Enjoy Life, Enjoy God

PRESUMPTOUS GRACE

November 2, 2009

What makes the gospel good news surely in the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Grace, umerited favor, showered upon us. Surely, this is the good news. But...

Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that the Lord has once for all entrusted to us, his people. For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
- Jude 3,4 TNIV

In the little known or Letter of Jude, a caution is given against presumptuous grace. In other words, they rejoice in their grace and new life received, but it risks being twisted, corrupted for "anything goes." My mentor, Earl Palmer, said a strange thing years ago, "Beware of a doctrine of eternal security that asks nothing of the faithful." In other words, grace secures us to Christ in salvation, but it summons us to faithfulness, to obedience, not "a license for immorality."

The good news truly is grand. I urge you to sit back right now as you read this and rejoice in it! Yet, it is a summons to faithfulness, a call to righteousness. Jude wrote to remind us this today, two thousand years later.
Joyfully,

Dale Patterson