Year 6, Day 251: Jude

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Challenge

• Challenge: God does not merely wish us to be in relationship with Him as we are.  He challenges us to grow, stretch, and transform as we take on the mantle of being His representatives to this world.

Jude is a book that is all about perseverance in the face of a secular world.  Jude was a letter written, probably by a brother of Jesus, to a people who were a generation or so removed from the death of Jesus.  It was written to a people who likely never saw Jesus in person but who certainly heard about Jesus from people who had seen Jesus in the flesh.  What this means, though, is that Jude is written to people who are like us.  They hear about Jesus from others, but they are faced daily with the reality that they have to choose between the strong call of a materialistic culture that drowns out everything else and the call of a God that they have not met in the flesh.  This is an incredible challenge at times.

Jude encourages the people to persevere.  Jude reminds them to hold fast to the faith.  Jude reminds them that part of the calling of Jesus is to accept the challenge of rejecting the secular world.  They are not called to be of the world.  Living in Christ does not mean embracing all things!  There are things to which Christ calls us; there are things away from which Christ calls us.  Again, this is the challenge of being in Christ while living in a secular world.

More to the point, Jude also challenges the people to watch out for teaching and teachers who follow the desire to embrace the world and Christ.  Jude calls them false teachers who creep in stealthily.  These are teachers who emotionally desire to follow Jesus but cannot find it within themselves to forsake the things of the world.  Therefore, they teach that they do not have to.  They desire the reward of Christ, but they reject His authority over the things of the world.

In the end, Jude is a book of challenge.  It is a challenge to find the narrow road and walk it.  It is a challenge to not listen to the people who talk about the narrow road but who actually walk the wide road.  It is a challenge to pursue God and His ways above all else.

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