Study in the Epistle of Jude # 8: Verse 3

by Chris McCann

EBible Fellowship (http://www.ebiblefellowship.com)

Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study time. We are continuing in our study of the book of Jude, and we are in verse 3. Last time, we were looking at the statement that God has made as He is using the Apostle Judas to write:

…that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

We were wondering, “What could this faith possibly be? What might it be that we are to earnestly contend for?” We saw that whatever we decide “the faith” is, it must meet the qualification that is found in the last part of the verse. It had to be “once delivered unto the saints.”

You could not, therefore, say that the Bible is in view by this statement of “the faith,” because the Bible was handed down over many generations to many different individuals from father to son. The Bible would not qualify. It can not be in view by this language of “the faith” that we read in Jude verse 3.

We also thought, “Perhaps it is simply the message of the Gospel itself, the basic tenets of the Gospel, which are that we are sinners and under the wrath of God, and that the Lord Jesus Christ is The Savior.” However, that also could never be said to have been once handed down or “once delivered unto the saints.” The Gospel has been often repeated; it is probably the most repeated thing that there has ever been. The Gospel has been handed down throughout the generations numerous times. It could not be said to have been “once delivered unto the saints.” So we were wondering, “What qualifies, what will fit this verse, what harmonizes, and what could this ‘faith which was once delivered’ possibly be?” When we turn to Revelation 19:11, I think we find our answer. It says there:

And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.

If we were to read more of this chapter, we would see clearly that this individual seated upon the white horse is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ who is returning in judgment. He is victorious, and so He is pictured as the conquering hero, the conquering God, who is seated upon the white horse. It says that He is faithful. This is His name. The Lord Jesus Christ is “Faithful.” So, He could also be in view here. What if we thought that “the faith” was referring to the Lord Jesus Christ? Could that solve this mystery? Could that answer this question? Could He be the One who is being identified as “the faith”? Is that possible? Would God speak about Christ as being faith Himself? We do know that God refers to Himself as “love” in 1 John 4:16 where He says, “God is love.” We also know that in referring to the Lord Jesus in 1 Corinthians 1:30, it says:

But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption:

Christ is wisdom. In Proverbs chapter 8, we find that wisdom is personified. That is because Christ Himself is the personification of wisdom. He is wisdom. God is love. Could God also be faith? Yes, that is what is in view here—”the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”

Was the Lord Jesus Christ once delivered? Let us turn to Hebrews 9:25-28 where it says:

Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.

There is a strong emphasis here that Christ was once offered. He was not as the high priest who must often go into the Holy of Holies (that was only once a year, but since it was to be repeated every year, it turned out to be often repeated). Every year for hundreds of years, the high priest of Israel was required to enter into the Holy of Holies with the blood of the sacrificial animal on the Day of Atonement and cover the Mercy Seat with the blood. He was to sprinkle the blood upon the Mercy Seat. This was picturing the sacrifice that Jesus Himself would later make when He would enter into the human race and become a man. But Jesus did not come often to suffer for the sins of the world. He came once, “once in the end of the world.” God uses the language “the end of the world” because He refers to the New Testament period as “the last days.” It was eleven thousand years before Jesus came the first time. He was the promised Messiah. He was the hope of the world for eleven thousand years, the hope of the people of God as they looked for His coming. Then finally, He came in the end of the world, because after eleven thousand years, there are only a few thousand years thereafter. God speaks of that period of time as “the last days,” and He can also refer to it as “the end of the world” because there will be no other period of time after these days. Christ came and put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself one time. No more, just once, Jesus offered up Himself. But what about this language where it says “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints”? If we turn to Matthew 27:1-2, we read these words which tie in with the language of Jude 3. Its says there:

When the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death: And when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor.

Jesus was delivered to Pontius Pilate and to the Roman authorities by the Jews. They turned Him over, and why? So that He would be crucified. In Matthew 27:26 it says:

Then released he Barabbas unto them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

Christ was delivered up to the Romans by His own people, by the nation of Israel. We, therefore, can see why Jude said in verse 3 that He was “once delivered,” once, for the sins of His people. So far, with every word that the Lord Jesus qualifies as “the faith,” He is harmonizing with this verse. He fits right in, and we know that “the faith” must be Christ Himself. Finally, verse 3 concludes by saying:

…once delivered unto the saints.

Who are the saints? Are they those men whom a certain church canonizes? Are the saints those dear people who live such holy lives that finally the church must recognize them and proclaim them as saints? Is that what a saint is? That is what some churches would call a saint. But Biblically, whom the Bible calls a saint is each and every child of God. Every believer is a saint. A saint is someone who has been saved, someone who has been made holy as God has saved them. Those people are the ones looked upon by God as being saints. The Lord Jesus Christ was once delivered, and we have seen that both the words “once” and “delivered” are focusing very much on the atonement, the death of the Lord Jesus. At that point in time, was Christ delivered unto the saints? Was He delivered to the whole company of the elect, to each one whom He would later save at some point in history? The answer is yes. Christ was delivered to the saints, and if you are a child of God, then Christ was delivered to you at that point. He was bearing your sins. He took your sins upon His own body and paid the penalty for those sins, which is the second death of eternal damnation (Revelation 20:14). Christ endured the equivalent of an eternity in Hell for each and every one of the saints. Therefore, He was delivered once to the saints. He was delivered up in our place, in our stead, and so God speaks of Him in this way.

Now this is a very important verse because the Bible says a great deal about salvation. The Bible gives us a lot of information about it, and we know that faith is central in the matter of salvation. The question then is, “Whose faith actually saves? Is it your faith, or my faith, or Christ’s faith?” We have confirmed, we definitely have shown by the Bible itself, that the faith in view here in Jude is the Lord Jesus’. It is Christ’s. He is “the faith,” just as He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). There is none other truth, there is none other way. So, when it comes to saving faith, there is none other faith. The only faith that can save an individual is the faith of Christ. We see this, for example, in Galatians 2:16 where it says:

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ…

There is that justification again which we have been looking at before. Remember, the great cry of the reformation was “justification by faith.” They had progressed in their understanding of salvation to the point of realizing that a man is not justified by works. They were able to see that a man is not justified by the church or even when the church says that he is justified, but that a man is justified by faith alone. Galatians 2:16 is saying the exact same thing.

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ…

Here we see justification by faith, that we are justified by “the faith.” That is what Jude verse 3 is saying when it declares that “the faith” was once delivered unto the saints. We saw there that “the faith” had Jesus in view. What faith is in view here in Galatians 2:16? A man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. The faith of Jesus Christ is what justifies. It is His faith that saves an individual—not the individual’s faith or the sinner’s faith. When it comes to salvation, “my faith” does not mean a thing, and no one else’s faith means anything either.

When we try to exercise our faith in obedience to the command of God, when we try to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as the Bible commands us to, and if we then say, “Okay, I will believe, I will exercise my faith,” then that would be a work of the law. That is because every commandment of God is the law, and whenever someone tries to keep the law, that is a work. When God says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not lie (Exodus 20:1-17),” there are people who try to keep those commandments and thereby get right with God. They think that they can be justified with God by keeping the Ten Commandments. But then Galatians 2:16 says to them, “No way! A man is not justified by the works of the law. You cannot keep the Ten Commandments to get right with God. That will not save you.”

Oh, but there are some that recognize that, many of them in the churches and congregations, and they realize, “No, you cannot keep the law or the Ten Commandments to become saved. That will not save you. But here is what you can do.” They say, “Here is what you can do. There is a commandment of God that says, ‘believe on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 16:31).’ So believe, just believe, and that will save you.”

Yet, these people are still under the yoke of the law, still under the bondage of the law, and they are still indicating that by believing you can do a work that will save you. But God is saying here in Galatians 2:16, “No way!” No work of any kind can justify a sinner. Nothing a man can do, no works of the law, whether it be keeping the law of Sunday as the Sabbath or keeping the law of believing on Christ or repenting of sin, will justify anyone. It is not our faith that saves.

Now someone might say, “Hold on a second! You are going to a couple of verses and making these kind of statements, but you know there are other verses too that speak about faith, and these verses do indicate that the individual’s faith is in view. For example, look at Mark 5:34,” they might say. There we read that there is a woman who touched the Lord Jesus Christ because she felt that if she might touch but His clothes, she would be made whole of her plague. We do see in verse 34 that Jesus says this to her:

And he said unto her, Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace, and be whole of thy plague.

“What about this verse? Is not this indicating that this woman’s faith made her whole? Is it not a picture of salvation when someone becomes healed in this way, and so is not God teaching us that our faith does play a part in salvation? Is not God teaching us that we have to reach out as this woman did and touch Christ by faith, and then we will become saved? Jesus Himself said to the woman, ‘Thy faith has made thee whole.’ So how can you say that our faith plays no part in salvation? How can anybody say that when it comes to saving faith, the sinner’s faith has nothing to do with his salvation?”

Well you see, there are a few scattered verses like this that seemingly, at first glance, do give the impression that it is our faith that plays a part in salvation, and that it is our faith that is instrumental as God would save the sinner. However, we know that this is entirely wrong because in Ephesians 2:8-9, God lays out the Biblical principle concerning faith and salvation. He says there:

For by grace are ye saved through faith…

There is nothing new there. We understand that faith is very closely associated with salvation, and so we are not surprised by this at all. By God’s grace we are saved through faith. Let us read the last part of the verse:

and that [the faith] not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

God is spelling it out for us. He is very clearly indicating that when it comes to saving faith, it is not of yourselves. Whenever we see a case such as the one in Mark 5 where a woman approaches Christ, and Jesus makes the kind of statement as, “Thy faith has made thee whole,” then we have to look at it carefully and try to harmonize it with all the other information that we know to be true concerning faith and concerning the fact that Christ is “the faith” that saves. Everything then fits into place. We understand that Jesus is saying, “Thy faith,” which is Himself, has made the woman whole. She had Christ, whose faith had become hers because Christ had saved her. He had saved her by His faith—the same way that anyone becomes saved—and then Christ became hers. Faith becomes her possession. The Spirit of Christ enters into her, and faith has made her whole.

In other words, if we were to reword this verse by just changing one word, then we would get exactly what is being said here, and we would get it very clearly. What if the verse read like this: “Daughter, thy God hath made thee whole.” You see, now we understand it clearly when we substitute the word “faith” for “God, thy God.” It has nothing to do with the woman. She is no part God herself, neither is God coming forth from her in any way, but God is her God because she is a believer. She has been saved, and so she worships the God of Israel. Therefore, her God, “thy God” has made her whole. That is what is meant by the statement “thy faith hath made thee whole.” Because Christ is faith, and Christ is eternal God, whenever someone is made whole of the plague of sin, always without fail, without any exceptions at all, Christ is doing the work of salvation.

Next time, Lord willing, we are going to continue looking at this word “faith,” and we are going to go to maybe a couple of other places where it seems a little questionable as to whose faith is actually in view when it comes to justification and salvation. We are going to see that in each and every case, the Bible harmonizes and everything comes together when we understand that Christ is the faith.