Contend for the Faith

"Contend earnestly for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3) - eight small letters, a handful of pages each in most Bibles, closing out the New Testament's non-Pauline correspondence with one shared and urgent concern: will the faith survive contact with a hostile world?

Contend for the Faith is the twenty-sixth volume in The Daily Quiet Time Reflections Series, continuing the same daily, one-reading-at-a-time approach used throughout the series - most recently in Faithful to the End: Reflections on the Books of 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. Drawn from years of daily Quiet Time writing and Sunday School teaching at First Baptist Church in Dallas, this volume walks through Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, and 3 John, and Jude across thirty-nine chapters organized in eight Parts, one for each letter.

Hebrews argues, book-length, that Christ is superior to everything the old covenant could offer - a better revelation, a better priesthood, a better covenant, a better sacrifice - and warns five times against drifting away from Him. James presses, relentlessly and practically, on the point that a living faith always shows itself in works. Peter, writing twice, first strengthens suffering believers to stand firm in grace and then arms them against teachers who twisted that same grace into a license for sin. John, writing three times, refuses to let truth and love be pulled apart from one another. And Jude, in the shortest and most urgent letter of all, gives this volume both its title and its charge.

This is not a technical commentary written for seminarians. It is a layman's companion for ordinary believers who want to read these eight letters slowly, together, and be met by both their warnings and their comfort.

Each chapter includes:

• A close, readable walk through that day's passage, grounded in careful study but written for everyday readers
• Honest engagement with each letter's most debated passages - Hebrews' warning passages, James on faith and works, 1 Peter's audience, James 5's prayer for healing - presented with appropriate care where genuine scholarly disagreement exists
• Cross-references tracing how these eight letters echo, and are echoed by, Paul, the Gospels, and one another
• Reflection and discussion questions, ideal for personal devotion or small-group Bible study