4/15/25

Jude 1:3-4 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.

Jude, the half-brother of Jesus, gives what I consider to be the desire and yet reality of a Pastor in these verses. His great desire is to talk to them about the joy and love shared amongst believers in Christ. Instead, he finds himself having to appeal out of necessity, for believers to contend earnestly (fight for, exert massive amounts of energy, take to court, be willing to lay down your life in battle, seek with all efforts to win like in a sporting event) for the faith.

Faith is to believe to the point of committing it to truth.

Let me give you an example. You are outside your home and it is on fire. In fact, it is engulfed in flames, and you know that your child is inside. You believe that your child will burn up in the flames. You have no proof of it because it has not happened yet. However, everything points to this as a fact. If you don't do something they will perish in the fire. Because you committed that belief to truth, you will go into the fire in hopes of doing whatever possible to save them.

This is what Jude is saying, that he is not seeing from Christ followers. Therefore, he is, out of necessity, forced to speak about this lack of striving for faith.

You see all lost people are heading to an eternal fire according to scripture. You have the fire suppression system to save them in the message of the Gospel that has been handed down to you by other saints.

It can be used verbally, (professing) physically, (life lived in dedication to Christ), or completely (doing both), which is the most preferred way. Yet it is seldom used in any way!

Instead of contending earnestly for the faith, we have church buildings full of people claiming to be the church, that are pinching off, kinking up, and closing the nozzle of faith. Therefore diverting the Grace of God. As Jude puts it, "ungodly persons turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ! "

I think I can speak for many Pastors in saying; if you desire like them to hear more of the preaching of the joy of our common salvation in Christ, and less of contend earnestly for the faith. Then open the nozzle of faith and let the Grace of God flow freely through your life by professing and living the gospel. It is the power of God unto Salvation.

This will hand it down to the saints that follow. Which might be our children who get snatched from the fire.

May we all do so!

Love Bro. Scott