Rescuing Others

Here's the strange thing about being rescued: we keep drifting back toward the thing we got pulled out of. Ask anyone who's quit anything. The old neighborhood still knows your name.

Jude saw this coming in Jude 20-23. His letter is short, barely a page, but he doesn't waste it. The church he's writing to has false teachers circling and standards slipping, and his advice isn't "keep your head down and mind your own faith." It's contend for it (v. 3). Fight for the thing. And not just for yourself. He tells them to snatch people "from the fire" (v. 23), which is about as far from polite religious language as you can get. That's not a suggestion to pray about it from a distance. That's grabbing someone by the collar.

Because here's what we don't get to do: stand at the rail and watch people go under. Grace will pull us out more than once, sure. But it also expects us to start living like people who've been pulled out, and to go back for the ones still in the water. Build each other up in the "most holy faith" (v. 20), Jude says.

Rescued people rescue people. That's the whole job.