Continuing in the short book of Jude (a letter from an author who I believe was Jesus’ half-brother, sent to others in the early church), the author moves into his message.
Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
Jude 1:3-4 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/jud.1.3-4.NIV
Jude expressed his love for those to whom he was writing (verse 2), and that he wanted to write about their shared salvation. That’s a good thing to talk about, for sure. However, Jude needed to address something specific: “ungodly” people had gotten into the church.
It appears that these ungodly people they didn’t announce themselves as infiltrators, but no good spies introduce themselves as spies, do they? A job candidate probably shouldn’t tell the interviewer that he or she is trying to steal company secrets…at least, not if they actually want the job. However, even if this group (described in 2 Peter 2 as “false teachers”) was sneaky enough to get past other Christians, they weren’t getting anything past God [Holloway, p.151].
Jude explained more about these “certain individuals” later in this letter, but we start learning about them here. For one thing, they were ungodly. Now, they might have seemed “smart” or “nice” or “spiritual”. They might have fit in with genuine Christians, but they weren’t following the true God, so even if they seemed religious, they were not actually godly. That is, they weren’t behaving like God, and they weren’t making choices that aligned with His commandments.
A second thing that this group was doing was to distort God’s grace into immoral [NIV] or indecent [NASB] behavior. This sounds like someone who says, “God will forgive all my sins, so I can do whatever I want.” God does forgive our sins when we accept His salvation, but He still loves us enough to not want us to make choices that hurt us and hurt others. We are saved to serve, not to sin more.
This particular group also denied Jesus. When Jude referred to Jesus as “Sovereign” [NIV] or “Master” [NASB] and as “Lord” [both translations], it sounds to me like this ungodly group (who had gotten into the church) didn’t recognize Jesus as having authority over them. That would be consistent with this group warping God’s grace into a license for egregious sin. Trying to accept God’s grace without accepting His authority over us isn’t how it works, though. When Jesus redeemed us, He paid our sin-debt, but that means we are His, now. As mentioned by Holloway, p.152, we are expected to die to sin when we receive new life in Christ.
Note how Jude made it clear that these people weren’t merely to be ignored or tolerated. He told this letter’s recipients to “contend” for the faith. When I hear “contend”, I think of actor Marlon Brando’s line, “I could have been a contender”. Brando’s character was talking about a boxing match, and “contend” has this idea of fighting for something. (Some contests are won by random drawing, but I think that contests or competitions where we work hard to win are those that we feel the best about.)
In this case, Christians have faith in God / faith in Jesus, not just for our own salvation – not to just “get saved” – but to take care of that faith. We have an obligation to share our faith, but we also have a mandate to preserve the original faith, just as it was given to us from God. There are a lot of aspects to faith in Jesus that we could talk about, but – in my mind – two of the simplest reasons to maintain the truth of the gospel are that, 1) nothing else can save people and, 2) anything less than the truth about God isn’t as good as the real thing. Adding human ideas to what God told us, or taking anything away from His word, can only make things worse.
So, let’s remember that the truth about Jesus – without corruption, without false teaching, without wrong human ideas – that truth is worth fighting for. It is worth fighting to preserve. It merits our active effort to maintain it within the church, and justifies work from us to keep bad ideas from creeping in.
I like what a commentator wrote: “Christians must contend for the faith, but they rely on God’s strength for the fight…” [Holloway, p.170] I hope that you will be a contender for the faith, in the power of God, this week.
From Sunday School lesson prepared for August 24, 2025
References:
- Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
- Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. Copyright by The Lockman Foundation.
- The College Press NIV Commentary – James & Jude, by Gary Holloway. © 1996 College Press Publishing Co.
Those Who Sin Differently 