NOTES for Jud 1:3

What wants to say the apostle, by exhorting the addressees of his message "to contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints"? It would have been possible of course to think that it is about a certain doctrine that the believers are called to protect, if necessary, at the cost of their personal life, as did in all the times the martyrs for an idea or for their religious persuasions.

Probably, if Christianity was simply a new religion, it would then have been necessary to understand the words of the apostle particularly so. But indeed, Christianity is not a new religion, not a new morality and either a new theological doctrine. Christianity is the life in this Kingdom, which the Savior brought to the world.

Well then arises question: how and from what the Kingdom should be protected, if it, according to the very words of Jesus “is not of this world”. What can the forces of our non transformed world do, what damage can they cause to what not only is not a part of it, but also is directly of the another nature? The question would have had no sense, if it was not one "but": the Kingdom, being of a different nature from the non transformed world, must all the same be present in it to have the possibility to transform it, and this presence is possible only in the form of Church, communities of people living in the Kingdom, and in this sense “saints", that is sanctified by the breath of the Kingdom.

And in order that such community not only break, but also lives a full life, is important the loyalty of its members to each other, and to the One, Who brought the Kingdom in the world. Of course this loyalty should be kept and protected. And the problem here is not only in the persecutions and the pursuits for the faith and for the membership in the Church, even if the persecutions in the life of the early Christian churches were numerous. The problem is again in what could divert the believers from what composed the main sense of their life, to divert by new or not too new ideas, theories, religiosity, - in short, all that, having taken completely man, can completely redefine his system of values and life priorities.

But for the life in the Kingdom, is particularly important in particular the system of values and life priorities, it is in particular it which defines the possibility of joining the Kingdom. First - "the Kingdom and its righteousness", and the rest will follow.

And "rest" however could be not only the material assets of this world, but also its cultural values, and its religion: because even in religion, to the basis of which is the experience of the revelation, there will be always a considerable layer of purely human religiosity, which longs to go out to the foreground, pushing revelation behind. But, no matter what proposes to the faithful this world as alternative to the values of the Kingdom, this alternative will not be in any case adequate. And the apostle reminds it to the authors of his message: because it is not simply about a doctrine, but about life and about salvation.