Common Salvation

Jude verses 3-4

“Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

It may be helpful to define the word common, by stating what it is not, it is not private, it is ordinary, it is widely found, it is shared, and it is public.  And if we join it to the word salvation, it implies being rescued, delivered or redeemed by someone’s act or action.  It seems to me that Jude is saying it was widely understood that Jesus Christ took on flesh to show us how to live, but if we stop there we still have a sin problem that will keep us isolated from a loving Father who desires our fellowship as we live on planet earth.  This truth is common knowledge; “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”  These words were spoken by Jesus, who is God’s love gift to a people He wanted to have a relationship with.  Sin was introduced by one man, Adam, and it has been passed to all mankind since that day.  Sin is a noun and we understand nouns, typically denoting a person, place, thing, animal or idea.  So like this common Salvation, we also have a common sin that will not allow the Father to have any relationship with us until it is paid for.  We are told by the apostle Paul, in Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  But if only we would have kept reading, we would have seen this common Salvation found in Jesus Christ in verses 24, and 25a.  “And are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”  This is the common salvation Jude is referring to.

Jude is telling us that that old serpent is up to his trickery that he used in the garden against Adam and Eve, but this time he is using people to carry his message of a better way to heaven than grace and faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross.  You may have them in your family, your neighborhood, and surely in your church.  They are the grace plus group; it may require baptizing, joining a church, doing acts of goodness, or performance, or it may require being a certain religion or denomination.  But it all bypasses the blood of Jesus, and Jude would be in total agreement, that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin.

I’m going to share one such person in our modern society who I believe the old serpent is using in this way, her name is Oprah Winfrey, and she said on her show; “Well, I am a Christian who believes that there are certainly many more paths to God other than Christianity.”  But that flies in the face of what the gospel states, for Jesus the Messiah said; “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Two very different views, one made by Oprah a very gifted and talented T.V. person who was created by God.  The other is Jesus, who the Scriptures tell us is God, who cannot lie, the Creator who formed Oprah; for me it is a no brainer, but what about you, is it Jesus or Oprah, one is lying? 

I can tell you how Jude is going to vote, it’s found in these words; “For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice