Delivered Once For All

Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

Jude 1:3

How is it that ‘the faith’ of which Jude speaks has been, ‘once for all delivered to the saints?’ The word ‘delivered’ carries with it the idea of ‘entrusted.’  At what point did God begin to entrust the faith into the hands of the saints?  We find the first presentation of the Gospel is in Genesis 3:15.  There, the pre-incarnate Christ speaks regarding ‘the seed of the woman,’ the Messiah, Who would crush the head of ‘the serpent,’ Satan.  Subsequent to that declaration of the Gospel, throughout the rest of the Old and New Testaments, the essentials of ‘the faith’ have emerged in various declarations from the ‘holy men of God who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.’  The Apostles of the New Testament took up the message of Christ and preached it over the whole of the ancient world.  Even their enemies declared that the result of their preaching was to, ‘turn the world upside down,’ that is, it overturned all the prevailing mythologies and supplanted them.  In every age, God has raised up those who would faithfully preach Christ, as the ‘one Mediator between God and man.’  Because this message is the message of ‘the faith,’ the people whom God raises up shall continue to proclaim it. 

Our Good and Wise God,
we rejoice that You have delivered this faith unto us.
We praise You that it has been declared,
is being declared, and shall be declared unto the end of the age.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning