Overview of the Book of Jude

The overview of the week for this Sunday is the book of Jude, written around 68

AD by the half -brother of Jesus. The theme of this letter is contending for the faith.

In other words, the book of Jude teaches us that we must fight for the faith.

Why? Because if we don't, according to Jude, false teachers will corrupt the church from within.

So Jude's letter has an urgent tone to it. There's only one chapter, but it really packs a punch.

He begins, Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, sanctified by God the

Father, and preserved in Christ Jesus, mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you.

He says, Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation,

I found it necessary to write to you, exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

So you see the urgency that you need to contend for the faith. You need to, in other words, fight for the faith.

Verse four, For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men who turn the grace of our

God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

So as you can see, Jude would have preferred to write a letter, a more positive letter about their shared faith and what a blessing it was to be a follower of Christ.

But the times that they were living in, it called for something different. The men that Jude refers to who had crept into the church, we would call these apostates, that while they appeared to be solid

Christian teachers at first, at some point they fell away from the truth.

Either they denied Christ and denied some part of his person and his work, but by doing this, they were teaching what we would call heresy, something that caused division.

And also it seems that they taught people that the grace of God basically gave them a license to sin.

After all, Jude says that they turned the grace of God into lewdness. Jude then goes on to give some

Old Testament examples of apostasy. Men who did this,

Cain, Korah, some of the Israelites who came out of Egypt and died in the wilderness.

Then in verses 20 through 23, he gives some encouragement and advice to believers and how to handle all of this.

And then he closes with this great doxology, which is an expression of praise to God.

He says, and forever.