appealing to the church to love the truth and to hate the error, to embrace and to define the faith once for all delivered to the saints in order to expose false doctrine, sometimes the church bears that responsibility in our own generation, brothers and sisters, we bear this responsibility on a host of issues that I need not name at this moment. You know that your generation in a way that exceeds even the generation of those of us in this room, some of us once dead, if the Lord tarries, will depend on you to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints as will successive generations of Christians until Jesus comes. 

You say, “I don’t like to be contentious and it’s a negative word,” and you don’t want to be except when you have to be. You’re the only person in the room who says, “It’s not enough to say that the Son is of similar substance as the Father.” If you’re the one person in the room who says, “No, the Son must be of the same substance as the Father.” You recognize that whether or not Jesus as our substitutionary Savior can save comes down to whether or not he’s similar or same. Contend for that faith. 

Secondly, is the once for all. Isn’t that liberating? Once for all. We don’t have to wake up and wonder what Christianity we’re supposed to stay up with and catch up with. And so, it really is a great, great deliverance for us to know that the faith was delivered once. Once, you say, “Where was the once?” Was it Jesus teaching on the shores of Galilee? Yes, it was that. Was it the apostles in the upper room? Yes, it was that. Was it Pentecost? Yes, it was that. Was it the church in Rome receiving the letter from Paul to Rome? Yes, it was that. It’s this brothers and sisters, this is the faith once for all delivered to the saints. And there is such great security in that. There are others who find security in a pope and a magisterium. How’s that working out for ’em? Especially, with this Pope? That’s another sermon, don’t worry. But, you look at this and you go, “You know, we’ve got nowhere else to go.” Once for all delivered means we are not looking for the new and improved Christianity. And yes, I know it’s a redundancy to say new and improved, but nonetheless advertisers use it. It’s neither new nor improved. If it’s new, it’s not improved.

Once for all delivered, just as we’re leaving, let’s just think about that “delivered” again. We did not call ourselves, we cannot keep ourselves, as in the first two verses, and we cannot deliver the faith. We’re not waiting for any human to bring us the faith. We’re not waiting for any new authority to bring us the faith. It was delivered and that was once for all. It’s done. No messenger is going to arrive at us from doctrinal headquarters to say, “Here’s a new doctrine.” No angel is to be tolerated among us, who would say, “I’m bringing you a new doctrine.” It’s a faith once for all delivered.
And then finally to the saints. It’s delivered to us. Now it means two things, just as we close. It means that the faith belongs to Christ’s church. It doesn’t belong to the world, it doesn’t belong to the academy, it doesn’t belong to the academic societies. It doesn’t belong by the way to the Baptists or the Presbyterians or the Methodists. It doesn’t belong to the Orthodox or the Catholics. It belongs to the saints. And the saints are defined as those who are regenerate believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, here’s where we are. The saints bear a responsibility to contend for the faith once we’re all delivered to the saints. And that means we’ve got to be always aware in our own time of the challenges that come unique to the time. We also have to be constantly aware of the challenges that seem to show up everywhere among all people, in all times, perennial heresies. We also have to avoid the temptation as to thinking we can have our own personal Christianity. And what is foreclosed for us is the liberal idea that Christianity is just an evolutionary thing, that has evolved and will evolve further. Brothers and sisters, we are not evolving. We are to be found worshiping, teaching, preaching, and contending for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. 

There’s more to be said. There’s a lot more to be thought. There’s a lot more to be done. But I hope you share with me the great inexpressible joy of knowing that I do not bear responsibility for my own personal Christianity. I want to be found standing with Jesus and with the apostles. I want to teach exactly what the apostles taught the church, that they were taught of Christ. That’s going to take me, it’s going to take you, continuously back to Scripture and it is going to make us want to hang around with people who love Christ and are determined to do the same. We are informed by faithful Christians throughout the centuries. We want to stand in place as the next in line.
Let’s pray. Father, we are so thankful for all you have given us in every word of Scripture, in this one verse. Thank you for liberating us from our own religion and calling us to faithfulness in Christ, the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Father, may we be found, faithful and faithful in it and faithful to Christ. 

We pray in the name of Christ our Lord, Amen.