Like Jude, I’ve been troubled recently by what I see as the precarious and weakening state of evangelical Christianity. While wanting to continue on in my study of the gospel of Mark, I was drawn to this short book of exhortation to acquire somewhat of an ally, someone with a similar gnawing worry. While wanting to write about a common salvation Jude pivoted to a common problem.

We need more Christians contending earnestly for the faith and less catering eagerly to the faithless. We live in a time where attacks on the fundamental Christian worldview are relentless. While we hold the upper hand in a victorious Christ, collectively the defender of the faith—the church—seems to have sounded the retreat in an attempt to stay relevant and accepted. We may be wanting to rescue people from the fire, but we aren’t preparing the kinds of people who can stand the heat.

How can a people who don’t seem to believe in the first 11 chapters of the Bible, who’ve gone wobbly on the reality of hell and God’s sovereign judgment, who get the main tenets of their theology from worship songs, and have made wholesale accommodations for the gross immorality the Bible clearly condemns, be counted on to fight for the doctrines of Christianity?

Jude is pleading for us the called, the beloved in God the father, the kept in Jesus Christ, to agonize over—struggle for—our common and most holy faith.

There’s much talk these days, and I hate it, of “being woke.” But if there ever was a time to wake up to the doctrinal peril we face it’s now!