A Summary of the Truth

1 Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James,

To those who have been called, who are loved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ:

2 Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance.

3 Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. 4 For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

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17 But, dear friends, remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ foretold. 18 They said to you, “In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” 19 These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit.

20 But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

Some people object to creeds in the church, saying, “I believe in God, but I only accept the truth of the Bible.” Though the Apostle’s Creed isn’t printed in the Bible, it faithfully summarizes the Bible’s teaching.

Jude’s short letter reveals the need for a summary of the truth. In his day there was an urgent need to defend the truth about Jesus Christ. In some ways like us today, people in the first century faced a swirling clash of ideas and claims about truth and religion, and it was easy to be misled by false teachings. Jude, an early church leader who was also a brother of Jesus, saw that false teaching threatened to mislead the church. He urged believers to hold on to the truth entrusted to them.

God the Holy Spirit, using the eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ apostles, forged the truth that we find in the New Testament. Then, from the days of the early church through the next few centuries, leaders and teachers summarized the main points of that truth as they taught new believers who were preparing for baptism. And by around the fourth century, a general statement emerged that has become known as the Apostles’ Creed.

Our grasp of God’s truth can still be threatened today. When we say the Apostles’ Creed, we are reciting God’s eternal truth to help us stand firm in our faith in Christ, and we do so with believers down through the centuries and around the world.

Lord, may your eternal truth shape us today as we share it with the world. Amen.