Sure, Contend for the Religion—however Don’t Overlook to Love

The epistle of Jude begins with an pressing message: “I discovered it mandatory to put in writing interesting to you to contend for the religion that was as soon as for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). Due to the hazard of false academics who had “crept in unnoticed” to “pervert the grace of our God into sensuality” (v. 4), the believers to whom Jude wrote wanted to be vigilant and lively, exalting the reality and rejecting falsehood.

This directive is not any much less essential in the present day. False academics are nonetheless creeping into God’s church. Folks nonetheless pervert the Gospel to go well with their very own sinful wishes. And the church nonetheless wants vigilant and lively women and men who will “contend for the religion.” But once we hear these phrases from Jude, we’re prone to have certainly one of two reactions.

Some will discover themselves instantly fearful and hesitant. “It’s simply not my approach to be like that,” they could say. “I’m not a confrontational kind of individual.” They might be tempted to tolerate error fairly than threat battle. Niceness and propriety set the agenda, and if the error turns into too nice, there’s all the time the choice of a quiet exit. Probably there have been some like that within the first-century church who wanted Jude’s counsel. There are nonetheless many like that in the present day.

Then again, some obtain Jude’s directive a bit too eagerly. They’re naturally bombastic, and so they should be settled down. There’s something about the necessity to take care of error that pulls the worst out of people that relish fights and luxuriate in arguments. This “quarrelsome” temperament (1 Tim. 3:3) is unbecoming of God’s folks, who ought fairly to be “fully humble and mild,” to “be affected person, bearing with each other in love” (Eph. 4:2 NIV).

In our day, this latter hazard is particularly prevalent. Digital media has made all of it too simple to have interaction in a sort of theological headhunting—trying right here, there, and in every single place for “false academics” towards whom we are able to self-righteously contend.

So at the same time as we obtain Jude’s exhortation with all seriousness, we have to flip a web page in our Bible to John’s Revelation and listen to the rebuke that the Lord Himself leveled towards the church in Ephesus:

I do know your works, your toil and your affected person endurance, and the way you can not bear with those that are evil, however have examined those that name themselves apostles and are usually not, and located them to be false. I do know you’re enduring patiently and bearing up for my identify’s sake, and you haven’t grown weary. However I’ve this towards you, that you’ve deserted the love you had at first. (Rev. 2:2–4)

The Lord recommended the Ephesian church for his or her means to differentiate between fact and error. He was happy with their means to confront and expel the depraved. However tragically, this advantage swallowed them so fully that it grew to become a vice. Of their effort to realize doctrinal purity, they’d forgotten the Lord’s command to like (John 13:34–35).

After we encounter those that oppose the Gospel, whether or not brazenly or discretely, our greatest instrument is just not a intelligent argument however a reworked life. We don’t merely contend for the religion by preaching the reality and confronting error, however we reside the religion, rebuking our opponents with gentleness, longing not for his or her defeat however for his or her repentance and salvation (2 Tim. 2:25–26).

The Christian strategy to false instructing is to contend for the religion and to maintain our love. Could all of us look to God’s enabling for the knowledge, conviction, and style to do each in order that the watching world will see our works and glorify our Father in heaven (Matt. 5:16).

This text was tailored from the sermon “‘Maintain Yourselves’” by Alistair Begg.