Jude 1:3 Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write to you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write to you… The revelation of God in Christ — whose contents are the object of Christian faith and are therefore described as the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints — does not consist merely in additional knowledge concerning God. Christ is the Saviour as well as the teacher of men. A large part, perhaps the larger part, of the revelation of God which has come to the race through Christ consists in the actual redemption of men from sin and eternal death. Those who receive the Christian gospel are not only brought under the power of great and pathetic and animating truths concerning God — they enter into the actual possession of a redemption which God has achieved for the race. To them the faith was once for all delivered. That is, the revelation of God in Christ, the Christian gospel, which is the object of the faith of all Christians, and which is here described as "the faith," is committed to the trust of all who have been actually redeemed and restored to God by Christ. They are responsible for its purity and integrity. There are other provisions for perpetuating it, and for renewing it, when it has been corrupted or wholly lost. The written story of the earthly life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the authoritative teaching of the apostles. But even those sacred books were written by elect saints in discharge of the same trust which has been inherited by ourselves. They stand apart. They have an exceptional authority. But they illustrate the fidelity which is required of the saints of all succeeding generations; and in our age, as in all past ages, the effective defence of the faith lies, under God, with living men and women who through Christ have received the remission of sins, and the supernatural life, and the grace and light of the Holy Ghost. To the saints was the faith delivered once for all. The saints of every age are responsible for defending it in times of peril and asserting its power. For they, and they alone, have an independent, personal, and immediate knowledge of the Divine objects of faith. Some kinship with a poet's genius is necessary for a true understanding of his verse; and spiritual kinship with the writers of the Old Testament and the New is necessary to catch their real thought. Who can tell what is meant by being "in Christ" except the man who is conscious that he himself is "in Christ "? Who can have any clear perception of the great truth — the paradox of the Christian gospel — that we are justified, not by our own righteousness, but in Christ, except the man who, out of the fulness of his own happy experience, can join in the exulting triumph of saints and say, "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," etc. The theologian, therefore, must first of all be a saint. It is not enough that he has mastered the theories of conflicting theologies concerning the Christian atonement, the forgiveness of sins, justification, the new life which is given to the race in Christ, judgment to come. He must know for himself the greatness of the Christian redemption. He must be vividly conscious that in the power of a new life he has passed into a new world, if he is to be able to give any true account of that Divine regenerative act in which the new life is given. His science is the science of God. He must have a large and varied knowledge of God — not merely of the speculations of other men about God. His faith in Christ as the Eternal Word who has become flesh must rest, not on proof texts, but on a direct vision of Christ's glory, and his faith in the Holy Spirit on his own consciousness that that august and gracious Presence dwells in him as in a temple. For his thought to move with any certainty in the great mysteries which surround the being of the Eternal, he must be able to say with other saintly souls, "Through Christ we have access in one Spirit unto the Father." To all Christian men the great objects of faith are revealed by the Spirit of God. No man can really say that Jesus is the Lord but in the Holy Spirit. The theologian who is called of God to be the teacher of the Church must receive in larger measure than his brethren "the Spirit of wisdom and revelation" in the knowledge of God. It is not given indeed to man to know in this direct way all the wonders of the Divine kingdom; and the theologian, like the discoverers in other sciences, must sometimes rely on the observations and experience of other men. The great things he should know for himself. Where his own vision is defective, and his own experience at fault, he will try to learn what other men have seen and what other men have experienced. He will distinguish between their speculations and the facts which they have verified and which have been verified by ordinary Christian men in different ages and under different conditions. He will remember that to the meek God teaches His way. He has to give an intellectual account of the faith once for all delivered to the saints. He will therefore attribute supreme value to that central substance of Christian truth which has been the life and strength of Christian men in all generations. The spirit of intellectual adventure will not be uncontrolled. He will not imagine that after nineteen centuries of Christian history the saints have yet to learn what are "the first principles of Christ." Believing that the light of God has come to himself he will also believe that it came to devout men of past generations. We claim for the intellect the largest freedom. It can render no worthy service to the Church or to truth if it be fettered. We claim for it in religion a freedom as large as is conceded to it in science. In science it cannot change the facts; its function is to ascertain and to interpret them. In faith it cannot change the facts; its function is to ascertain and to interpret them. In both departments the facts are supreme. Wherever facts are known the speculative intellect is under limitations and restraints; it is absolutely free only where it is absolutely ignorant. The methods of the intellect in the investigation of religious truth differ from its methods in the investigation of scientific truth, as the methods of the historian differ from the methods of the chemist. But the claim for intellectual freedom in theology needs no other qualification than that which is imposed upon it in every other province of intellectual activity — facts, through whatever channel the certain knowledge of them may come, and by whatever methods they are discovered or verified — facts are its only limitation. It is our duty to keep an open mind to the discoveries of theologians and scholars; but this does not mean that we should consent to regard all the articles of the Christian faith as open questions. On the great subjects our mind is made up. The facts we know, and under God we have to transmit the knowledge of them to coming generations. We are willing, if necessary, to revise definitions, but can accept no definition which obscures the Divine glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Son of Man, Creator, Brother, Lord, Redeemer of the human race. We are prepared to discuss theories of the Atonement, but can accept no theory which would dislodge our hearts from their sure confidence in Christ, in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the remission of sins according to the riches of God's grace. We confess that the mystery of the eternal life of God transcends our science; that the terms of the creeds must be inexact; that they point towards august truths, but do not reach them; and yet, with reverence and awe we worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — one God, blessed for evermore; and in the knowledge of God we have eternal life. The substance of the faith delivered once for all to the saints of the first age has been verified in the experience of the saints of every succeeding generation, and has, in these last days, been verified in our own. Theologians have not to create new heavens and a new earth, but to give a more exact account of that spiritual universe whose mysteries and glories have environed the saints from the beginning. (R. W. Dale, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints. |
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