Keep yourselves in the love of God
Important documents are often kept in a safety deposit box. We like to keep valuables in a safe place.
Where can we keep ourselves safe? In God’s love! “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” The word ‘keep’ here means ‘preserve’, ‘keep in safety and protect from harm, decay, loss or destruction’.
Jude uses the passive form of the same word in verse 1: “To those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ” (Jude 1). A Christian is preserved in Christ.
Paul wrote: “And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom” (2 Timothy 4:18).
David prayed: “Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust” (Psalm 16:1).
“Keep yourselves in the love of God.” This is a command, which indicates that we must do something to remain in God’s love, and also that it is possible to forfeit the protection of God’s love. Otherwise this command would have no meaning whatever.
Nothing external can separate us from the love of God: “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38, 39).
Only by his own neglect can a Christen lose the eternal protection of the love of God. Thus, it is extremely important that we know how to keep ourselves in the love of God.
Jesus gave a similar command: “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love” (John 15:9, 10).
Thus we must keep the commandments of Jesus to abide in His love.
Let us examine the context: “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples. As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love” (John 15:4-10).
Thus, we remain in the love of Christ, we keep ourselves in the love of God, by keeping the commandments of Jesus. Jesus told His followers: “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John 14:15).
Jude mentions two essential activities for keeping ourselves in the love of God: spiritual edification and prayer. “Building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God” (Jude 20).
“Building yourselves up on your most holy faith”
Our most holy faith is the Christian faith. It is holy because it comes from God.
In verse three Jude wrote: “Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.”
This original faith for which we must contend is our most holy faith on which we must build ourselves up if we want to keep ourselves in the love of God.
To abide in Christ’s love we must abide in His word: “Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, ‘If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free’” (John 8:31, 32).
To abide in the word of Christ we must abide in His doctrine: “Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son” (2 John 9).
God’s word builds us up. Paul told the Ephesian elders: “So now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32).
We are built up in Christ: “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:6, 7).
In the church of Christ, His “one body” (Ephesians 4:4), we build each other up “till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13).
The church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:20; 4:11).
To His church, Christ has also given evangelists, elders and teachers “for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12). To edify means to build up.
Each Christian helps to build up the church, that we, “speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head - Christ - from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:15, 16).
We build ourselves up on our most holy faith to keep ourselves in the love of God.
“Praying in the Holy Spirit”
“But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God” (Jude 20).
“By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (1 John 4:13).
To keep ourselves in the love of God we must pray in the Holy Spirit, “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:18).
We need help when we pray: “Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26, 27).
Thus when we pray in the Spirit our inadequate prayers are accompanied by pleadings of the Holy Spirit in accordance with the will of God.
In Revelation, golden bowls full of incense represent the prayers of the saints (Revelation 5:8). An angel with a golden censer is “given much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints” (Revelation 8:3).
Though we are weak, we pray as well as we can by following the guidelines on prayer in the Scriptures. Then we pray with confidence in the knowledge that the Spirit intercedes for us.
“Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
“Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life”
“But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life” (Jude 20, 21).
When we keep ourselves in the love of God by keeping the commandments of Jesus, building ourselves up on our most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, we may look forward to eternal life.
“Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:23, 24). Amen.
Roy Davison
The Scripture quotations in this article are from
The New King James Version. ©1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson Inc., Publishers.
Permission for reference use has been granted.
The New King James Version. ©1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson Inc., Publishers.
Permission for reference use has been granted.
Published in The Old Paths Archive
(http://www.oldpaths.com)
(http://www.oldpaths.com)
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