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 was once for all entrusted to God’s holy 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
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!
Galatians 1:6-9
This Friday the Ranch will be in full celebration mode. Each October we teach our students about the Reformation. Obviously, much attention is given to the rise of Protestantism in the 1500s. This is why on the 31st we celebrate as Reformation Day the pivotal event of Luther’s 95 Theses being posted on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. But we are careful to teach several related facts. There were other reformers before Luther. There were important contemporaries in his day. There were tragic flaws in his life and the other reformers, too. There were many reformers who carried on the work in the centuries that followed.
Earlier this month we saw another example of reformation as our brothers and sisters in the Anglican churches broke free from those segments of Anglicanism that have abandoned biblical authority, biblical morality and the truth of the gospel.
The true Reformation is not the work of men and women; it is the work of God’s Spirit calling his people to trust in Jesus and obey his word. Our emphasis is not on the heroes who risked and even paid with their lives for the truth. Our focus is on the truths for which they died.
The Bible is our authority! We are only saved by God’s grace. We receive that grace by a living faith in Christ Jesus. Thus, all the glory belongs to God. These are the truths we focus on.
