DAD'S RAMBLINGS – CONTEND FOR THE FAITH
"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 3)
The common Gospel is the good news that the Lord Jesus' Jesus died for our sins and rose again, and that that by faith in Him we receive salvation to eternal life.
The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ has been under attack from the earliest days of Christianity. Satan does not like the Gospel and through the centuries he has tried to dilute it, change it, or in some way minimize it.
In the early church, there was the controversy surrounding the teaching of the Jewish converts that Gentiles had to observe the Mosaic Covenant – especially circumcision – in order to be saved. The Holy Spirit revealed to the Apostles Peter and Paul that salvation was offered to the Gentiles without any strings attached. Paul wrote an entire letter to the churches in Galatia about the issue, showing that they were being turned away from Christ to a different gospel, a perversion of the Gospel of Christ (Galatians 1:6-7).
Gnosticism was another big controversy. The first letter that John wrote was a rebuttal of this heresy. Gnosticism taught that the material world is evil, including our human bodies, and that Jesus could not have come in the flesh because then His body would have been evil. Gnosticism also taught that there were ladders of knowledge to get to God. So John wrote, ""By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God" (I John 4:2-3).
These heresies are still around us today. That's why we need to contend earnestly for the faith that was once delivered to the saints. The pure Gospel of grace is the only way to salvation. Let us earnestly contend for it.
Love, Dad
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