Defend and Protect

Dear friends, I had been eagerly planning to write to you about the salvation we all share. But now I find that I must write about something else, urging you to defend the faith that God has entrusted once for all time to his holy people.           Jude 3

Jude, the half brother of Jesus changed his mind concerning the subject he wanted to convey. He wanted to write and encourage his readers in their salvation, and that is a noble and wise subject, but now he wants them to defend it because it is under attack. Even in the days of the early church there were those who attacked it.

But who is the small book of Jude written to? Strangely, it is the church of his day and that means only one thing. The people who needed to start defending the faith are the very people who were already in the churches, some of whom were the problem. Ouch. So let me get this right, the biggest problem back then, and even now in our day, are those ‘loosely’ worshipping in the same church as the defenders of that same faith. All we need to do is figure out which is which and where we stand. Not as easy as it looks, and doing anything about it would certainly ruffle a few feathers.

Tell you what. Let’s pretend we didn’t come across this verse, and just ignore it. After all, who would know? Somebody might think we are part of the problem and we can’t be having that! I don’t like it when the Bible talks to me like that. Well, do you?