Judas, the lowest form of slave. That’s not feigned humility. He really believed that. For thirty-three years I assaulted God the Son in my own home, but in His own world. I am not fit to speak for you, work for you, I am your slave forever, just like my brother James. Please have mercy on me.
Many are called by God. But this letter is addressed to those who have been not only called but made holy by Him. This is for the seriously committed, the ones whose names are written in the Book of Life, and therefore are being preserved by Jesus one day at a time.
Even in his salutation we see fire. He is about to expose the false. So let’s be clear about who are the true, to whom I am writing. To those folks only: mercy and peace and love. No, not just the normal amounts, but multiplications of all three. You see how intense the man is. Every word serious, focused.
Vs. 3. Re-directed purpose.
Pastors today, the good one, really want to be positive. They’d really like to talk about happy things involving our salvation. And quite often they do. But, like Judas, there are a lot of other things that need to be discussed as the church grows. The not-so-good pastors will take a pass on “negative preaching”, assuming the people don’t want to hear it, and that they might turn against him if he continues in it.
True enough. Negative preaching can be taken too far. But the pastor who does not warn the flock from time to time is no true pastor at all, but a hireling, who sees the wolf coming and hides behind positive thinking and happy talk.
Judas was obviously not such a man. He truly had intended to write about our common salvation. The teaching of grace and mercy and the crucifixion and the resurrection and all the rest. But he couldn’t. Not in this letter. The wolf was not only coming, he had already gotten in the door!
It was time instead to talk about self-defense, and aggressive action. There was after all a faith that had been delivered to the saints. And it was under attack. Got to do something!
What specifically is this “faith which was once for all delivered to the saints”? Alas! There was no King James Bible to contend for. No English Bible at all. No Bible at all. No Protestant Reformation. No Calvin or Luther or Tyndale or Wycliffe. Go back to the church Fathers. They too had not yet lived and taught. No Augustine, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr.
No, the early church continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine… The faith had been delivered to them, and through them, in the leading and power of the Holy Spirit it was delivered to all those saints of the first century, who passed it on and on to us.
The faith was Jesus and all the things surrounding Him. Before the canon of Scripture, which must include the apostle John’s works in the 90’s A.D., was even completed, Jude, writing somewhere in the 60’s, says the faith, the CHRISTian faith, had been delivered to the saints, in the form of the teachings of the apostles.
Those apostles wrote the essentials down. The church collected their writings, examined them, and passed them to us. The story of the Christian Bible’s preservation is one of the miracles of church history, and it all started by a once and for all delivery shortly after the death of Jesus. It was not like the Old Testament, which had evolved slowly over centuries. Once and for all. It was not to be in any way un-done by heretical men who doubted and denied the Divinity of the words of the apostles. Hence the need for this letter. Guard the faith Christians. The deposit has been made to you. Pass it on intact.
We see now just how seriously they took this charge.
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