Our Common Salvation

Tonight we’re going to be looking at Jude 3-4 and we get to what we could call Jude’s thesis statement. In these verses we see exactly why Jude is writing, what the main purpose of his writing is, and really this is a summary of what the entire letter is going to be about. What I love about Jude in this introduction that we are gonna read is how brutally honest he is. What we are going to see is that the letter that Jude wanted to write is not the letter that is being sent out. As we’re going to see, events have taken place and people have taught certain things that are a threat to the spiritual wellbeing of the church. What Jude is doing is addressing the great need of the hour but as we’re going to see, there are other things, other topics that he would much rather be addressing because they are more joyful. Or maybe because they are something that is easier to address and as a pastor, let me say that I totally relate to that. There are so many times in ministry where I would have much rather written or preached or counseled someone on a different topic but things happen in time where it is our duty as ministers of the Gospel to attend to what is happening first. I think of just a month or so ago when we bombed Iran, that was something that I didn’t want to talk about but we did. It would have been so much easier to either pretend it didn’t happen or avoid it. There are times where I’ve been talking to people and they are very clearly caught up in some false beliefs or false teaching and it would be easy to just listen and encourage. But that can’t be who we are as messengers of the Gospel. We have the responsibility to stand for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, no matter how the world may respond. We need to remember what Adrian Rogers once said: The church is not a showboat, it’s a battleship and you were born for the battle. There’s this misconception amongst many Christians and many unbelievers that the Christian should be a passive pacifist when it comes to the actions and teachings of the world. There’s this thought that Christians need to stay in their lane and only mingle with themselves but what we are going to see in Jude is that the Christian life isn’t about just playing defense, it’s about playing offense as well. We are to defend Scripture, defend our faith, but at the same time, we are to do battle with the forces of darkness. Paul says in Ephesians 6:12 “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.” He then goes on to write the famous passage about the armor of God but remember that with that armor, there is also a sword. Not everything in the Christian life is about playing defense. We have the responsibility to not just defend the truth but to actively contend for the truth. Let’s open up in prayer and then we will look at verse 3-4.

Jude 3–4 NASB95

Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, 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. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Unity between Believers (Verse 3a)

As we start making our way through verse 3, I want us to stop and look just at the first half of this verse. We see that from the very first word that Jude is writing to people that he loves. In some translations like the NIV and CSB, we see Jude address the people he is writing to as, “dear friends.” There’s this term of endearment that is designated to the people of God. Remember, last week in verse 2 we saw that Christians are those that are beloved in God the Father. Knowing that Jude so greatly loves these fellow brothers and sisters in the faith, it makes perfect sense that he feels compelled to write what he is going to write in this short letter but before we even get to the content of this letter, I want us to look at the content of the letter that Jude wanted to write. Jude says at the beginning of verse 3, “I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation.” What was it that Jude originally wanted to write about? He wanted to write about salvation. Specifically, it seems that he wanted to write about how salvation is a unifying mark of all Christian believers. Jude wanted to write about the unity that we have through salvation in Jesus Christ. So let’s talk about that, what is so special about this common salvation? What is so important about this unity that we have through Christ? Despite all of our physical differences that we have, we are more united through Jesus Christ because of what He has done, than if we all looked exactly the same. We are united in one salvation and there is only one true salvation. There is no salvation outside of Jesus Christ. Acts 4:12 is a verse that many of us are probably familiar with: “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” How is salvation common? How is it unifying? Because it is located solely in one place, in one person. We as Christians, all Christians, have Christ as the chief cornerstone on which we stand and in which we unite. Paul says in Ephesians 4:4-6

Ephesians 4:4–6 NASB95

There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

All Christians will find themselves united at this point. If we are not united to this point, this point of salvation through Christ alone, then we are not united to Christ in salvation. What we also know about the Christian faith, about the common salvation that Jude wanted to write about is that is a salvation for all peoples, all tribes, all nations, and all tongues. So often Paul and Scripture testifies to the fact that God tears down dividing walls of hostility and binds together in the Gospel. Paul says in Galatians 3:28–29 “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.” I love how Tim Keller commented on these verses: “The gospel has radical social implications. It means I am a Christian before I am anyone or anything else. It means that all the barriers that separate people in the world into warring factions come down in Christ.” Even if we look just as verse 28 we see 3 of the greatest warring factions to borrow Keller’s term that have existed throughout the entirety of human existence, albeit after the fall. We see the racial divide is torn down. Jews and Greeks, in Paul’s day that was really all there was. You were either a Jew or you were a Greek or Gentile. What the Gospel says is that is no longer you primary identifying marker. Isn’t race still an issue today? Race has always been an issue! In the Gospel, in Christ, we see that the color of your skin does not determine whether or not we can be united in Christ. Paul also says that in Christ there is neither slave nor free. This means that there is no class barrier. This means that we as believers reach beyond the poverty line and don’t resent those that are well off. Economic barriers should not exist within the Body of Christ. Finally Paul mentions what could have been considered the biggest barrier in his day and it certainly seems like the biggest barrier in our day and that’s the issue of gender. The Gospel tears down even the gender divide. The war between man and woman. In Paul’s day women were not seen as equals. It was obviously a very male dominated world and so let me say this very carefully, for those that argue that the Bible is oppressive to women, no the Bible is much more progressive than anything else that we see at the time it was written. Specifically, it was progressive in a God-honoring way. It was only in the Christian religion where women were finally respected, where women were no longer seen as inferior but as someone that was to be cherished as an image-bearer of God. In Scripture, in the Christian faith, we see women in God-ordained roles that were not designed to minimize women but were designed to allow them to be faithful co-laborers in the Gospel. Now this does not mean that we should take everything that men are commanded to do in Scripture and automatically apply it to women. What it does mean is that you are not less or more in the eyes of the Lord and in the gospel based on the gender that God has made you to be. In these 3 warring factions, God has brought them together in the only possible way that they could be united: in Jesus. How important is unity amongst believers? It is a total necessity and it cannot be avoided. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “The unity amongst Christians is a unity which is quite inevitable because of that which is true of each and every one. I sometimes think that that is the most important principle of all. With all this talk about unity, it seems to me, we are forgetting the most important thing, which is that unity is not something that man has to produce or to arrange: true unity between Christians is inevitable and unavoidable.” As the Body of Christ, we must be united. So, what is it then that Jude writes about in this short letter? We see what he hoped to write on, but what was it that he wrote on that he feels so strongly about that he calls it a necessity?

The Battle for the True Gospel (Verse 3b)

Jude says in the middle of verse 3, “I felt the necessity to write to you you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.” Jude is writing so that the people of God would earnestly fight for the faith and the true Gospel. Now obviously this doesn’t mean through violence. Jude isn’t calling for the crusades and the crushing of the infidels. No, he is calling that the united body of Christ would be bold as lions in the defense of the true Christian faith. I’m not sure if you know this or not, but it is the responsibility of all Christians, not just the giants of the faith, to defend their faith. Remember what Peter says in 1 Peter 3:14–15 “But even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. And do not fear their intimidation, and do not be troubled, but sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.” This isn’t just something for the master apologist or the seasoned theologian, no every Christian must be able to give a defense with gentleness and reverence for the hope that they have in Jesus Christ. We must always be ready to stand boldly for the one, true Gospel. Spurgeon said and I totally agree with that, “The great business of the saints is to defend, if necessary with their lives, the faith once delivered to them. We are put in trust with the Gospel. We are trustees of a divine deposit of invaluable truth, and we must be true to our trust at all costs.” No matter what the cost may be to us, we must be ready to defend. We must be ready to stand against the world for the truth. Even if we must physically stand alone, we cannot bow to the demands of the world, we cannot submit to the preferences of fallen and sinful man and leaders. No, church history is filled with examples of men and women that boldly stood for the true Gospel regardless of what was being taught and regardless of what was demanded of them. Centuries ago there was a man named Athanasius and in the year 319, there was a controversy that blew up within the church known as the Arius controversy. Arius was a deacon in Alexandria and he believed and started teaching that Jesus was not eternal, that Jesus was a created being. This controversy which became this heretical teaching known as Arianism was a direct assault on the deity of Christ and it risked tearing the church away from the true Gospel. But in 321, Athanasius wrote a scathing critique of Arius thoughts and Arius was deemed as a heretic but the battle for the truth didn’t end at the Synod in 321. For the rest of his life Athanasius would stand and defend the true Christian faith that was once for all handed down to the saints. For the next 52 years of his life, Athanasius would stand against Arianism. In his lifetime, Athanasius would be exiled 5 different times by 4 different emperors that all stood for Arius’ teaching. Yet by the providence of God and the faithfulness of that man, we continue to have the unadulterated Gospel that testifies to the full deity of Jesus Christ. In history, when one thinks about Athanasius, they often think of the phrase Athanasius Contra Mundum: Athanasius against the world. Athanasius boldly stood against that which was a plain denial of Scripture even when the entire world seemed to be against him. Think of someone like William Tyndale. It is through Tyndale that we have the Bible in English. Tyndale almost singlehandedly is responsible for the translation from Greek and Hebrew into English and he did it when both the Pope and the political world stood against this work. There was a time in England where it was illegal to own a copy of an english bible and this was largely because Rome was afraid of “commoners” having access to Scripture. There was this thought that the commoner couldn’t understand what the Bible taught and if they couldn’t understand it, they would need someone to interpret it and this could only be done through the Roman Catholic church and its leaders. At this time in England and in many places around the world, the Catholic mass was entirely in Latin but no one could understand it. The people would go and get absolutely nothing out of it and the Bible that the priests would use would actually be chained to the pulpit so that no one else could read it. Tyndale said, “No, the Word must be given to the people.” Tyndale so strongly believed in the need to pass the true Scriptures to the people that he told a Roman cleric that was totally ignorant of the Bible: “If God spare my life, ere many years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost." As we can see in the teachings of the Catholic church, that really wasn’t that hard of a task to get to in the sense that they had so greatly butchered the Gospel, that it is only through the providence of God that we see the true Gospel come out. Tyndale would go through so many trials and he was a criminal and he went to Germany to the only place that was willing to print his english New Testament but in 1535, Tyndale was arrested and he was eventually put to death. Within 2 years of his death though, John Rogers, one of Tyndale’s closest laborers in the task, published under the Thomas Matthews, released what is known as the Matthews Bible. This Bible featured the entirety of Tyndale’s New Testament, as much of the Old Testament as he released, and whatever wasn’t finished would be completed by Rogers or Myles Coverdale. By the year 1539, practically every church in England would have the Coverdale Bible, a complete English translation of the Bible. Tyndale’s work was so accurate that when the King James version was being translated that they used approximately 90% of Tyndale’s translation. Tyndale stood against the entire Roman church and the entire English government, largely alone, because he knew that the Gospel needed to reach the ears of all people in a way that they understood. And we don’t have the time to really look at him but we can’t forget the famous scene of Martin Luther at the Council of Worms. It is because of Luther that we had the Protestant Reformation, the return to the true Gospel. To quickly summarize, Luther was called to the city of Worms for what was basically a heresy trial and as Luther stood before the court, a table was before him that was full of his sermons and books and Johannes Eck asked 2 questions: “Martin Luther, are these your books? And do you recant of what you have written?” Luther had written and said a whole lot so he asked for the evening to look at his writings again. The next day Luther stood before the court and said the words that shook the Papacy and the world: “I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.” Here I stand. Church where do you stand? Where are you digging your heels in for battle? It shouldn’t surprise any of us that truth is under attack on every side. The world is not necessarily anti-christian, the world is anti-Christ and the world will only be anti-christian to the extent that the church aligns itself with Christ. The world will not care about the church that looks just like the world but the world will despise the church that looks like Christ. Each of us this day is presented with the challenge of whom they will stand for. Will you stand for Christ, His Word, and His truth? Or will you sit down and let the world stroll deeper into depravity? Luther said, “If I profess with loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except that little point which the world and the Devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.” The faith that we must stand for is the faith that has been passed down to us through the apostles. No other Gospel will do. No other Gospel can save. Jude was concerned in his own day about the perversion of the gospel and the denial of Jesus Christ and if that was true in his day, only years after the events had taken place, should we not be concerned about it in our day? In order to defend the true Gospel, we must know the true Gospel. John writes in 2 John 9–11 “Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.” In Jude and John’s day, they had everything that they needed in order to be saved. God has spoken finally and authoritatively. John MacArthur said, “The authors of the New Testament did not discover the truths of the Christian faith through mystical religious experiences. Rather God, with finality and certainty, delivered His complete body of revelation in Scripture. Any system that claims new revelation or new doctrine must be regarded as false. God’s Word is all-sufficient; it is tall that believers need as they contend for the faith and oppose apostasy within the church.” What was the apostasy that was brewing in the church in Jude’s day? Look again at Jude 4 “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

The Great Denial (Verse 4)

What happens in Jude 4 is what happens when their is laxity in the church, when there is laxity in matters of doctrine and interpretation, specifically in regards to essentials of the faith. There are things in Christianity that if you take them away, you no longer have the Christian faith. There are numerous things that are non-essential that I believe we can disagree on and still be united in a common salvation. Take a doctrine like the Millennial kingdom. You can be post-mill and I can be amill and we can still be united in the Gospel because we both firmly believe that the return of Christ is a core teaching of the Christian faith. Our views on election, though important can still differ as long as we both believe that salvation is by faith alone, through grace alone, in Christ alone. There are certainly secondary issues, secondary doctrines, that we can disagree on but still be united in the Gospel. Jude warns though that people have crept into the church and have intentionally taught a false gospel. Notice too that he says that this isn’t the world outside of the church tossing grenades at the church, this is happening within the body. That’s the biggest threat to the church to be honest. When weak men stand in the pulpit and allow false teachers to come in and teach a false gospel, that will do more damage within the church than anything outside the church will ever do. Outside the church, the worst thing that the world can do is kill you and all that is is a graduation to glory. But inside the church, we see that the devil is prowling like a roaring lion waiting to devour someone. This is why we must be so very careful with who we put before you to teach and I go as far as to who I recommend that you listen to and read. You will never hear me or any leader here recommend a person that teaches the prosperity gospel or any other gospel outside of the one that is clearly revealed in Scripture. We have a responsibility as shepherds in the church to gather sheep and drive away wolves. And we have the responsibility as shepherds to feed you all a healthy spiritual diet. So, we do all that we can to not give a platform to someone that will spread falsehoods and promote false teachings. What Jude warns about in verse 4 are people that take the grace of God and use it to live immoral and shameful lives. These are those that say things like, “God is so gracious and God is so loving and He wants you to be happy so live how you want.” They are those that are all grace but no justice. This isn’t something new, this is something that the apostles had already been warning people about. Paul in Romans 6:1–2 “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” Even Paul recognized that there were people in the world that would so presume the grace of God that it would allow them to live however they want. God’s grace is not an excuse for us to pursue immoral lives. We cannot approach grace with the mindset of, “Well, God will just forgive me anyway.” David Helm says of verse 4, “Is there a verse in the Bible more appropriate for our day than this one? When we talk about certain people taking advantage of God’s grace, we need to listen. It is too easy and convenient to assume that when Jude speaks of certain people, he speaks to others and not to us. But this verse reveals our underbelly. Isn’t Jude’s trouble with insiders? Didn’t they creep in unnoticed? The truth is, this verse unmasks our propensity. Who among us, if left alone by the Holy Spirit for a single second, might not risk all Heaven holds for a moment of earthly satisfaction. Daily, the temptation is to presume upon grace.” What else are these false teachers that have crept into the church doing? They “deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” Even in the days of Jude we see the Lordship Salvation controversy coming into the church. Do any of you remember the Lordship Salvation controversy of the late 80’s and 90’s? MacArthur was really THE guy that stood for Lordship salvation. Basically what the issue boiled down to was could someone be a Christian without submitting to Christ as Lord. Like is it possible to be saved solely through accepting Christ as Savior but denying Him as Lord and master of your life. The answer is no. A.W. Pink in the 1950’s said, “No one can receive Christ as His Savior while he rejects Him as Lord. Therefore, those who have not bowed to Christ’s scepter and enthroned Him in their hearts and lives, and yet imagine that they are trusting Him as Savior, are deceived.” The controversy comes down to this: Can I have Christ as my savior without submitting to Him as Lord and King? Some will argue that if we have to submit to Christ as Lord that salvation is no longer purely by faith. But to have faith in Christ, to submit to Christ, to be saved by Christ means that we have come to Him in all that He is and that is both as Lord and Savior. You cannot separate one aspect of Him from the other. To submit to Christ as Savior means that we must also submit to Him as Lord. What we see in Jude 4 and what we see throughout the history of the world is that people will always try to deny who Christ clearly is in Scripture. To deny who Jesus is is a terrible offense and a blasphemous sin. That is how false teaching becomes false teaching. If we have to alter the Scriptures or alter Jesus in order for Him to fit into our teaching method or curriculum, we are not teaching faithfully. There is only one savior, one Lord, one salvation, one Word of God and even if we must stand alone, we must be willing to do battle at that point. Over the next few weeks, we will look at the teachings of these false teachers and we are going to see that not only did there teachings reach back into history, we will see that false teachers continue to follow the same method today. Let’s pray and then let me know if you all have any questions.