Untitled Sermon (3)
3 Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.
now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to his holy people. 4 I say this because some ungodly people have wormed their way into your churches, saying that God’s marvelous grace allows us to live immoral lives.
4 For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.
“Because of what was at stake”
Jude got directly to the point: I … urge you to contend for the faith. Then he proceeded to tell his readers why he was so concerned. Godless men had secretly slipped in among them. They had joined the assemblies of believers, pretending to belong with them when actually they were enemies.
‘to come to the defense of’ [TNT], ‘to continue (one’s) vigorous defense’ [ISV]. This is a strong word [BNTC]; it implies positive action, not merely defense [El, WBC], in spiritual, not physical, conflict [Hie], aiming to establish the true gospel
Contend implies a strenuous effort. The word is used of participants in athletic contests. Mental effort is needed to understand and teach the word of God aright and moral effort is needed to apply that understanding to everyday behaviour
To make a Christian profession and contradict or deny it by one’s behaviour shows no understanding of what it means to call Jesus Sovereign and Lord
not simply to defend the faith, but to fight for it and to actively promote it, not only with words but also in action.
they are intruders who have secretly gained admission to the church. The Greek verb here means “to sneak in under false pretenses,” “to slip in unnoticed,” “to slip in stealthily,” “to infiltrate.”
This does not mean that these people are not members of the church; they probably are members