Chapter 1: What does it mean to contend for the faith without being cynical?
We contend without being cynical. We don't fall into the trap of thinking the worst of everyone out there. Why? Because Jesus is Lord and Master. He reigns. Someone that is on this path of destruction with their teaching or what they've embraced in a moment can go from there to in Christ for eternity. No one is beyond His grace.
It can be easy to become discouraged, to become cynical.
Chapter 2: How can we avoid discouragement while contending for the faith?
As you grow in your understanding of God's Word, you may see error all around, whether intentional error or out of ignorance. You hear someone in your Bible study pray, and you realize they've fallen into a Christological or Trinitarian heresy. In that moment, how do you contend for the faith?
This is the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and today you'll hear a final message from Jason Holopoulos' series, Contending for the Faith, The Book of Jude. If you'd like to study Jude more, you can request the entire series and the study guide when you give a donation at renewingyourmind.org in support of Renewing Your Mind.
We'll also send you a Renewing Your Mind notebook, all to express our thanks for your support of this program. Well, here's Reverend Halopoulos with five warnings for when you contend for the faith.
In this lesson, what I want to do is just take a step back a little bit from the text for this lesson and think through together contending. I think often when we hear that, we immediately have objections and there should be some concerns or at least I have some concerns.
I think you have concerns as we watch different people and maybe even as we see in our own hearts as we're seeking to contend for the faith. So I want to think through a couple of those objections here in this lesson and then also think through a few warnings for you as we seek to contend for the faith.
The first objection that people will often offer, and you read something like Jude, where Jude comes out of the gate so strong, you need to contend for the faith. Well, doesn't that sow disunity? If you're contending, if you're agonizing, if you're fighting, to use Paul's words, doesn't that sow disunity? And isn't unity important in the body of Christ? Well, it is.
We see this over and over throughout the Scriptures. And you think of 1 Corinthians 12 or Romans 12, or you think of Jesus' longest recorded prayer in John 17. Much of it is about the desire for unity within the body of Christ. And so it's very much a concern of the New Testament and the New Testament writers and should be yours and my concern. But look at what's happening here.
Why is it that they need to contend for the faith? It's not the contending that sows disunity. Rather, it is that false teachers have come in, and false teachers are teaching something that is different from the faith, and they are the ones that are sowing disunity. And so what Jude is saying to them is, you need to fight. You need to contend against that for the sake of unity.
We contend for the sake of unity. Now, that doesn't mean that we have to contend for everything. We are always looking at, is this a first-order doctrine? Is this a second-order doctrine? Is this a third-order doctrine? Is it not even something that we should be worried about? I'm going to read to you a
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Chapter 3: What are the objections to contending for the faith?
I've watched enough movies where somebody is rushed into an emergency room. The person with the stubbed toe, though it's awful they have a stubbed toe, and I'm Sorry if you have a stubbed toe this morning. That's important. But it's not quite as important as the man who has his head cracked open and his brain matter is falling out.
You don't have the whole hospital descend upon the man with the stubbed toe. You triage. This is of importance, of greater importance. We do this all the time. You do this as parents with your children. Everything can't be a fight with your children. You have to decide. Is this something we need to address? Is this something we don't?
You do this with your friends or otherwise you won't have that friend anymore if everything you got to call them on. I had a thing about this in marriage. I had a young husband approach me one day and he said to me, he said, Pastor, how often should I be correcting my wife? I said, well, brother, a lot less than you think. I think that is safe to say.
You do triage or you're not going to be married for very long. In the church, we do triage. There are things that are worth fighting for. There are things that are not worth fighting for, and that's not being a coward. It's being wise. Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 1, wage the good warfare. Well, what warfare is worth waging? What is worth contending for? The faith.
Chapter 4: What are the five warnings for contending for the faith?
The faith is worth contending for. This is of the utmost importance. It is worth it for the unity of the church. When you and I contend for the faith, we're actually maintaining unity in the church. So I want you to think about this. It isn't just our day and age that we're concerned with. You and I belong to one holy, Catholic, and apostolic church. There's one church under God.
We're united here, the church militant on earth. We're united with the church triumphant in heaven. One church. What they believed, we are to believe. The core. We're to contend for that. It doesn't matter how many churches in our generation buy into this new thing that either adds or subtracts from the faith. It doesn't matter how many there are and we identify. We can identify with them.
No, we belong to the church through the ages. We are seeking to maintain the unity of the church, not just in our day, but through the ages. And so when we contend for the faith, we're actually contending for unity. The second objection is that contending doesn't sound loving. Aren't we supposed to be lovers as Christians, not fighters? Well, yeah, you're supposed to be lovers.
And sometimes being a lover requires that you are a fighter. When we lose the faith, if we lose this truth, We lose the one hope for mankind trapped in darkness. It is the most unloving thing we can do to lose the faith. Because people without the faith are destined to eternal darkness, as Jude will get to. Eternal fire, as Jude will get to.
It is actually the most loving thing that we can do is to contend for the faith. It doesn't need adapting. Just doesn't. This faith that you and I contend for, that we are united with all of the church through the ages with, that actually is contending for this as an act of love, it's the same faith that saved in the first century?
It's the same faith that saved in the 4th century, same faith that saved in the 19th century. It will save in the 21st century. And if the Lord does not return, it will save in the 40th century. The same faith. We contend for it. But let me give you five warnings as you seek to contend. First, contend without being contentious. Contend without being contentious. We are not to love fighting.
And we should not always be looking for a fight. The man who never fights or finds anything worth fighting about is ungodly. The man who is always fighting and fights about everything is equally ungodly. We are to contend but not be contentious. If everyone loves you, there's a problem.
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Chapter 5: Why is unity important when contending for the faith?
If everyone hates you, you are a problem. Don't be contentious. You contend. Again, notice Jude, he did not want to write as he wrote to them. He didn't want to do this. He wanted to write about, as he said in verse 3, our common salvation. It was only because of the disruption that he saw in the churches that he felt like he needed to contend and to encourage them to contend.
He's not contentious for the faith. He's contending for the faith. It is godly, it is godly to be a reluctant fighter. We only contend because we have to. We are, as the Apostle Paul said, as far as it is possible to live at peace with all men, contending reluctantly but with no less resolve is godliness. That's what it looks like.
I think back, some of the staunchest defenders of Christian truth through the ages have been marked by this. They contend, but they're not contentious. Some of my favorites are Old Princeton Theological Seminary.
when it was a faithful seminary and they were standing against liberalism in their day, and those old Princeton scholars and theologians, they contended for the faith, but they were reluctant to fight about everything. I was reading a number of years ago, I was reading through all these different memorial addresses of some of these early men at Princeton.
So Archibald Alexander, Samuel Miller, Charles Hodge, and on we could go. And something kept jumping out to me as I was reading these memorials at their funerals, you know, the sermon that was read. that was preached or a memorial that was written up in a journal or something after they died. And over and over and over, I saw the same word, gentleman. He was a gentleman.
I'm not quite sure when we started frowning upon such a description, but that's a good thing, to be a gentleman, to be a gentlewoman. We contend, but we aren't contentious. Second, we contend without being conceited. Pride has no place in the Christian. I think it's the ugliest thing on planet Earth is a Christian filled with pride. How can that be? Saved by grace. Grace.
Whatever I am, I am by grace. Whatever I know, I know by grace. Whatever I've come to understand, I understand by grace. And so we don't look down with disdain upon those that we engage with when we contend for the faith. We understand that all that we have is by grace.
Often on mornings, a lot of mornings, when I'm shaving in the morning, I will stare in the mirror at myself and I repeat the same line to myself. I say, Jason, you just aren't that important. While you were sleeping, the Lord held together planet Earth and all the universe fine without you. You're not that important. And I start that with my day. I want to be faithful. I want to be godly.
I want to be effective as much as I can. But frankly, I'm just not that important. He is. I often walk around cemeteries for this very reason. I love walking through cemeteries, and you look at all of these gravestones, and some of these people, I mean, good night, they have monuments that reach towards the sky. How important they must have been, and nobody knows them today.
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