Contend For The Faith
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. Jude 3
We live in a religious world where the contend, as used in the passage above, takes on a whole new meaning.
The following verses in this book enlighten the reader as to the depth of the problem among these believers. They had people among them who were trying with everything they had to strip people of their faith.
The Greek word used here means “to act as a combatant,” but it has an intensifier that makes it say to “earnestly combat” for your faith.
Some have taken this as a open invitation with God’s permission to fight anyone who is a little different from them. There are those in our brotherhood who live to fight.
Bringing this down to a personal level, I am encouraged by this book to fight anything that comes in the way of MY FAITH. This is not about fighting people around the world. It is about fighting to keep my faith strong and help those around me to do the same.
Faith is the basis on which we appeal to God. If my faith is bombarded by things that are not in sync with God, then my appeal becomes corrupted. It is critical that we keep a careful watch on our faith, making adjustments as the need becomes obvious.
There is but one faith. And that faith is critical to every believer. Men and women tend to rearrange things to meet God’s standards, while it is actually the other way around. God’s standards are supposed to rearrange man.
With this being true, we need to fight in our lives as “earnest combatants” any and everything that tries to destroy or pervert our faith. And as well, we need to work the same way to keep the system of faith that God has given us free from the perversion of man’s ways.
Faith is a fight. Think about it. What is it Satan wants to destroy in us. Is it our house or our car? No. It is our faith. And, the best way to do that is to water it down and pervert it so we can go our merry way thinking all is well.
This group of believers in the Book of Jude needed an overhaul in many areas which were already perverted. It is a very relevant text. And it is relevant because today the same kind of things are infecting believers.
Maybe I need to inspect my faith and you need to inspect yours and we can find out if there is anything we need to fight and get out of our lives. Because, when our faith is corrupted, we then begin to corrupt the system of faith delivered to us by God.
Think about it!