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After celebrating the amazing gift of God's grace in his introduction, Jude's original plan was to write about it in more depth in the rest of his letter. But instead of doing that Jude writes to believers to urge them to contend for their faith. It was under attack, being distorted, diluted and demeaned by the conduct and teaching of people who promoted themselves as leaders in the Church but in fact did not even know God! Their basic message was that being big on grace means being soft on sin. Don't sweat it, God forgives! Jude gives some sobering reminders about how serious God is about sin - not to make us feel guilty and nervous, but to help us stay in the love of God. When Jude urges us to contend for the faith, he's asking us to do our absolute best to make sure that we don't throw away what God has so graciously made possible for us - a right relationship with Him through Jesus Christ our Saviour.
