Called, Beloved, and Kept

This sermon was originally preached at Community Worship on August 28, 2025.

I have said and will continue to say that the best apologetic for the Christian faith is a loving, Jesus-centered community. And sadly, that can sound countercultural even for other professing Christians. It feels that some Christians thrive on fear rather than love. The mean-spirited, hateful, racist, patriarchal, xenophobic, anti-empathy segment of American Christianity might not agree with my assertion that the best apologetic for the Christian faith is a loving community. But I want us to consider what I’m suggesting. One of the main reasons I stay here at NPTS is because we aren’t just a community of people who know things, or even a community of activists who do things. We are a community of people who always strive to love God and love our neighbors. And from that love we learn things and do things. 

In Jude’s relatively short letter he opens by describing his readers as called by God, loved by God, and kept by God. Called, beloved, and kept. Let that seep into your psyche. God has extended a divine invitation. God loves us and displays it in Jesus. God keeps us all the way until the Lord Jesus returns and we get to live with him in Glory. We are called, loved, and kept. If we can be sure of that, then we need not give into fear. Christians who know that they are called, loved, and kept will not be afraid and will not trust in the horses, chariots, and guns rather than the strong arm of the Lord. 

Jude 3 is an urgent call for Christians to contend—or struggle— for the faith, but Jude’s perspective is far from that of the so-called Christian Nationalist. Jude urges his readers to resist the intrusion of those who would distort the Christian faith. He urges his readers to fight for what the apostles taught, but not to fight in a violent, coercive way. The Christians are to live in contrast to the power-grabbing, hierarchical ways of the Roman world and to strengthen their community bonds through love, mercy, and faith. We cannot allow our faith to be distorted because some people crave ungodly power and prominence. We cannot allow our faith to be a tool of any government.  

The story in Jeremiah always stands out to me because I have met and known people throughout my life who wanted to be called prophet. They often wanted to have the ear of prominent politicians—even presidents. I was a pastor in DC for 18 years and there was never a shortage of Christians who wanted to get really close to government officials. The prophet Hananiah in Jer 28 delivered a message that the kingdom of Judah would only have to endure 2 years of Babylonian pressure. His message surely sounded positive compared to what the Lord had actually said through Jeremiah. I imagine the king, priests, and other officials preferred hearing from Hananiah rather than Jeremiah. It’s like Evilene in the Wiz. Remember her? Her big show-stopping number is, “Don’t nobody bring me no bad news!” There are leaders today who fire the person bringing the bad news rather than reckoning with reality. God used Jeremiah to rebuke Hananiah and bring the hard—but true—word that the exile in Babylon would be for much longer than 2 years!  

That story of Hananiah and Jeremiah reminds me that among God’s people there will always be those who promote lies—even some people who claim to be prophets. And those lies often serve to comfort the powerful, the prominent, and the privileged. Jude knows that there will always be distortions of the faith. Consequently, he exhorts his readers to fight, or contend, for the faith. I don’t have time to get into the Greek here, but Jude’s language is related to the athletic arena even more than the battlefield. The struggle Jude describes is not so much like a military battle as it is a moral one. The struggle is about living virtuous lives.  

That verse—Jude 3 is—about apologetics. It gets at defending the faith among critics, cynics, and skeptics. Most of the time we think apologetics is primarily about words. Christians have long depended upon well-crafted, logically consistent arguments presented by clever communicators to defend the Christian faith. Defenders of the faith responded to intellectual objections to Christianity. Apologetics, therefore, required an academically engaging rationale for why people should believe in Jesus. But we cannot help but observe that many people today are not impressed by rational arguments. Actions indeed speak louder than words and communities of faithful people who love their neighbors represent Jesus better than slickly written or well-argued presentations. The best apologetic for the Christian faith is a loving community that strives to practice and not merely recite what Jesus taught. 

Please know that we are serious about academics here. You get plenty to read. You get plenty of opportunities to write. You are always asked to think. That’s critical to your Christian life. But all of that would be meaningless if you do not heed God’s call, know God’s love, or understand that God is the one who keeps us. 

I recall a guy who regularly sat near me in a theology class during my seminary days. It was a class with Dr. Kevin Vanhoozer. I still remember some of the racist stuff he would say and finally I confronted him on it. He had no desire—or reason—to respect what I had to say. I didn’t feel comfortable about this guy’s attitude toward black people, and I even talked to the Dean of Students.  But there was nothing they would do or say about it to deal with him or even safeguard me. My seminary days were not here at NPTS—just to be clear. And my seminary days were not all bad. But I couldn’t help but to get the message that the school was mostly concerned about what I got into my brain. They wanted to be sure that I could articulate what they would consider to be sound doctrine. At that time, they seemed less concerned about whether someone was racist, homophobic, misogynistic, or xenophobic. In fact, those things seemed to be normative and expected as part of being Christian in America. However, I take those attitudes to be distortions of the Christian faith even if you can sign some orthodox doctrinal statement.  

Jude’s letter ends with an admonition to “build yourselves up on your most holy faith” (v. 20). He encourages the entire community to grow together. He comes back to the themes of being called, loved, and kept. So let me encourage you to stop and thank God that you are called, beloved, and kept—do that often. Let me provoke you to fight for the faith—not by trying to win some culture war or even a war of words. We fight by being virtuous people who love God, love our neighbors, and as Jude says, are merciful to those who are wavering. There is simply no room for self-righteous bigotry. 

So, my sisters and brothers—let’s move onward into the academic year, fighting for the faith, knowing we are called, loved, and kept. God bless you!