Hey Jude
“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.” Jude 3
Jude was a half-brother of Jesus (Matthew 13:55), and it is believed that he recognized and acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God after Jesus’ resurrection. It is uncertain as to whom his letter was addressed, but it was apparently a group of believers in a local church. He wanted to write about the benefits of salvation received by grace through faith, but he had heard how some false teachers had infiltrated the church, and he wanted to urgently caution the believers to not get cold and indifferent concerning these counterfeits, but to stand firm in the faith and defend it with conviction.
In the late 1960’s, Paul McCartney of the Beatles wrote a song entitled “Hey Jude”. He wasn’t writing about Jesus’ half brother, but it is thought that the song was written for John Lennon’s son Julian. When he was just a boy, his parents went through a divorce, and Paul wrote this song to comfort Julian. The song was originally entitled “Hey Jules” (from Adam Perlmutter’s Performance Notes in Lennon & McCartney Piano Songs for Dummies.) A line in the song goes like this: “And don’t you know that it’s just you? Hey Jude, you’ll do. The movement you need is on your shoulder.” Now, I am not really clear on exactly what Paul McCartney was saying here concerning a little boy whose world was being torn apart, but the line makes sense to me in light of Jude’s earnest please to his readers to “contend for the faith”. If the faithful do not defend the faith against lies and half-truths, then who will? The committed followers of Christ are the ones on whose shoulders the responsibility of contending for or striving for the truth of the gospel is laid.
When we hear some doctrine or someone’s interpretation of scripture, God’s word tells us to “search the scriptures” (John 5:39). We must make sure that what we are hearing and what we are relaying to others can be backed up by God’s written word. If we don’t study God’s word diligently, then it makes it easier for someone to deceive us. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to be deceived. If we are armed with the truth, then we can stay a step ahead of the enemy. If we are willing to learn and put into practice those truths that we discover in God’s word, God will reveal those truths to us.