'The Once-for-all Faith'
Jude 1-5 July 2, 1989 (First in a short series on Jude) 

Jude, along with his more famous brother James--James the Just, the leader of the church in Jerusalem in its early years and the author of the letter which bears his name in the NT, was a younger half-brother of Jesus.

Jude modestly omits that fact, calling himself instead what he, no doubt thought a more important part of his self-identity, A Servant of Jesus Christ. For the fact is, as you remember, there were days, days which Jude no doubt remembered to his shame, when, though he was a brother of Jesus, he was not the Lord's servant, nor even his follower. For we learn in the Gospels that Jesus' brothers and sisters did not believe in him during the days of his public ministry and that it was only after his resurrection that their eyes were opened to see their elder brother as also their Lord and Savior.

What stories Jude must have had to tell of growing up in the same household with the Savior of the World! And with a sinless older brother who never once teased him into tears, or grabbed his favorite toy out of his hands, or refused to let him play with his legos!

Now Jude had had designs of writing to this community of Christians--which community and where it was located he does not say--he had planned to write a letter which would have expounded and explained, as he says, 'the salvation we share.' Perhaps it would have been something like Paul's letter to the Romans, a setting forth of the great facts and themes of God's grace and how he has delivered us from our sins through Jesus Christ. But that letter never was written.

Instead, Jude, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, had to dash off something much more quickly and much more urgently, because he learned that this church, this group of Christians, was being threatened by false teaching, by heretical modifications and corruptions of the truth which put their spiritual life and safety in jeopardy.

'I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.'

And this is precisely what he will urge upon them in the remaining verses of this brief and urgent letter.

In the next few weeks we will examine the body of his letter and of the appeal which he makes to his Christian friends.

But, this morning, first of all, I want us to look more carefully at Jude's famous statement of his purpose: 'to urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.' It is a statement full of weight and very important for understanding Christianity and Christian faith, and it is very much worth our time to look more closely at it.

There are three matters which require a bit of elucidation before the statement Jude makes will strike us with its full force.

The first touches the phrase: 'the faith.' Jude is not speaking here about the act of trusting or believing in Christ. Faith here is not a verb, but a noun. It is the body of truth which is believed, which is accepted as true, by the followers of Jesus Christ. Jude is saying, in effect, that to be a genuine Christian, a true follower of Christ and child of God, there is a body of teaching, a set of facts and propositions and assertions which you must accept as true.

The modern notion that a person can be a Christian and yet deny what the Scripture affirms or refuse to submit to the teaching which Scripture lays down as the truth of God, would be preposterous to Jude and to all the writers of the Bible. Christians are defined by their adherence to the doctrines, the teaching, the facts of history as they are set forth in Holy Scripture. What a person believes, what he or she accepts as true is of the utmost consequence.

Second, this truth was 'delivered' to the saints. The NIV translators have rendered the word 'entrusted', which is acceptable, but which perhaps does not so clearly convey the idea of this word, which is a technical term in the NT. It means 'handed down' or 'delivered over' in an authoritative and official way. You meet the same word, e.g., in 1 Cor. 15:3, where Paul writes: 'For what I received I passed on to you or delivered to you in my official capacity as an apostle of Jesus Christ as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the twelve, etc.

The point of the term as Jude uses it you see is that 'the faith' the truth which all men and women are called upon to believe and which Christians are called to contend for, did not appear by itself, was not concocted by some creative individuals. The Christian faith is not some person's invention. It was 'handed down', it was 'delivered' first by God himself to his apostles, and then by the apostles, who in the New Testament, made a full and authoritative revelation of the facts and the truth, to the church and the world.

'The Faith' as Jude calls it, the body of truth which is the basis of Christian belief, has been authoritatively revealed and handed down in the teaching and writing of Christ's apostles. It is not someone's opinion, someone's guess as to what is the truth about God, man and salvation: it is truth as God himself has made it known by those he equipped and authorized to convey his mind to mankind. In other words, God himself has defined 'The true Faith' and has sent into the world.

Third, and last, this disclosure of the faith, was and is 'once for all.' This word which Jude uses, 'once' is a very emphatic word. It does not mean 'once' as in the series 'once, twice, three times.' It means 'once' and not again. The NIV translation 'once-for-all' captures its meaning precisely.

'Only once', 'once and never again' is the idea. The word is used in Hebrews 9:26, 28, for example, with reference to the fact that Christ did not suffer for sin over and over again, but once--that is once for all--and that once for all sacrifice is sufficient for the salvation of all men.

Jude's point is that 'the faith' has been given a definitive disclosure and revelation. It has been handed down in a complete and final and perfect form. The faith, as God has revealed it through his apostles is normative for all times and unalterable. It will not be one faith in Jude's day, another, somewhat different faith centuries later. Jesus Christ, who is the author of this faith, is, the Scripture says, the same yesterday, today, and forever, what he did as our Savior he did once for all, and his life, death, and resurrection and its authoritative explanation and application in the Bible will be as valid and as authoritative 2,000 years from now, if the Lord should not come by then, as it was 2,000 years ago when Jude first spoke of 'the faith once for all delivered to the saints.'

Now it will not come as any surprise to you to hear that what Jude here asserts as fundamental Christian conviction, that there is one truth about God and man, that it has been authoritatively disclosed in the Son of God, Jesus Christ and in the account and explanation of him which is given in Holy Scripture, and that that truth, that teaching, is true, valid, authoritative for all men and women, in all ages, in all places, in all circumstances; I say, it will not surprise you to hear that this idea is utterly at odds with the prevailing orthodoxy of our day and time.

'Relativism' is the creed of the people we are rubbing shoulders with every day. That absolute truths which bind all men and women everywhere simply do not exist is the sincere religious conviction which dominates American University life, American television, and American public discourse, such as it is. It is a quite new creed, this relativism, and has wrought utterly devastating consequences in society, but it is the settled conviction of a great many in our day and the unwitting assumption of many more. It is, indeed, the modern faith--for faith it is. No one, surely, has ever demonstrated that no absolute truths exist; indeed, the very assertion is obviously itself a contradiction: I mean, for someone to say, that it is absolutely true, always and everywhere true, that absolute moral and spiritual and fundamental truth does not exist.

William Kirk Kilpatrick, professor of psychology at Boston College, describes the situation this way [Psychological Seduction, p. 50]:

In Roger's latest book, A Way of Being, there is a chapter entitled "Do we need a reality?" The answer, as you might expect, is no. Rather, says Rogers, there are as many realities as there are people, and what is real for me now is not real for me tomorrow, and so forth.

No matter how unrealistic these ideas are, they have had practical consequences. Our society is already more than half-convinced that subjective realities are superior to objective ones. Notice the constant chatter about arriving at your own truths or not imposing your values on others, as though truth and value were purely personal constructs and had nothing to do with things outside yourself.

Part of this attitude, I believe, stems from misplaced kindness. Because we are a society that puts a premium on feeling over thought, we yield to temptation and give the subjectivist argument the final say. In that way, no one will get his feelings hurt when a difference of opinion arises. All can be right; no one has to be wrong.

Consequently, we tend to evaluate beliefs by their degree of personal meaning rather than by an objective criterion. One person say, "I believe in Christianity because it has been meaningful for my life" and another says, "Christianity doesn't have any meaning for me. I've found that Eastern philosophy is more meaningful."

But this attitude is the complete antithesis of Jude's conviction, who insists that faith must be anchored both in objective fact and divine authority. Genuine Christianity has always proceeded on the assumption that reality is what we were built for and the more reality we get, the better off we are, even if that reality is often painful and daunting.

The Christian faith is not founded on beautiful thoughts, but on decisive historical events. We cheerfully confess that our faith and our lives stand or fall on the reality of those events and the true and God given authority of the apostles of Jesus Christ who wrote the New Testament. Paul himself made no bones about this: 'If Christ was not raised from the dead,' he wrote to the Corinthian church, 'then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.'

And in Paul's name, and in Paul and Jude's steps, as a Christian minister this morning, I cheerfully acknowledge that if Jesus Christ was not the Son of God come in the flesh, if he did not bear the sins of the world when he died on that long ago cross, and if he did not rise from the dead--then we are all of us wasting our time here this morning, and that ceremony we just witnessed, that baptism, was nothing but sentimental poppycock.

And in our relativist day, Christians are about the only people around who still willingly and cheerfully face reality and its implications.

I am reading a fascinating book now on Sigmund Freud and his views of religion and Christianity in particular. Freud took over the views of the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach who had taught that religion, all religion, was simply the result of the projection of human ideals and needs. Man feels a need for purpose, for justice, for security in the face of death, and religion is constructed to meet these needs and to resolve these fears. It is, in fact, an illusion, but an illusion created by mankind to fulfil a very definite purpose.

Freud, indeed, wrote a book about religion as wish-fulfillment, which he entitled 'The Future of an Illusion.' Religion, he argued, is the subconscious creation of man to protect him from his greatest anxieties, from the fear of natural forces, from the terror of death, and from the injustices inflicted by other men. This religion allows us to live our lives believing that justice will triumph, that all will be well in the end, that the sufferings of this life will be compensated for. [Vitz, p. 209]

But, of course, says Freud, it is all an illusion, it is make believe. It may serve some purpose, but it is not real.

And friends, there can be little doubt that Feuerbach and Freud have hit the nail on the head with regard to most religious thought and conviction in our world today. It is irreal, it is wish-fulfillment, it is merely the projection of our desires. Think of what passes for the religious thought of most people in America today: a God not too different from Santa Claus, who overlooks our faults and will jovially receive us such as we are into heaven when we die; a full heaven and a virtually empty hell; a religion which requires virtually nothing of us in this world--which basically allows us to live for ourselves and do our own thing--and for this we will be rewarded with eternal bliss; a religion which allows all others to believe whatever they want and do whatever they please and makes a similarly pleasant place in heaven for them as well. Friends, this is wish fulfillment, projection, and, Freud is absolutely right, this is an illusion.

But not Jude's 'the faith once for all delivered to the saints'. It is not projection or wish fulfillment. It is not difficult to demonstrate this. First, Jesus' message when he first preached it and still today--unlike any other religion in the world and unlike any contemporary world and life view--completely cuts across the natural instincts, desires, wishes, and intentions of men and women. That is why Jude in his day and we in our day are constantly having to protect apostolic Christianity from being corrupted and modified--because it is not, not at all, what men and women naturally want it to be. Jesus was not the Messiah the Jews were looking for or wanted--that is why they murdered Him! His doctrine of salvation is in fundamental respects an offense to men in its sweeping rejection of all human efforts to please God as utterly worthless; his doctrine of true goodness is not what anyone wants to hear--all that he had to say about denying oneself to follow Christ, about loving God and one's neighbor more than oneself, about laying up treasure in heaven and not on earth, and so on. Apostolic Christianity is the farthest thing from the comfortable illusion that man otherwise invents for his religions and his philosophies--in its rugged insistence that all men must fear God, humble themselves before him, trust absolutely in his promises, and keep his commandments. That God alone is sovereign and all men and women are subject to his will and utterly dependent upon His good pleasure.

And Christianity is not projection or wish-fulfillment for a second reason: and that is because it is founded upon actual events in the real world, it is based and flows from real history--not simply the opinions of some religious leader or founder. Christianity is what it is and teaches what it does because of and on the basis of actual events -- flesh and blood events in the real world; events and history, for which there were many eyewitnesses, things which Paul would later remind King Agrippa were not done in a corner.

Carl Rogers may tell us that each of us is free to have his or her own reality--but Jude says that that is preposterous, for Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, appeared to his disciples, later to more than 500 of his followers in Galilee and is coming again to judge all men. His life, his work, his death, his resurrection, his teaching have defined reality for every man and woman, boy and girl, who will ever live in this world.

This is the great task of Christians in the late 20th century. To expose the utter futility and the illusion of man-made philosophies of meaning and man-made religion and to call men and women everywhere back to 'the faith once for all delivered to the saints.'

This was Francis Schaeffer's great purpose in life. You remember he came to speak of biblical Christianity as 'true truth' because 'truth' as a term had lost its meaning among the thoroughly modern people to whom he was speaking. Truth for them meant only whatever idea a person found helpful or meaningful or likeable. His insistence was that there is true truth, absolute truth, which binds everyone in the same way; and, what is more, that without such truth, life cannot be meaningfully lived and men and women created in the image of God, as all men and women are, cannot come to terms with the requirement of their own existence or find true harmony in the world which God has made.

This was also the great theme of C.S. Lewis who drove home this same point tirelessly with all of his characteristic simplicity and brilliance and profundity. His challenge in the modern era to renew the great question of the ages which had been so muted in our time. Is it true? That is the great question, the only truly important question to answer. That is, no doubt, a difficult thing for the modern mind, soaked in psychology and self-worship, to grasp. Modern people ask whether an idea, or a religion, or a philosophy is healthy; or whether it makes them feel better; or whether it contributes to their self-concept; or whether it meets their needs. No, said Lewis: the question is whether it is true.

He wrote: 'If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.' Faith in Jesus Christ does help, of course, and brings joy, peace, love, hope, and eternal life. But it does all of that and brings all of that only because it is true!

Lewis himself, hard-boiled atheist that he once was, came to Christ and to Christianity precisely because, by the grace of God, he came to the realization and the conviction that it was true, that it was founded on real, actual events, and was, indeed, the disclosure of God's will.

Some years ago there was a debate at the University of British Columbia over the existence of Jesus Christ between a University philosophy professor and John Warwick Montgomery the Lutheran apologist. In the newspaper account another University Professor, one Professor Briggs was quoted as saying that 'As a matter of fact, we consider these topics, atheism and Jesus Christ, as not very important...as compared, for example, with the question whether the earth's fuel is running out.' [Where is History Going, p 39]

But, of course, that is the indifference of unbelief speaking. If in fact, as Christians know and believe, Jesus Christ is the Son of God, his death on the cross the only hope for eternal life, his resurrection the very center of human history, his coming to judge the living and the dead the single momentous event yet to transpire in human affairs, then, clearly compared to one's relationship to this same Jesus Christ, compared to being at peace with this Lord Christ, the Savior and the Judge of men and women, compared to the question whether Jesus Christ counts you among his people or no; the question of the earth's remaining supply of fossil fuel becomes an utter triviality.

If even a fraction of the claims Jesus made for himself are true; if even a fraction of the history reported of him in Scripture is true, and, of course, if a fraction is true then all is true--then all men must of necessity be faced with a shaking of the foundations and the necessity of a complete realignment of personal philosophy and conviction and purpose and commitment.

I say, we gladly face the implications of this. We are Christians and remain Christians not because Christianity feels good--there are some in this room who became Christians and almost immediately their lives became much more difficult and painful--we are Christians because it is true and real.

I cannot promise those of you who are unbelievers here this morning that if you believe in Jesus Christ and begin to follow him that your life will become a bed of roses. Some, alas, preach that way, but that is not the faith once for all delivered to the saints. But I can promise you this, that in Jesus Christ and in his Word you will be founding your life and your existence upon the truth, the absolute, unshakable, and unalterable truth. And it will ever be the truth, and only the truth, which sets men and women free.

And for us who believe--how are we to be true to this faith once for all delivered to the saints except

1. by learning it and mastering it as the truth and the only truth upon which to build our lives;

2. by standing for it when many others, out of a desire to project their own wishes, would alter the truth which Christ has once for all made known;

3. by living by that truth each day, and by conforming our existence more and more, as God helps us, to that reality which God has made known to us;

4. by rejoicing in that truth--in the light which illuminates our way through this dark world;

5. and by joyfully proclaiming that truth to those who do not yet know it.

What an immense privilege it is to know the truth--to know what is so about man, and human life, to know what God thinks about man and his behavior, to know how to be right with God and to know God personally as our Father in heaven, to know what God wants of us in this world, to know how to have our many sins forgiven, to know what is to become of us in the world which is to come--to be able to think, think openly and honestly about the various issues of life and not to be afraid for the darkness which is all around us in this benighted world. That is happiness of the truest kind.

My Father, whom I love very much and to whom I owe more than I can ever say, is dying. How long this process will last, no one can say, but it now appears that his days are drawing to a close. And that is very painful for him and for me.

But dark as these days are in one way--they are not dark at all in a more important way. For he lived his entire life in commitment to that faith, that truth, once for all delivered to the saints--and that truth now shines as brightly as ever, illuminating the path he must walk. And it shines as brightly on my path as I make my way down that path behind him.

All men are like grass
And their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the Word of the Lord stands forever.

At this point--all projection, and all wish-fulfillment counts for nothing. Only one thing matters at all: is it true? And Jude who was the Lord's own brother and saw his risen brother with his own eyes, says unequivocally: Oh, yes; it is true. Once, I thought differently, but now I know Jesus Christ is the truth. Don't ever let anyone tell you different. It is true and it is THE truth--for all men and women everywhere and at every time.

No one who believes it, lives by it, stands upon it, shall ever be moved! And that is why Jude dashed off his urgent letter, for he knew that at bottom only the truth will do, only reality, only the faith which was once-for-all delivered to the saints. Nothing else. And nothing else will do for you either, my friends. And what a glorious thing to know that God has not kept that truth a secret, but has sent it into the world so that all might learn it and be saved by it.

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