Jude: Defending The Faith

INTRODUCTION

There was a man who walked into a gas station with a $20 bill. Just a regular Tuesday. He handed over the cash to the cashier, who paused, held it up to the light, scribbled on it with one of those little pens—and then called the police.

It was a counterfeit. The man was stunned—he wasn’t trying to cheat anyone. Someone had slipped him that bill in change earlier that day, and now he was unknowingly passing it along.

It looked real. It felt real. But it was worthless.

That’s the exact kind of danger Jude is warning the early church about. Not from the outside, but from the inside. The people he’s concerned about aren’t fringe radicals—they're sitting in the pews. They sound spiritual. They might even quote Scripture. But what they’re passing along is a counterfeit gospel. A message that looks like grace but denies Jesus. A teaching that feels like freedom but leads to ruin.

And Jude says to the church: don’t be passive. Don’t just accept it. Contend for the faith that was entrusted to God’s people.

From the first century until today, the church has been threatened by false teaching. The names change. The tactics shift. But the threat remains. And the call to vigilance and faithfulness is just as urgent now as it was then.

Let’s turn to this short but fiery little book together.

Prayerfully choose but

The Sin and Doom of Ungodly People

NLT Jude 1:3 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. 4 For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about[b] 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.

N T Wright in his commentary says,

“These are the people who cause divisions. No doubt the teachers would have said that it was people like Jude himself who caused divisions by dragging them back to an old fashion morality, based on funny old stories in the ancient scriptures they had discovered through what they took to be God’s grace. But Jesus and his early apostles had given the same warning as those ancient scriptures: scornful people will come, mocking you for your silly little roles, eager to follow whichever desires happen to be uppermost at the time. Such people, says Jude, simply do not have God’s spirit, for all they may claim to do so. They are living at the merely human level. ”

As I’m writing this, I see that there are two primary worries Jude has for the church:

1. People are twisting grace into an excuse for immorality.

2. Others are outright denying Jesus as Sovereign and Lord.

Sound familiar?

Today, you’ll hear people say, “God loves everyone exactly as they are”—which is true. But then it gets twisted: “So everyone must stay exactly as they are, doing whatever they want, because God just wants them to be happy.” This is how grace gets distorted. And this is what was happening in Jude’s time. God does love us exactly as we are… but he doesn’t leave us there.

Some in the church were saying: “God is gracious, so we can tolerate a little sexual immorality.” Jude doesn’t name specific acts—he assumes we know the Scriptures. He says these are “things written long ago,” meaning: go back and read what God has already said. God’s grace is never a license to ignore His holiness.

Others were denying Jesus' Lordship altogether—claiming He was just a good man or one spiritual guide among many. That’s not new either. You’ll hear that in plenty of interfaith events and “ecumenical” gatherings that don’t confess Jesus as Lord.

Take, for example, the “Women’s Ecumenical Dinner” invitation hosted by the Mormons. That’s not a harmless social event—it’s hosted by a group with a counterfeit gospel. Mormonism is a cult. They do not affirm the Nicene Creed. They deny that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human.

To further muddy the waters the Mormon church has recently rebranded themselves. The full, official name of the church is still: "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." However, under the direction of President Russell M. Nelson (since 2018), the church has strongly encouraged the use of the full name and discouraged terms like “Mormon,” “LDS Church,” or even “Latter-day Saints Church.” They now prefer to be described as: "The Church of Jesus Christ"

Jehovah’s Witnesses fall into the same category. These are not minor disagreements. These are departures from the core of our faith.

Judaism and Islam also deny that Jesus is God.