#DailyDevotion We Are ______ in Christ Jesus

December 12th
Read Jude 1-25
Jud 1:4-5. (4) 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. (5) Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

What wonderful gospel Jude starts out with. We who are baptized are called to be God’s children. We are beloved in God the Father. We are being kept for Jesus Christ. Called out from the fallen world away from the bondage of sin chosen by the Father from all eternity we should remember this when we doubt our position before the Father.

We are God’s children and so we can call God Father. We were born from above through the water and the Word and the Spirit of our God. We were born not by our choice or another’s will or the will of the flesh but of the Father’s will that through baptism we would be in the Father and be able to approach Him with boldness and confidence as true children approach their true father.

We are Christ’s. We do not belong to ourselves. We are not our own. We belong to the Lord. This is a good thing. It is where we are truly free when we are bound to Christ Jesus. We are for his glory and it shows in our life that we belong to him. What we do is not for ourselves but for the One who has delivered us from bondage to sin, death and the devil.

We are called to contend for this faith. The Faith and Christ don’t need us to contend for them but we contend for it for ourselves and those around us. We contend for it so people may know the truth and be freed by it. We contend for it so we may not be tempted to fall away from the truth and lose what we gained by grace.

There are those who would tempt us to use our freedom for evil. After all, if the Father will not hold us accountable for our sins, why not just go and enjoy sinning? Their condemnation who think and live this way is well deserved. They are not regenerate. They are still in their sins and are not in the Father.

The last thing we should note here is the divinity of Jesus Christ. Jude says it was Him who saved the people from the land of Egypt. If you read Exodus we read it was the Angel of the Lord who delivered the Israelites. Ergo, Jesus is the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. He is YHWH, Jehovah, the great I AM. Jesus knows who is his who is just along for the ride. Not all who were delivered believed as is plain from the Exodus to Malachi and even in the New Testament. Hypocrites fill the Church of God on earth.

Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you for delivering us from sin, death and the devil. Ever keep us in this faith that we may contend for it until your return. Amen.