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“Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 3–4 ESV).

One thing Jude makes clear in these verses is that it’s necessary for us to deal from time to time with threats to “the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints” (Jude 3). Jude doesn’t tell us anything specific about the threat he was dealing with in his day, but it’s clear that the people he was writing about had failed to understand the meaning of God’s grace. Jude was dealing with, as one translation says, “ungodly men who have turned the grace of our God into a license for evil” (Jude 4 NET).

It’s amazing to me how often departures from the faith are justified by an appeal to grace. Have you ever noticed that? There’s a very simple principle we need to understand: If we invoke the concept of grace to justify a practice that is contrary to God’s will as it’s revealed in his word, then we are guilty of misusing grace. Grace was never intended as a means of letting us live as we want to live without fear of consequences. That’s not what God’s grace does.

People like those described by Jude have a way of sneaking in among God’s people. These people had “crept in unnoticed” (Jude 4 ESV). Paul said basically the same thing about the Judaizing teachers who were troubling the churches of Galatia. He spoke of “false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery” (Galatians 2:4 ESV). That was a different situation, but the same method was used to get in among the saints.

What that says is that we can’t afford to be inattentive. We must be watchful. That is one reason why churches are to have elders. They are overseers. When Paul met with the elders of the church in Ephesus, he said to them, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28 ESV). The responsibility to pay close attention, however, does not belong to the elders alone. It is one each Christian shares.

I realize that we can get to the point where we go beyond being watchful and begin to view everyone with suspicion. There are people who seem to see false teachers wherever they go. We have to guard against that way of thinking as well. The key is to be balanced. That’s not necessarily easy, but it’s what we need.

The way you get that kind of balance is not by reading books or listening to people; it’s by reading the word of God—all of it. David once said to the Lord, “The sum of your word is truth” (Psalm 119:160 ESV). Jesus stated the same principle when he quoted from the book of Deuteronomy and said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4 ESV). Are you doing your part to know God’s word?

If you’ve not already done so, pick up a reading schedule from the table in the foyer, and begin the process that will take you through the Bible in a year. It’s worth the time and effort. It will not only help you to live the way you’re supposed to live, but also prepare you to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3 ESV).