Study in the Epistle of Jude # 9: Verse 3

by Chris McCann

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

Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study time. We are continuing with our study of the book of Jude, and have come to the very significant verse of Jude 3 that declares that “the faith” was once delivered to the saints. We have been pausing to take a moment to really look at this idea of what “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” really means. What could possibly be in view? We saw that it could not be the Gospel, because the Gospel has been handed down numerous times. We saw that it could not be the Bible itself, because the Bible has also been handed down numerous times throughout the generations. We have been able to conclude that the only thing that qualifies as being “the faith,” and the only thing that fits the requirements of the verse as being “once delivered,” is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the faith. And we are starting to see that when God is looking at faith, when He is considering or explaining what saving faith is, the Lord Jesus Christ will always be in view. In Galatians 2:16 we read:

Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

Twice in this verse, God carefully explains that the faith which justifies or saves (and to be justified means that you are just in the sight of God, that you are saved) is the faith of Jesus Christ and not the faith of man. Some people do not like to hear this. They really do not like this idea. They like to think that they do not have to trust God and that they do not have to wait on God at all for salvation. They believe that salvation is not in the hands of an almighty God who will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy (Romans 9:15), but that salvation is in the hands of man. They believe that what man will do is really up to man. Will he accept Christ, or will he reject Him? That will determine his eternal destiny. This is what some think. They turn to a verse such as the Gospel of John 1:12 which says:

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

They say, “See, you have to receive Christ and reach out to accept the gift that God is offering. You have to play your part. You have to do something, not just sit back and wait for God to save you. You have to reach out and grab hold of salvation and bring it to yourself.”

Now there are some verses that people can go to which apparently say this kind of a thing, that man is to make some kind of contribution to his salvation. We have to be careful, though, and we have to read the whole Bible. We have to compare one Scripture with another Scripture in order to harmonize our conclusions and make sure that this is what God is saying in the Bible. For example, in John 1, we read verse 12, but we do not read verse 13. In that verse, God is going to speak about being born again, about salvation. It states:

Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Verse 12 is speaking about receiving the Lord Jesus and about them that believe on His name, and it is saying that this is how someone becomes born again. And then God says that those who are born again are not born by their blood in any way. They are not born again because they are either a Gentile or a church member or anything like that. God declares, “Nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man.” Twice over, God emphasizes exactly that man’s will plays absolutely no part in his being born again or receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. So, free will is totally contrary to what the Bible teaches. Man’s will is not free. Man who is dead in sin will always go after the lusts of the flesh. His only freedom of choice is which sin he will choose, which false god he will choose.

Let us turn to Joshua 24:15, because some people bring up this verse. It reads:

And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve…

Well, there you have it. God is pleading to man’s free will. He is throwing it out there to man to make a choice, to choose this day. This is how this verse is often presented. Some use this verse to say that man plays a part in his salvation, but they are not reading this verse carefully.

…choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.

You can see that the choice of man is between one group of false gods or another group of false gods. There is no choice here to serve the Lord. That is not in the picture. Choose you this day whom you are going to serve if your will is going to play a part in your salvation. Well yes, you can chose one sin over another sin—you can have your preference that way. Your will certainly can participate in those kinds of decisions. However, when it comes to saving faith, when it comes to salvation, there is no choice to be made. God says in John 1:13 that it is not of the will of the flesh, it is not of the will of man, but salvation is of the Lord. “But of God” is how God concludes that verse in John. “But of God”—that is how a man is born again. That is how someone becomes saved. We are justified by the faith of Jesus Christ. We are saved by God’s action. He does everything when it comes to salvation, and that is the simple truth that the Bible lays out and presents. God does everything.

Someone then might say, “Does not a believer, a Christian, have faith? Do we not have faith if Christ is faith?” Yes, we have faith, and this faith is in view in Galatians 5:22, where it states:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

“The fruit of the Spirit”—let us think about that for a second. “The fruit of the Spirit.” This means that we have to have the Spirit in order for the Spirit to produce this fruit. If we do not have the Spirit, then we will not have the fruit of the Spirit. So, if we do not have the Spirit, we would not have love or joy or peace as God understands these things or as the Bible presents them, and we would not have faith. But when someone becomes saved, the Spirit of Christ enters into that individual and they become a child of God. God actually says that if the Spirit of Christ is not in you, then you are none of His (Romans 8:9). When someone is born again and experiences salvation, they receive the Spirit. The faith of Christ has saved them; the faith of Christ has placed the Spirit of Christ within them and now they are a child of God. They had nothing to do with any of that. They had no part to play in anything related to their salvation, but now they have the Spirit of Christ. The Holy Spirit indwells them, and so the Spirit will begin to produce fruit. One of the fruits of the Spirit is faith. Do you see what comes first according to Galatians 5:22? Which is it that we see first in the life of the sinner? Do we see faith?

You see, that is how many are presenting the Gospel today. They are presenting it backwards. They have it upside down. They have it all wrong. They are saying that you must first have faith, the fruit of the Spirit, in order to bring the Spirit to you. But that is not how God says it. First you have to have the Spirit. You must be saved first, and then you will begin to exhibit the fruit, one of which is faith.

Another way of looking at it is this: let us say that you have an orange tree. You plant it, and it must grow and develop into a mature tree that can then produce fruit of its own. That is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, the seed of God’s Word, is planted in the heart of a sinner. God blesses that Word and saves the person, and they receive the Holy Ghost. Then the Holy Spirit will begin to open up that person’s understanding to the truths of the Bible, and they will grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord (2 Peter 3:18). Love will begin to sprout, joy will begin to show itself, and peace will come along as well as longsuffering and gentleness and goodness to some degree—some more, some less. Then faith will be seen. They will begin to trust God more and more in their life. However, this is not saving faith. It is not faith that has anything to do with getting them saved or with their salvation, except that it is a result of their salvation. It is faith like the fruit on the tree. It is an orange on the orange tree. First you must have the tree, and then you can have the orange. Likewise, first we have to have the Spirit of God before we develop one of the fruits of the Spirit. That is the faith that will show itself in the believer’s life. But whenever we see faith that has to do with salvation in the Bible, always, one hundred percent of the time, this is Christ’s faith. It is saving faith, not the faith of man.

Now someone might say, “Oh, but what about Abraham? What about what it says in Romans 4?” Well, let us turn to Romans 4:3 which states:

For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.

Do you see how that reads? Here we are saying that our faith has nothing to do with justification, that our faith has nothing to do with our righteousness, and that our faith has nothing to do with our salvation. But, what about Abraham? Very clearly, God is saying that Abraham’s belief, which is another way of saying his faith, was indeed counted towards him for righteousness. It did play a part in his salvation. But no, we have to be careful how we are reading this. Because, if this is true, if Abraham’s belief in God was indeed counted unto him for righteousness, then God does accept the works of man for salvation because belief is a work.

To believe on Christ is a work, and to exercise faith is a work. A work, as the Bible would describe it, is just the keeping of God’s commandments. If God tells us to go into all the world with the Gospel (Mark 16:15) and we go into all the world with the Gospel, we send forth the Gospel in our neighborhood or we give our money in obedience to that command, then that is a work. If God wants us to observe Sunday as the Sabbath, if He does not want us to do our own will or our own pleasure on that day (Isaiah 58:13), and if we desire to do things His way and are involved in spiritual activities, those are good works. Now, they have nothing to do with saving us, and a believer would never try to do these things in order to obtain salvation, but these works are works that God has prepared for His people to walk in after salvation (Ephesians 2:10). It has nothing to do with getting right in the sight of God. The believers do desire to obey God because they do possess the Spirit and the Spirit wants to do the will of God. Any command of God that we obey is a work. If God commands, “Repent” and someone says, “I have repented,” that is a work. If God commands, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” and someone says, “Okay, I will believe,” that is a work of the law, because the whole Bible is a law book and every command is one of the laws of God.

So then, there is a law that says we must believe on Christ and someone says, “Well, I know you cannot get saved by keeping the law, but there is this one verse that I am going to keep which says ‘believe on the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Acts 16:31).” They are kidding themselves if they think that this is not a work of the law, because it is. Therefore, we know that what we read in Romans 4:3 cannot be what it seems at first glance. It just cannot be that Abraham’s belief, that his faith in God, is counted for righteousness in the sense that it saved him. And as a matter of fact, we read this in Romans 4:1-2:

What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory; but not before God.

Here God is giving us a signal before He gives us verse 3, “Now be careful in how you understand verse 3. I am telling you here immediately before in verse 2 that Abraham was not justified by works or by his own belief.”

What about the book of James though? Does James not say the same thing? Does James not verify that Abraham was justified by his works? Let us look at James 2:21-23. We read there:

Was not Abraham our father justified by works…

There is the question. God is stating it plainly here. “Was not Abraham our father justified by works?” Then God gives us the historical situation:

…when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.

Certainly then, we have to say that there is an exception. At the very least, Abraham was saved by works and justified by his own works, was he not? Even though Galatians 2:16 says that a man is not justified by the works of the law, you can see why some people have stumbled badly over the Epistle of James, especially chapter 2. Some people have pulled out their hair trying to understand this passage and fit it in with what else we read in the Bible concerning God’s justification by faith and the fact that God is the One who saves and that man plays no part. People have struggled greatly with James 2 because people have struggled so much with the fact that the Lord Jesus is the faith that was “once delivered unto the saints.”

We are going to stop, and in our next study, Lord willing, we are going to get into this passage of James 2, beginning in verse 14 to the end of the chapter. We are going to go verse-by-verse through James. When God says that a man is not justified by the works of the law, there are no exceptions, not even Abraham. There must be, therefore, a way of understanding this statement as God asked the question, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works?” There must be a way of harmonizing this and putting the pieces of the puzzle together where there will be no contradiction and where we will continue to see that faith is always and without exception the Lord Jesus Christ.