What If?

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.  For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jude 1:3-4

What happens if we do not ‘contend earnestly for the faith which was one for all delivered to the saints?’  Jude speaks of ‘certain men’ who have an agenda to do three things.  These are: to turn the grace of God into lewdness; to deny the only Lord God and; to deny our Lord Jesus Christ.  If we refuse or fail to ‘contend earnestly for the faith,’ then this agenda proceeds without opposition.  What is the end-result of that agenda?  It is the perversion of free grace into self-gratification.  It is the repudiation of God and His Authority.  It is the denial of the Person and work of Christ.  None of this leads to a good end.  By contrast, what happens if we do earnestly contend for the faith?  What happens is, there will be many who will experience the grace of God and the personal effects of it.  They will embrace the Lord God by embracing Christ as Savior and Lord.  They will enter into the company of ‘the saints’ to whom ‘the faith was delivered.’  The results of contending earnestly for the faith is good both generally and specifically.  It is that contending earnestly in generation after generation which has transformed lives and deterred evil.  Therefore, we have every reason to ‘contend earnestly for the faith.’

Our Great and Faithful God,
we rejoice that You given us the faith,
and enabled us thus far to contend for it.
We pray that You will continue to make us faithful,
and to proclaim the Person and work of Christ.

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning