Fight for the Faith: The Battle of the Mind

What you’re prepared to fight for reveals what is most important to you. Family, kids, dreams, ambitions, friends, money, career—the question: Of all the things worth fighting for in your life, does your faith make it on the list? Are you prepared to fight for faith?

A Lesson from the Boxing Ring

When I was living in Cape Town, I tried my hand at boxing—it wasn’t my idea but my friend Jannie’s idea, who thought that we could become the next preaching boxers. And so, he dragged me off to a naval base where we started training with an ex-navy guy. Now, I was just glad to be getting out of college because I didn’t want to be reading my Bible the whole day, as I was studying at Bible college. But Jannie, on the other hand, had illusions of grandeur, thinking that he could become the next boxing champ of the world. And so, the guy that we were training with was an ex-navy by the name of John. So both Jannie and John started plotting their rise onto the boxing big stage.

And so, the first step on that was actually a local competition that John was going to organize at the gym. By the time I heard about it, Jannie and John had actually signed us both up for that particular competition. Now, I wasn’t keen for a match, let alone a competition, but then Jannie actually appealed to my vanity by saying to me, “Look, buddy, of all the guys in your weight category at the gym, you’re actually one of the best. And so, some of these guys have entered into the competition, and so it’s really your competition to win.”

And so, I thought to myself, I was like, “Well, I’d gone to Cape Town to get a Bible college degree, but walking away with a few boxing crowns under the belt didn’t seem like a bad thing, right?” And so, on the day of the competition, we rocked up there early to register, only to find that the whole of Cape Town and the dog had turned out for this competition. And so, it turned out that this competition was actually one of the qualifiers for the Western Cape amateur boxing championship—which I did not know about. And so, too late to back out, I register for the competition, only to find out that I will be fighting in the super heavy category—that is, guys that are 100+ kilos, who are way heavier than I am. Jannie nudges me and says, “Don’t worry about it. You’ve got this,” while he qualifies to fight guys who are way lighter than him.

My first fight was against a Bulgarian monster of a man. I kid you not—standing in the middle of the ring with him, toe to toe, looking up at him—the guy literally dwarfed me and was like twice my size. Jannie and John, in my corner, were saying, “Hey, remember what we’re practicing.” I’m like, “Hey, we didn’t practice for this at all.” And so, as people started exiting the ring before the bell rang, I’m like, “You’re really going to leave me to fight this beast?” Then, as I look at this Bulgarian guy, I could just see in his eyes that he intended to swallow me up whole—and that’s when I realized, moments before that bell rang, that I actually needed a plan if I was going to survive three rounds with this guy.

And so, forget about winning the fight—all it was was survive just one more second that day. And so, just before the bell rang, I started thinking about what will be my approach, because once the bell rang, the guy bull-rushed me and I realized that I couldn’t go toe to toe and try to out-muscle this guy. I couldn’t just fight what was coming at me—I had to fight smart. I had to fight with my mind. And the fact that I’m standing here today means that he didn’t at least kill me, right?

Fighting for Faith Requires a Battle of the Mind

And so, a testament to how sometimes our minds can make all the difference when it comes to the battles that we face—a lesson that can be applied with Jude’s call to contend for the faith. And so, we will need a two-pronged attack if we are to contend for the faith. In Jude 1:5–10, we see the first prong or side of our attack, and that is the battle of the mind. As we face the onslaught of a sinful world as Christians who are being called to strenuously defend the gospel of Jesus Christ, we will have to wage the battle of the mind. Jude called his readers to contend for the faith because God’s grace and the Lordship of Jesus Christ were under attack by certain people—false teachers who had come into their midst. Now, Jude doesn’t identify these false teachers by name, but instead he’s careful to do two things:

The first is this: he exposes how their work is nothing new. And so, he writes and he says, “…for certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation.” And so, what is he saying? He’s saying that throughout Scripture we have seen how God has always dealt with people who have been about the kind of things that these false teachers were actually propagating—of which he will go on to give examples.

The second thing that Jude does is expose how to combat their falsehood—with the mind. Because false teaching is always fundamentally a matter of the mind—over what we will choose to believe about God. And so, contending for the faith—fighting for faith—is first and foremost a battle with the mind over what we will choose to believe about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Old Testament Warnings: Three Cautionary Tales

So what should we remain mindful of as we wage the battle of the mind?

Jude unpacks this using three Old Testament examples of people who lost the battle of the mind as they rebelled against God: Israel, fallen angels, and Sodom and Gomorrah.

1. Israel: Jude 1:5 – Jude writes and says, “Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.” And so, God’s grace had rescued the people of Israel out of Egypt, sustained them daily in the wilderness, and yet, at the report of the spies who had gone out to scout the Promised Land and came back and said there are giants living there, Israel turned its back on the saving grace of God. And so, likewise, Jude is saying to his readers—when we give in to hopelessness and despair as we contend for the faith, we might as well be saying that the single most powerful display of God’s saving grace, as we see in the gospel of Jesus Christ, might not be enough to anchor our lives.
2. Fallen angels: Jude 1:6 – “And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—” Now, it’s not too sure which fallen angels Jude is referring to. Some think that he might perhaps be referring to the devil and his fallen angels, who rebelled against God in heaven, as we see Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 allude to. Others think he might be referring to the angels who took the beautiful daughters of men as wives, which Genesis 6 tells us briefly about. Though it’s not clear which fallen angels Jude is referring to, he’s being absolutely clear about his point: those angels being referred to did not remain in their domain under the authority of God—they rebelled against God and His glory. And so, if fallen angels are judged for having rebelled against the glory of God, then how much more those of us who choose to rebel against the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ?
3. Sodom and Gomorrah: Jude 1:7 – “Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.” Sodom and Gomorrah are the Bible’s go-to “bad kids in class” example. You want to know who not to be like when you grow up? Sodom and Gomorrah is the Bible’s answer. Now, you would think, because of their bad rep in the Bible, that these places must have been just the worst kind of place to live in the world, right? So horrid, scummy, and just outright filthy. But in reality, Sodom and Gomorrah was like Sandton—living in Sandton. Because we see in Genesis 13 that the reason Lot decided to settle in Sodom and Gomorrah was because it was a place of great abundance and prosperity. And so, God doesn’t destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because He was like, “Ah, who would want to live there?” No—God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for this one particular thing: their lack of morality before the eyes of God. So we see that great opportunity for prosperity does not equate to great opportunity for purity before the eyes of God. And that is such a great reminder to us today because so many times, right, we look to great opportunity or we think about the opportunity and the abundance that we have around us—wealth and possessions—and we think, “Wow, this great abundance will lead to a fruitful life before God.”

Sodom and Gomorrah are an example in the Bible where we see that great opportunity does not equate to great purity before God. We need to be reminded of that. So what did Sodom and Gomorrah do in the abundance of the wealth that they had? They decided to put themselves above God and refused to allow His morality to govern their everyday lives.

The Authority, Morality, and Glory of God

These three examples—here’s what Jude is trying to drive home to us: he’s saying we should not mislead ourselves or misjudge our position before God. We must not supersede or place ourselves above the authority, morality, and glory of God because when we do that, we shut ourselves out from God’s blessing and incur His judgment. We fall into that trap when we cease to wage the battle of the mind—which is the battle to embrace the authority, morality, and glory of God. This is why Jude adds in Jude 1:8: “Yet in like manner these people also (so these false teachers like the three examples that Jude has given), relying on their dreams (so they are dreamers), defile the flesh, reject authority, and blaspheme the glorious ones.” Now, a dreamer in the Old Testament was someone who claimed to have received a message from God, which then needed to be verified as true or false. So Jude is appealing to his readers and basically saying: don’t be so eager to accept any spiritual leader willy-nilly who comes to you with a new revelation from God.

Instead, when you assess and try to discern what they are propagating—whether in words or deeds—if you find it empty of the authority, morality, and glory of God, which can only be found in the gospel of Jesus Christ, do not follow after it. This is such a pertinent warning for our day and age, because we have such an insatiable thirst for things that are new. We go from place to place looking for some kind of experience that will draw us closer to the divine—something that will finally connect us or make up for something lacking. And in the process, we end up accepting anything willy-nilly that lacks, at its core, a calling to humble ourselves and submit ourselves under the authority, morality, and glory of God, which can only be found in the gospel.

We should not chase after things in hopes that God will deliver something new, but instead trust what God has already said in the Bible. In the gospel of Jesus Christ, God has already revealed the authority, morality, and glory by which you must submit your life. Now, that’s not to say that God cannot speak to us directly in a particular situation with visions, dreams, and such. No—He can. But here’s what you’re guaranteed when He does: as you try to discern what He says, you’re guaranteed to find that whatever God says through those means will always affirm what He has already said about where we can find true life and godliness—and that is found in the authority, morality, and glory of God contained in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I don’t know about you, but perhaps you’re wondering: Is this battle with the mind a battle I can effectively wage? To help us with that, Jude offers some encouragement through the archangel Michael’s example.

A quick side point before we look at that example:

One of the difficulties in understanding the book of Jude is how to interpret the freedom with which he uses some extra-biblical material to support his points. The example we’re about to look at—between the archangel Michael and the devil—is actually found in a piece of material outside the Old Testament canon. So, how do we approach that? By quoting some of this extra-biblical material, Jude is not advocating for it to be accepted into the Old Testament canon. In his Jewish upbringing, he would have grown up with these pieces of literature as part of their cultural context. So by quoting them to support his points, Jude is not seeing them as having divine authority, but is referring to them like I might quote a well-known Christian author or book. So I could reference the Africa Bible Commentary or The Pilgrim’s Progress to make a point, without putting those works on the same level as Scripture—and Jude does something similar.

Now, back to Jude 1:9: “But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you.’ Here’s what we read about Moses’s death and burial in Deuteronomy 34:5: “So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord, and He (God) buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth-peor; but no one knows the place of his burial to this day.” The mystery around Moses’s death and burial inspired some extra-biblical works that speculated about what might have happened. One of those works is called The Assumption of Moses, a narrative where the devil opposes the legitimacy of Moses being accepted into the presence of God as a sinner. Now, presumably, you might think the archangel Michael would either side with the devil and condemn Moses as a sinner, or he might condemn the devil for daring to challenge Moses’s acceptance. But the archangel Michael does neither.

No doubt he was frustrated in this whole affair because the devil, in his insolence, dared to speak on matters he had no authority to speak of. Yet Michael, instead of asserting his own authority, turns to God and simply says, “The Lord rebuke you.” This was Michael’s way of saying: “God will judge you and deal with you as you deserve. It’s not up to me to decide how He will do that.” Why? Because the authority by which God will judge, the moral standards by which He will measure, and the glory He defends belong to God—and God alone.

So what’s Jude trying to illustrate with this? That if there was ever a created being who held a high position in the eyes of God, it was the archangel Michael. Yet he does not let it get to his head. He is mindful, in this moment, to surrender to the authority, morality, and glory of God. And Jude is encouraging us: if the archangel Michael—just another created being—was able to be mindful and embrace God’s authority, morality, and glory, how much more can we, by the grace of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ, be the kind of people who can effectively wage the battle of the mind?

Lies We Must Battle Against

So contend for the faith by waging the battle of the mind against these kinds of lies:

“I am better off than God.”

That I can go on living life in my own way, apart from the authority of God that is found in the gospel. Where in your life are you needing to submit to the authority of God?

“What God requires of me is outdated and irrelevant.”

That I’m better off governing myself through my own morality—that I am my own compass in life. Where in your life are you needing to submit and abide in the morality of God?

“Life is all about me.”

That I ought to focus on my own agenda, for my own glory, apart from the gospel of God. Where in your life can you be displaying the glory of God more and more?

May Jude 1:10 never become true of us. Jude writes and says, “But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand…” What don’t they understand? The authority, morality, and glory of God, which is contained in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And by failing to understand that, what then happens? Jude 1:10 continues: “…they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.”

Apart from the gospel of Christ—under the judgment of God. Contend. Fight for the faith as you wage the battle of the mind, because you have every right and ability to win the fight—the battle with the mind.