Earnestly contend

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. - Jude 1v3

Jude had important letter to write. He was committed and diligent to write a letter to talk about salvation. What better topic could he have than that? He had literally known Christ since the beginning and knew from his own life what it was like to know Christ, but also what it meant to come to salvation and ‘really’ know Him.

So he sat down to pen this letter, but something went wrong. He found it necessary to write of something else. We know in retrospect that the Holy Spirit was moving in his heart to have him right another letter. I think we have the clearest description of how God passed His word on to us. Here was a man with one intention, but the Holy Spirit breathed His words into the man so that we have this amazing little epistle.

What was so necessary? Jude was compelled by the necessity to write about the need to ‘earnestly contend for the faith’ that had been delivered to all saints. Instead of writing about salvation he was to write about the need to contend for it.

Right at the core of the Greek word here for ‘earnestly contend’ is a word that English readers will grasp immediately. Written in Roman characters the word is epagōnizomai. See the word ‘agonize’ there? I think this gives us a picture of how we are to contend for the faith. While we can’t build a doctrine on etymology, in this case we do get an idea about how important this contending is.

I am preaching today from Titus 3 and part of the message deals with avoiding foolish discussions, contentions, and battling over the law. While it is true that there are petty little things that we are not to get caught up in, there is something we have to fight for. Our challenge from Titus is that we must contend, or agonise if you will, for the faith that God gave us.

We are going to learn a lot more about the false teachers who are going to try and destroy that faith with their vain promises and false teachers. We might be tempted to say something like, ‘well that is not really worth fighting for, aren’t we told to try and avoid fighting over spiritual stuff?’

True, but we cannot compromise the truth of the gospel. We cannot compromise the faith. The faith is more than just the way of salvation. It is the whole body of faith as delivered to us by God in His word. It is the teaching. It is, to use a term that we don’t like to use very often, the great doctrines of the faith.

There is balance here. We MUST contend for the faith or false teacher will wreck havoc. We must be diligent and firm. We cannot compromise in any way, shape, or manner. From the rest of scripture though I think it obvious that even our contending must be done in a caring, loving, and meek manner.

I heard it put this way one time and I like this description. ‘Contend without being contentious.’