Calling the previous article and this one on the Epistle of Jude a “study” would be overstating the case, no doubt. Probably a “treatment” is more like it. Once or twice over lightly.
Those who love the Word will identify with what happened to me. After penning the previous article on Jude, I found that it lingered with me. Several statements in particular would not let me sleep last night. They kept insistig that they deserve more than the light reference we gave them previously.
Let’s call this: 5 statements that describe this faith of ours, from Jude’s epistle.
1) Ours is a revealed faith. (Jude 3)
“…the faith which was once for all entrusted to the saints.”
We did not “get up” this body of beliefs. We did not concoct it, think it up, work it up, knock it together using church councils or schools of prophets. It was given us by the Almighty.
Unless we settle this up front, nothing that follows will make any sense.
In their attack on the Christian faith, some will think they have found the fatal flaw when they point out that “your Bible was written by men; you Christians seem to think it was dropped from Heaven as a finished product.”
No one believes that. We cite the Apostle Peter when he says, “Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (II Peter 1:21).
God used human instrumentation. Scriptures are saturated with the fingerprints of its human authors, and far from denying it, we revel in it. We treasure the “warts and all” character of the Bible and the personal references from those used by God to pen it. “I Paul write this greeting in my own hand” (I Corinthians 16:21). “Do your best to get here before winter” (II Timothy 4:21).
2) Ours is a finished faith; it is completed (Jude 3).