Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Jude 1:20
But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,
20. building up yourselves on your most holy faith ] Both the adjective, which is nowhere used of faith in its subjective sense, and St Jude’s use of the substantive in Jud 1:3, lead us to take “faith” in the objective sense, as nearly identical with “creed,” which attaches to it in the later Epistles of the New Testament (1Ti 5:8 and perhaps 2Ti 4:7). The readers of the Epistle are exhorted to take that faith as a foundation, and to erect on it the superstructure of a pure and holy life.
praying in the Holy Ghost ] The precise combination is not found elsewhere in the New Testament, but the fact which it expresses corresponds with St Paul’s language in Rom 8:26, and the almost identical phraseology of 1Co 14:15. What is meant is the ecstatic outpouring of prayer in which the words of the worshipper seem to come as from the Spirit who “helpeth our infirmities” and “maketh intercession for us,” it may be in articulate speech, it may be also as with “groanings that cannot be uttered” (Rom 8:26). Here again we may recognise a side-glance at the false teachers. Not those who deserted the Church’s faith for a life of impurity, but those who “built” on it a life of holiness, were capable of that height of devotion which is described as “praying in the Spirit.”
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith – Compare the notes at Jud 1:3. On the word building, see the 1Co 3:9-10 notes; Eph 2:20 note. It is said here that they were to build up themselves; that is, they were to act as moral and responsible agents in this, or were to put forth their own proper exertions to do it. Dependent, as we are, and as all persons with correct views will feel themselves to be, yet it is proper to endeavor to do the work of religion as if we had ample power of ourselves. See the notes at Phi 2:12. The phrase most holy faith here refers to the system of religion which was founded on faith; and the meaning is, that they should seek to establish themselves most firmly in the belief of the doctrines, and in the practice of the duties of that system of religion.
Praying in the Holy Ghost – See the notes at Eph 6:18.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Jud 1:20
Building up yourselves on your most holy faith.
The Church and saints, as houses, must be edified or builded daily
This word edify signifieth to build. This metaphor is not improperly applied to the saints, for building and edification is proper to houses. Now the Church and saints of God are as houses, and therefore may be said to be builded and edified. This teacheth us two things, first, that all Christians should be edifiers, builders; that is, should make themselves a seemly house for God to dwell in. We read what care David had to build a temple, but God would not suffer him; but now every man must build a temple for God, even his own soul. We read what cost Solomon bestowed upon the temple, but now God careth not for such temples made of stone; He will have a temple made of lively stones. All true Christians must be builders; but before they build they must know how to build, and the way to come to this knowledge is the Scripture. No carpenter will build a house without rule and square, and the rule and square of Christian building is the Word of God; by it our hearts and souls are squared, and made fit for Gods house. If Solomons workmen were one month in Libanus about the work of the temple, and two months at home about their own business, let us exceed them, let us employ two months about the Lords building, and but one about our own business. Let us first seek the kingdom of God. And as we must edify and build houses for ourselves, so for our brethren also; so saith the apostle. Exhort one another and edify one another, but especially we must edify our children; a father should especially build his son in religion and virtue. Secondly, this teacheth us that it is not enough to begin to build in faith and good works, but we must go on, go forward, increase in it. Our progress in religion is compared to building. Houses are edified from the foundation to the walls, from the walls to the roof. (S. Otes.)
Character building
I. Every man is truly the architect of his own character. It is often said that a man is the architect of his own fortune. If a man build a fortune he has to do it with his own hands and his own brains. One thing is certain, nobody else is going to do it for him. Just so every man is the builder of his own character. Sometimes a fortune may be made suddenly, the result of an accident; but never is this true of character.
II. We must notice the important parts of this structure.
1. The foundation is essential. If it be ill laid no subsequent care, toil, or expense can avail. Human nature is a quicksand, in which are thrown all mans efforts, his works, his wisdom, his piety; but all of them put together cannot furnish a sure foundation for character. Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus.
2. This foundation Rock once secured, we are to be careful to build upon it–not near or about it, but upon it, and upon nothing else. Think of an architect carefully laying a foundation, and then building on one side of it.
3. The position of the superstructure is also important. This you are to build under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Every stone we lay must bear a relation to Christ and Him crucified. The centre of gravity must fall within the base. The great leaning tower of Pisa is a wonder to all who see it, because it does not fall, for it leans fifteen feet over the base. The centre of gravity is still ten feet within the base, hence it cannot fall. There are some characters that are leaning towers; they are so strange and eccentric in many things, so far out of plumb, that we wonder why they do not fall to utter destruction. Ah, here is the grand secret: the centre of the hearts gravity still falls within Christ.
III. Character building is a progressive work. In heathen mythology it is said that the goddess Minerva sprung from the head of Jupiter, at once full grown and glorious; but character, like a great edifice, is of slow growth. As the builder lays brick after brick, stone after stone, erects beam after beam, so, slowly and laboriously, this character work advances. There is not an act of our lives, however small, not a thought even, that does not add a stone to that edifice.
IV. The materials to be used are important. It is not every quarry that can furnish materials for a cathedral Character will stand longer than even stone, or gold, or silver. If a man is to build for the future he must select materials that will last. Gold, silver, precious stones–love, faith, hope, self-denial, and patience, these are the materials for a lasting character.
V. We must build for eternity. We must live in the house we build. Character, not circumstances, makes a man happy or miserable. If a man has a pure and holy character, do what you will you cannot make him unhappy.
VI. We build for inspection. How careful were the old cathedral builders that the most distant work should be as well done as that nearest the eye. Why? Because they were built, not for mans eye, but for the eye of God, who sees all. So in character building this should be our motto, Not for man, but for God, whose eye sees the most trifling act or thought.
VII. We must not mistake the scaffolding for the building. We meet a friend and ask, How is your business, your health, your family?–this is all scaffolding. Instead, we should ask, How is your character getting on, the inner man?–then we should get at the heart of the thing. Scaffolding may be swept away by the storm, but character remains just as we form it, unchanged for ever. (J. S. Holme, D. D.)
The Christian life
I. The Christian growing in holiness. Building up yourselves on your most holy faith. By the faith you are to understand the whole body of Christian doctrines. And this faith upon which we are to build the apostle describes as a most holy faith. That which is to bear the superstructure of Christian hopes should be well proved. The faith of the gospel may well be called a holy faith–holy in its Author, holy in its design, holy in the precepts it inculcates, holy in the rewards it holds out. Yes, everything about this faith is holy. Holy is the law its doctrines are designed to vindicate. Holy is the offering provided by the righteous demands of God. Holy is the conversation required of those who should embrace its promises. Holy is the Agent who is ordained to make us meet for the presence of God. Such, then, is the faith upon which we are to build. The text further intimates that there must be a building up–that is, a progressive advancement–until it becomes a perfect building of God.
II. The Christian praying in the strength of God. Praying in the Holy Ghost.
III. The Christian watching against the enemies of his faith. Keep yourselves in the love of God.
IV. The Christian waiting for his hope. Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. (D. Moore, M. A.)
Building up
I. Christian edification. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith.
1. A sure foundation. The gospel which they had received from faithful witnesses contains the fundamental truths for soul building.
2. A wise diligence. To build up a Christian character is mans noblest ideal.
II. Spiritual aid. Praying in the Holy Spirit.
1. The Spirit reveals our wants.
2. The Spirit inspires us with faith.
3. The Spirit blends the labour and the blessing. The building is advanced by the twofold energy of God and man.
4. The Spirit also will bring in the final issue. (T. Davies, M. A.)
The spiritual building
I. Before building.
1. Count the cost (Luk 14:28).
2. Prepare fit matter (2Ch 2:8-9; 1Co 3:12).
3. Prepare skilful and faithful builders.
Some build a wall, but daub it with untempered mortar, which the shower and hailstones throw down again (Eze 13:11). Some flattering builders there be that gild rotten posts and mud walls, and by flatteries cause people to err (Jer 23:1-40.). Some that square their work by a false rule; not the Word, but some profounder school-learning.
II. In building.
1. Lay a good foundation, both for matter and manner.
(1) The matter is Jesus Christ (1Co 3:11).
(2) Then the manner of laying this foundation sure is to dig deep, as you know the foundation of a great house had need to be. Lay it in humility and godly sorrow, called in Heb 6:1 the foundation of repentance, because it can never be laid without a deep sense of sorrow for sin, giving us a clear sight what need we have of Christ.
2. The foundation thus laid. Lay all the materials skilfully upon the same foundation; for building is an artificial coupling of all materials by square upon the same foundation. So here–
(1) There is use of many materials. In every mean house there must be somewhat of everything, some stone, timber, lime, lead, glass, iron, and in this building must be some degrees of all graces–some faith, hope, love, knowledge, and the rest. Faith as gates of brass, and door to let us in unto Christ and His Church for salvation; knowledge as windows to lighten the house, or else all would be dark; hope as the glass or casements to look out unto things believed, specially the life to come; love as the cement to knit all together; patience as the pillars, bearing all the weight of the house, etc.
(2) These and the rest of the graces muse be laid together (2Pe 1:5).
(3) By line and square of the Word (Exo 25:40).
(4) All upon the same foundation–Christ.
3. Build up to the laying of the roof and ridge tiles, still striving to perfection (Heb 6:1; Eph 2:21).
III. After building.
1. As the Jews, having built an house, must dedicate it to the Lord, so do thou thine. Especially the temple and tabernacle were solemnly set apart for His service and sacrifices. Do thou also offer in this thy house the daily sacrifice of prayer, praise, alms which smell sweet (Php 4:18). Let it be the house of prayer, a spiritual house, to offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ (1Pe 2:5). Yea, offer thy soul and body a reasonable sacrifice, living and holy (Rom 12:1), which is the right dedication of thy house.
2. Furnish thy house with needful utensils. (T. Taylor, D. D.)
The principles and prospects of a servant of Christ
I. The principles which are here suggested to us as constituting true religion.
1. True-religion is here represented as a building, the foundation of which is laid in the faith of Christ. Building up yourselves on your most holy faith. Whether it relate to personal or to social religion, this must be the foundation of the fabric, or the whole will fall.
(1) One lays the foundation of his religion in what he calls reason; but which in fact is his own reasoning. The same inspired writer who in one sentence commends understanding, in the next warns us against leaning to our own understanding (Pro 3:4-5). To strengthen ourselves and one another in this way is to build up ourselves on our own conceits.
(2) Another founds his religion on his good deeds. Good deeds undoubtedly form a part of the building, but the foundation is not the place for them. They are not the cause but the effects of faith.
(3) A third builds his religion on impressions. It is not from the death of Christ for sinners, or any other gospel truth, that he derives his comfort; but from an impulse on his mind that his sins are forgiven, and that he is a favourite of God, which is certainly nowhere revealed in the Scriptures. We may build ourselves up in this way, but the building will fall.
(4) A fourth founds his religion on faith, but it is not a holy faith, either in respect of its nature or its effects. It is dead, being alone, or without fruit. The faith on which the first Christians built up themselves included repentance for sin.
2. That religion which has its foundation in the faith of Christ will increase by praying in the Holy Ghost. We must not live in the neglect of prayer.
3. We are given to understand that by means of building on our most holy faith, and praying in the Holy Ghost, we keep ourselves in the love of God. The love of God is here to be understood, not of His love to us, but of ours to Him.
4. We are taught, that when we have done all, in looking for eternal life, we must keep our eye singly and solely on the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.
II. The prospects which these principles furnish as to a blessed hereafter. Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
1. The first exercise of mercy which the Scriptures direct us to look for on our leaving the body is, an immediate reception into the presence of Christ, and the society of the spirits of just men made perfect.
2. I do not know whether I ought not to reckon under this particular the glorious progress of Christs kingdom in this world. Why should we suspect whether our brethren who rest from their labours be from hence interested in this object? If there be joy in heaven among the angels over one sinner that repenteth, why not among the glorified saints.
3. Another stream of mercy for which we are directed to look, will attend the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consist in the dead being raised and the living changed. By looking for this part of the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be reconciled to death even before we meet it.
4. But there is another stream of mercy beyond this, to which we are directed to look, and which pertains to the last judgment. (A. Fuller.)
Well-built Christians
I. The first thing is to secure a solid foundation. That foundation is not to be created; it is already provided–Christ Jesus. All else than this is crumbling clay or shifting sand. Shallow conversions make shallow Christians. I trust that you have dug deep, and laid your foundations well. The Eddystone lighthouse is not only built on a rock, it is built with iron bolts and clamps into the rock. So you must be built into Christ by a living union of your weakness to His strength, your ignorance to His omniscience, your poverty to His wealth of grace, your sinfulness to His perfect righteousness. The best part of a true Christian is the unseen part, as the vital part of a tree is its root. So the innermost graces that lie, as it were, in the very depths of a Christian soul next to Christ are the most precious and powerful and enduring portion of the man.
II. But a building is not done when the foundation is laid. Regeneration by the Holy Spirit is only the initial process, and then comes the command to build up yourselves on our most holy faith. Gods quarry is rich in materials. It would be a good thing for our Churches if solid granite were in greater demand. Flashing marble is very ornamental for lintels and capitals. But in these times we need more firm granite of honesty, courage, truthfulness, and self-denial. Every now and then a Church is disfigured by an ugly crack or rent in its walls from the fact that a bit of friable pumice-stone was put in there in the shape of a swindling or frivolous professor. What is true of a Church as Gods building is equally true of individual character; nothing should go into a Christians character except what is taken from Gods quarry.
III. Some christians are not built up symmetrically. They are lopsided, and their painful deficiency is on the ethical side of their religion. They can sing in a prayer-meeting, and pray devoutly, and exhort fluently; but outside of the meeting they cannot always be trusted. What they lack is a rigid sense of right and a constant adherence to it. They need more conscience, a conscience to detect sin, and a granite-like principle to resist its seductions. The word of these Christians is not always to be relied on; in matters of business they do not always go by the air-line. Every wise builder makes constant use of his plumb-line. All the showy ornamentation that he can put on his edifice amounts to nothing if the wails are not perpendicular. Sometimes we see a flimsy structure whose bulging walls are shored up by props and skids to keep them from tumbling into the street. I am afraid that there are thousands of reputations in commerce, in politics, and even in the Church, that are shored up by various devices. It is a mere question of time how soon every character will fall in if it is not based on the rock and built according to Jesus Christs plumb-line. It may go down in this world: it is sure to go down in the next. We ought to lay the plumb-line up against all our religious acts and services, even against our prayers. If failing to use the Divine plumb-line in character building is a great mistake, it is another mistake that the little everyday actions are made of small account. You could hardly make a worse blunder. Christian influence mainly depends on what you may regard as little things. It is the aggregate of a good mans or good womans life that tells for the honour of our Lord and Saviour. It is by adding the brick of courage to the brick of faith, and to this the brick of temperance and the brick of patience, and the brick of brotherly love and the brick of honesty and of benevolence, that a noble Christian character is reared. Nothing is of small account that involves your influence in a sharp-eyed world. Other peoples eyes are upon you as well as your Masters eyes. The Athenian architects of the Parthenon finished the upper side of the matchless frieze as perfectly as the lower side, because the goddess Minerva saw that side. Every one of the five thousand statues in the cathedral of Milan is wrought as if Gods eye were on the sculptor. Michael Angelo said that he carved for eternity. Every true Christian is a habitation of God through His Spirit. Young friends, build for eternity. And let every one take heed how he buildeth; for the Architect-in-Chief will inspect each ones work on the great day of judgment. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)
The building up of Christian manhood
I. First of all the faith. Building up yourselves on your most holy faith. I might say broadly, no splendid man was ever built up, no fine character was ever formed, but by a positive belief–a faith. And definite belief is the thing from which Christian manhood starts. Now, to build upon the faith–
1. We must first have a clear notion of what the faith is.
(1) That is, to begin with, we must distinguish between the faith and accretions to the faith; between the tree and the parasites that have entwined themselves about the tree; between the rock and the sand which has accumulated upon the rock. We may persuade ourselves that we are jealous of the honour of the faith, that we are its champions, whilst we are the champions of the very things that obscure, mar, limit, cripple it. A very few years ago one of the noblest cathedrals in England used to be habitually spoken of with contempt. Its nave columns were huge masses of commonplace material overlaid with plaster. But some one, one day, had the wisdom to dig into this plaster, and lo! beneath were noble columns of exquisite marble. Nobody said, that I know of, that it would be desecration to destroy this venerable plaster, and very soon it had vanished; and now you have the original columns, an honour to the genius that designed them. That is all that is going on in these days. Destruction, do you say? Nay, it is restoration, not destruction; it is the bringing back of the temple of Divine truth to its original design and proportions, the bringing out again of the lines of its pristine beauty.
(2) Then, secondly, we must grip the faith, understand the faith, present it clearly and vividly to ourselves. To understand a thing does not necessarily mean to remove all mystery from it. You cannot build upon mist, you cannot grow strong on mere sentiment, you cannot foster Christian manhood upon vague emotionalism. If your faith is to have anything to do with the making of you, the first thing is to state it clearly and distinctly to yourself.
2. Again: To build upon the faith, we must be continually carrying it further. The circle of Christian truth is a wide one; the applications of every Christian fact are endless, the sweep of every Christian doctrine is infinite. And we must be carrying every Christian truth continually further; we must search all the ramifications of it. This implies first, that we must never cease from fresh, ever renewed, and expectant study of it. I have heard people speak of mountain scenery. I have asked them, Do you know Snowdon? Oh yes! And, pray, how often have you ascended Snowdon? Or–for there is something more important than merely to ascend to the summit; it is quite as necessary to live at the foot–how long have you lived within sight of it? Oh, I saw the mountain once; spent a day in the neighbourhood once. I ascended it, too. Oh yes, I know Snowdon! Ascended it once, saw one aspect of it, and you know it! Why, you must live there to know it. You must watch the mountain in a hundred moods. You must see it when spring creeps up its sides, and when winter has set its throne of snow upon its summit; you must see it sleeping in a trance of summer heat, and hear the shouts of its children when the floods are out. Then you may say that you know it. So of the faith. We cannot sum up its doctrines, settle them, and have done with them. We must pitch our life before them. We must live out every experience in their presence.
3. The power to be passive is as requisite as the power to be active. There are subtle beauties, finer shades of meaning, in every gospel truth; you cannot force these, but they will disclose themselves, if you can wait and give them time. There is a story in every great picture which you cannot master in a hurry; you must lend yourself to it, give yourself up to it in active passiveness. And so there are glories here which you must sit down to see; quieter tones in the voice of Jesus which you will never hear until you cease from your hurry and distraction, until sometimes you give up even your work, your most Christian work.
II. The spiritual atmosphere in which you live. That, in the next place, determines your progress in Christian manhood. Praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God.
1. Keep yourselves in the love of God. There are many aspects in which the love of God is looked at in these Scriptures; and I think this is as remarkable as one of them–that to be in the love of God, to live in the constant sense of it, is one of the indispensable conditions of spiritual growth that Christian manhood is impossible without. The world is full of analogies of it. To begin with, we make nothing of the truths of the gospel; they never become more than opinions; they are never vitalised, unless you live in the love of God, and breathe it as the atmosphere of your life. You delight in your garden. Cultivate the taste. You go and look at your plants. You see that they have everything they need. They are set in the right soil, they have the due amount of moisture, they have sufficient heat. But you forget them; you let the fire go out, and you go in a week and find your favourites all dead. Or you remove them into a cellar. You give them everything, even heat, but you shut out the light, from them, and you go and visit them by and by, and find that you have a collection of ghosts–pale, colourless caricatures of plants. Nay, if you want them to grow, and you would delight in their beauty, you must give them warmth and sunlight. And so of this. You can make very little of the Bible unless you keep yourselves in the warmth and light of Gods love. You take every rule of conduct in the Book, and you try to live them out one by one; you shut your lips and determine, exert all your force of will, keep yourself tied to the grim angel of duty; but you can make nothing of them. They simply stupefy you, and, dull and discouraged, you shrink into yourself. Love is a necessity to me. I have no courage to try to live without it. To preach law, to set clearly before myself the lines of duty, is not enough for me. I pine for love. I become a guest at a house, and there is a card hung up on your bedroom wall which practically says, Life is ticketed off into a distinct number of rules in this house; we live by the clock here; meals are served with the regularity of the tides; the sun rises according to signals which it receives from this house; and from that moment I am miserable. Omnipotent law, stern law, grim-faced, sublime law! But I am sick and tired of hearing of thee. Majestic, beautiful, terrible; if I were strong and heroic, and never made a mistake, the gospel concerning thee might be pleasant to hear. But I want something more to be preached to me to live, to be strong and courageous thereby; I want warmth, I want sunshine, I want the sense that Gods benediction is upon me, I want love. Everything then, the sternest command, the hardest duty, becomes food to your soul, and you grow and become robust thereby. The health of God, the deep peace of God, sinks into your soul, and there is nothing in life that can beat you.
2. Praying in the Holy Ghost. Prayer keeps the sense of God and heaven alive in the soul; it keeps up the bond of connection between earth and heaven. I go into a mans house–this is not altogether fiction–and he begins to moan over the wretched climate of this land. The sun never appears. Dark and dull and depressing; there is no light by which a man may do his work. I look around me, and lo, every window is dust-covered, no sunlight can pierce it, and I say, My dear sir, excuse me, but suppose you begin there; clean these windows to start with. The sun does shine sometimes, even in England; be ready when it shines to receive its glorious wealth of light. And so here. I am ready to contend a great deal for prayer; I am ready to contend for some things which prayer effects that once I was not very sure about. But in any case, this I am sure of–it keeps the windows of the soul clean, it facilitates the entrance of God into the soul, it puts the soul in touch with all spiritual realities. If there be a God, He must reveal Himself to the soul that prays; if there be an eternal world, pray, and you must pray yourself into the midst of it. Come here. Stand amid the wealth of this glorious revelation. Would you understand it? Would you have the light of it fill your soul? Would you miss nothing of it? Would you have it irradiate your work and change the fashion of your countenance? Then pray without ceasing.
III. Our growth depends upon the souls outlooks, the inspirations that lie for us in the future. Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. There is a famous essay which I am never tired of reading–Emersons Prospects–the outlooks of life. I went the other day to see a member of my congregation who is a great sufferer–a woman who is half her life–three-fourths of her life–a prisoner. I condoled with her, sympathised with her. Come up into my little room, she said. There, sit in that window. When the torture begins, when I am worried and weary, when the fog gets into my brain and the fever into my bones, and I begin to burn and welter in my misery, I run away here. This outlook across the fields soothes me, heals me, and I am myself again. I understand. I like to do my work with a window through which I can now and then look out before me. Then, I like to see the man who insists upon having mental outlooks. No mans life need be utterly material. Work, but always work with outlooks towards the world of thought, with windows towards the world of genius, make the work shine with the light that comes from the loftiest range of human vision. So in a higher sense still. Life is often hard; the years become more and more exacting; but it is not a prison. The sorrows are many, the strain is sometimes terrible; but oh, the prospects! the window of life which Christ keeps open towards heaven! I rest there. There is not a vista that looks in that direction, but I am often there. Rest you also there this morning, and let some of the aches be smoothed out of you as you rest. Listen to the murmur of the river as it wanders through fields whose green never withers, and as you listen, the beauty, the calm, the deep peace, shall pass into your face. But now to close.
1. This prospect is ours of Gods free mercy disclosed to us in Jesus Christ. We believe in the Divine mercy.
2. This is the last word: as the years move on, thought, anxiety, endeavour–everything gathers there–to make sure of that. Oh, we have had our dreams. We have been full of ambitions, we have swept all earthly prizes into our lot; but they have become infinitesimally small. I care for nothing but this–shall I attain unto the eternal life? I have been on sea. I have made more than one voyage. We had some weeks before us, and we were full of plans when we started. I even proposed new subjects of study to myself which were to be pursued during the voyage. But one day the cry went out, We are getting near land. Instantly there was a great bustle of preparation. The expedients devised to while away the voyage; books with which we had been busy, half finished–everything was put away. We thought of nothing but to be ready to land. Dreams of wealth, of fame–oh yes, we have had them. But they are nothing to day; I dismiss them all. I am looking out wistfully for the shore; I want to be ready when the cry comes. Breezes from the land, laden with the fragrance of the sweet fields, are in my face. I strain my eyes. It is nigh at hand. Let me be. Perish everything, so that an abundant entrance be given me into the ever lasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. (J. Morlais Jones.)
How is the doctrine of religion most holy?
First, in itself, being without fault and error and having sundry excellences, being full of Divine wisdom and truth, and the only instrument whereby Gods infinite wisdom and goodness is made known unto us. Secondly, in regard of the effect and operation, which is to make the creature, but especially man holy (Joh 17:17). It sanctifieth men instrumentally, in that it maketh them resemble God in many graces. Thirdly, it is most holy, because it sanctifieth all inferior creatures to the use of man, so as he may use them with good conscience (1Ti 4:4). (W. Perkins.)
The Church a house
1. The faithful are the house of God (Heb 3:6; 1Ti 3:15; 1Pe 4:17).
(1) Christ is the foundation. The sole foundation (1Co 3:11). A strong foundation (Mat 7:25).
(2) The Church is a house in respect of believers, who are the stones of which this house is built up; and these stones are naturally–
(a) Rugged and unpolished, till they are hewn, smoothed, and made fit for the building (Hos 6:5).
(b) Of several sizes–some greater, some less.
(c) Though different in size, yet cemented and united one to another.
(3) The Church is a house in respect of God. He dwells in it. He furnishes it with all necessaries, yea, ornaments–His ordinances, graces, etc. He protects it. He repairs it. He cleanses it.
2. The Word of God is the foundation of a Christian. It is a foundation to bear a saint out in all his duties, comforts, belief of truths. (W. Jenkyn, M. A.)
The Holy Trinity
I. Let us consider this mystery as a received truth of christian doctrine. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith. Now the sum of that faith, we are told, is this, that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in unity. And the Catholic Church has always been very jealous of this fundamental dogma. She has never hidden it; never shrunk from the definite statement of it. With regard to the mysteriousness of the doctrine, the point is conceded. The question is, whether by a looser theology–by a charitable vagueness of expression, or by a scheme of definitions which should define nothing–we should ever be able to get rid of this mystery? A man must be an angel to understand even an angels powers; and he must be himself infinite who could comprehend an infinite existence.
II. Let us consider this great mystery as it throws light upon the nature and moral government of God.
1. This it does in that it exhibits God as sustaining towards us the most beneficent personal relations; thus removing the cloud which had been spread before the throne, and presenting the Godhead under a form which, as Burke well expresses it, softens and humanises the whole idea of Divinity.
2. But in relation to the clearing up of mystery in the Divine procedure, we claim it as a further advantage of the doctrine we are considering, that it is specially revealed in conjunction with a scheme for the pardon and recovery of mankind. (D. Moore, M. A.)
Praying in the Holy Ghost.
The inspirer of prayer
Jude, a brother of our Lord, speaks of the prayer which transcends the normal religious capacity of human nature as one of the conditions through the observance of which the believer must keep himself in the love of God and in the steadfast expectancy of consummated redemption. The attachment of friend to friend is apt to be weakened, if not destroyed, where communication ceases. When some member of family is away in a foreign land, the only antidote to the chilling effect of distance is correspondence, and correspondence which is free, vivacious, unconstrained. If the correspondence become stilted and formal only, it is about as hurtful to affection as complete silence. The heart must send its pulsations through every available channel of intercourse if love is to be kept alive. And that is true in the sphere of the religious life. No man can keep himself in the love of God without using all the lines of communication God has opened to him, and the prayer with which we keep ourselves in correspondence with God must be permeated by supernatural help and vitality. The Spirit of God helps prayer long before this ideal of praying in the Holy Ghost is completely realised in the daily experience. In the imperfect prayer which He does not as yet pervade with this supreme ascendency, He is present, in some degree at least. The man who prays before he is the subject of a new life is unconscious of the Divine presence which stirs up his prayers and prompts his faint desires after better things. When a believer has learnt to pray in the Holy Ghost, he is awake to the nearness and active operation of a mystic Being who incites and energises his prayers and makes him inherently well-pleasing to God. In him who prays according to this evangelical standard, the Spirit stimulates the sense of need. Many are comparatively prayerless in their habits, because there is no sharp sense of need at the core of the life. The age itself is so interesting, and fortune pampers men with so many worldly benefits and luxuries, that they have scarcely any aspirations which need to be fulfilled in supernatural spheres. Their souls have not been harrowed with grief or made to ache with want; and if they pray at all, it is in imitation of prevailing customs only, or as a tribute to the semi-sacred memories of childhood. Where men pray without personal convictions and in imitation of current usage, desires will press to the forefront of their prayers which ought not to be there, or there in very subordinate positions only. Ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. When their frivolous and shallow wishes seem to be gratified, such men cease to pray, and when crossed and baffled they drift into moods of mingled mortification and scepticism, and either tacitly assume or openly proclaim the uselessness of prayer. Our natural desires can no more mature into true prayer than the bits of coloured gauze in the milliners shop, representing orange, peach, and cherry blossom, can set into fruit. Till the Spirit comes to us, we are shut up in the senses, and can no more feel the throb of the great currents which course through the spiritual world, than the creatures in the glass cases of an aquarium can feel the enthusiasms which ebb and flow in the veins of a great nation. There can be no right and enduring sense of need unless through the constant inspirations of the Spirit. But the unspiritual are not only shut up in the senses and the things of the senses, they have no keen realisation of the deepest needs of the world. They assume that a broad law of betterment is at work in human history, and if there is any exception to the law, every man is to blame for the drawbacks which stint and embitter his own life. The bitter cry of the outcast multitude finds no echo in their hearts. Human nature without the Holy Spirit of God is too narrow and self-occupied to find a place for the spiritual wants and woes of others in its supplications. Prayer languishes everywhere through this lack of desire, not only for ourselves, but for others likewise. Like the ship described by the Ancient Mariner, it is becalmed in a sea of breathless stagnation, slime, and death. Prayer cannot move without desire. Things will be far otherwise when the Spirit comes to us, and not only prompts our prayers, but so encircles us with His presence and power, that the world, its maxims, chilling influences, and sordid traditions of conduct, can scarcely get near us or affect us in any way. If we live in the atmosphere created by the inspirations of the Spirit, self-knowledge will grow, and a more adequate interpretation of our own needs will arise within us, and our affections will be so fed from the fountains of the Divine unselfishness that we shall be acutely sensitive to the needs of the world, and shalt pray agreeably to the counsels of Him whose name is Love. He whose soul is permeated by the presence and teaching of the Spirit will be kept from asking those things which are at variance with the counsels of the Most High. Strange and sacred restraints are cast about the believer whom He actuates, and no petty, foolish, self-seeking prayers will be likely to pass the lips. Where the influences of the Spirit are wanting, every kind of mistake is possible. Things frivolous and even hurtful are insatiably desired, and the prayers presented bear the stamp of unregeneracy. Wherever the Spirit is honoured and discerned, He will prompt us to ask for what is supremely important, and will make us submissive to all the will of God. The nature possessed by those right and acceptable desires which are instilled into it by the Spirit will instinctively exclude what is false, foolish, and wrong from its prayers. Indeed, there will be no room for such things to unfold themselves. The Holy Ghost brings its subjects into active and happy sympathy with the Divine plans, and makes that sympathy to dominate every temper and act of devotion. By such prayer we shall keep ourselves in the love of God, for if we never find the heavens as brass, our faith in Gods tenderness and fidelity cannot deteriorate. All such prayer will strengthen the tie uniting us to God. In the prayer offered under those influences which the Holy Ghost creates to compass and enswathe us in our access to God, there will be an answering sense of the efficacy of Christs work. It is His special mission to glorify Christ, and He never forgets the absorbing end for which He was sent. He can perhaps fulfil this mission more impressively through those prayers of the saints which He helps and animates than by those accompaniments of conscience-arresting power vouchsafed in connection with the preaching of the gospel to the world. Just as great winds once carried to rocky islands and barren peninsulas the seeds out of which arose at last tossing forests of beauty and far-ranging zones of sweetness and fragrance, so the great Spirit brings into the poor, barren prayers of those who are touched by His breath a seed of new things, and diffuses there the beauty and the fragrance of Christs efficacious redemptive act. Christ by taking away sin took away the incompetence of human prayer, and the Spirit makes us steadfastly conscious of the fact. No being purified by trust in that sacrifice can pray out of proportion to the rights it has secured. We are brought into participation with a priesthood that cannot be denied. This secret, undefinable persuasion of the unknown power inherent in Christs sacrifice and mediation is a mark of those who pray in the Holy Ghost. The prayer upwinging itself through that special atmosphere with which the Holy Ghost enwraps the obedient soul is characterised by a sense of filial confidence. The grace of assurance it is His joy to bring makes the widest possible difference in the tone and quality of the devotional life. The Spirit cannot come from the God of love to a contrite soul without bringing tokens, pledges, intimations of Gods forgiving love. He gives us access into an unshadowed grace in which we may stand to the very end; and if we retain this unfailing witness, we shall always be on speaking terms with God. Never let us think of it as a superfluous luxury of the religious life rather than an essential privilege. It is given to open for us constant and intimate access to God, and is vital to the prevalency of our prayers. Where the Spirit of assurance is lacking, prayer is a voice in the outer court of the Gentiles, rather than the freedom of speech accorded to Abraham and Moses. But when the Spirit helps prayer, it is a cry in the circle lit up with the benignity of fatherhood. Prayer, falling short of this standard, is only a little above the level of pious mechanism, and cannot nourish the high affections of the soul towards God. Prayer in the Holy Ghost involves the mystic interchange and fellowship of love. Where prayer is presented under these supernatural conditions, there will be a true apprehension of the vast resourcefulness of God. The Pentecostal atmosphere is full of the Spirits interpretation of the wisdom, power, generosity, intimate nearness of the Father; and prayer necessarily acquires a distinctive tone from that atmosphere out of which it arises. The fact that the Holy Spirit is more sensitive to our needs than we who are the subjects of them should satisfy us that He has also measured the help laid up for us in the deep counsels of God. As we pray, He shows God to us in all His amazing plenitudes, and makes His strength authoritatively ours. The man who prays without these inspirations is like one who, wrapped about with the ignorance of the stone age, stands upon the shore and yearns for some distant world of which he has dreamed. The plains there would supply his need of bread, the leaves and fruits of the forest would heal his maladies, and the metals hidden in the hills would defend his life and give him the material from which to construct a better civilisation. But he is not dwelling in an age charged with the spirit of scientific discovery and achievement. He cannot cross to this promised land and possess its good. So it is with the man who prays in the Holy Ghost. Not only does the wisdom of God interpret the secrets of redemption to his heart, but the power of God brings him into a new world in which all things are possible. And thus does he keep himself in that love of God which means victory over all seen and unseen foes. We are all familiar with the effect of atmosphere upon the quality of work, and the ease with which it is accomplished. In some parts of the world, malaria and tropical heat speedily turn healthy and capable colonists into sickly loiterers and rickety neer-do-weels. No race seems able to toil under the frightful conditions of climate which prevail on the Isthmus of Panama. And, on the other hand, some climates are so crisp and exhilarating that the laggard finds it difficult to do less than a fair days work. Unknown ingredients in the air seem to accelerate the blood and spur to strenuous exertion. The qualities of the work done by poet, painter, musician, may almost be told in the terms of the atmospheric pressure prevailing at the time. Genius, just as much as the unopened flower bud, needs the bright, bracing day to bring out its splendour. And the soul requires, for the reaching out of its highest powers towards God, a refined and well-balanced element, which we can only describe as climate or atmosphere. The difference between praying on the mere level of our natural perceptions and sympathies, and praying in a realm pervaded by the unfailing inspirations of the Spirit, is not unlike the difference between drudgery on a tropical swamp and movement on a glorious tableland. In the one case prayer is an effort, a burden, a vexation, and an idle penance; in the other, a joy, a sunrise, a melodious outrush of upper springs, glad spontaneity, life pulsating with the sense of power and victory. Under this covenant of more perfect help and privilege, ought not prayer to attain a surpassing prevalency? By praying under these Pentecostal conditions we may come to reach the apostolic mark of continual and unceasing prayer. Is not He who prompts and upholds the supplications of those receiving His baptism of fire present at all times, and unsleeping in His subtle ministries as the providence of the great Being whose attributes He shares? If we dwell in a circle of which He is the vitalising centre, our conscious and even unconscious movements of thought anal feeling will be informed by strange stimulations. Acclimatised to these sacred conditions, the habit of prayer will be a second and a better nature to us. The stimulations of this unseen and ever patient Helper never fail, and so it is our privilege to pray always and not to faint. This exhortation seems to imply the constancy of the laws under which the Spirit operates, and our power of so conforming those laws as to reach this lofty experience. It ought to be no little encouragement to us that this habit is spoken of as one of the conditions of our perseverance, and it must be therefore just as practicable for us to pray in the Holy Ghost as it is to keep ourselves in the love of God. To have this close communion with the Most High is not a distinction of pre-eminent saintship, but the privilege of all who abide in His love. He who would thus pray must cultivate tempers of daily spirituality, and to that end must shut out the world, the flesh, and the devil in their manifold disguises. Where the things which are adverse to God are thrust out the Spirit of God will surely come in. It is an axiom in ventilation that unless there be an outflow for the vitiated air it is quite useless having an inlet for that which is pure. The winds of Gods life-giving Pentecost will steal into us if we give free exit to every giddy pleasure which makes the Bible an insipidity, to every darling pursuit which conflicts with the perfect love of God, to whatever deteriorates the intellect, the conscience, and the affections. One of the fair cities of the earth is begirt with pine forests, and has streaks of silver sea about it on every side. Nature lies quite close to its streets and squares, and exhales there day and night the sweetest airs and the most reviving zephyrs. But if one of the citizens should shut himself in an air-tight compartment with the diseased, even in that fair city of health the result would be inevitable. If, on the other hand, all doors and windows be open, the invisible tides of mystic sweetness and strength cannot fail to lave him. The Divine breath is always playing upon those who inhabit the true city of God. Let us make ourselves accessible to it at every point, and take heed that we do not shut ourselves in with the foul and deadly contagions of the world. The tone of our daily speech and thought and life will react upon our prayers. Let us live to keep ourselves ever fit for this high intercourse with God, as the enthusiast in art or poetry or music lives for his work. Never grieve the Spirit who holds in His hand your very power to pray. He can sever at will your communication with the throne of all grace and power. (T. G. Selby.)
Praying in the Spirit
1. Without the Spirit there is no praying.
2. How excellent and honourable a work is that of prayer! The whole Trinity has a work in this holy exercise.
3. As without the Spirit there is no prayer, so without prayer a man evidently shows himself to have nothing of the Spirit.
4. Needs must the prayers of the saints be acceptable. They are by the Holy Ghost.
5. How good is God to His poor saints! He not only grants, but makes, their prayers.
6. It is our greatest wisdom to get and keep the Spirit.
(1) It is obtained in the ministry of the gospel.
(2) It is kept by following His motions and suggestions.
7. How happy are saints in all straits! They have the Spirit to help them to pray. (W. Jenkyn, M. A.)
Keep yourselves in the love of God.–
The means of preserving us from sin, and of promoting in us holiness
On the one hand we are taught here a universal principle of religious obedience; and on the other hand we are taught here what the ways are for procuring and cherishing it. Keep yourselves in the love of God. Do so; and undoubtedly you will have no similarity of character with those men who, having not the Spirit, are sensualists, and in being so are separatists from the communion of true Christians. But how shall you be enabled to obey this injunction? By building yourselves up on your most holy faith–by praying in the Holy Ghost–and by looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus unto eternal life. To have love to God, and to have this Divine affection in vigorous exercise, is to give security for the renunciation of all sin, and for the choice and accomplishment of all duty. It forms the very principle of action, which is applicable in every situation, and during all time. Can the devout affections be really the object of my careful cultivation, without at the same time being accompanied by the desire and the endeavour after universal holiness? Can I revere the majesty of God without the fear of offending against the dignity of His authority? Can I esteem the unrivalled beauty of His moral excellences without the anxious wish to resemble Him and to enjoy His approbation? The view of what is the native tendency of this Divine affection is indubitable. To give diligence that we may remain in the exercise of this holy affection is to give diligence that we may weaken, and finally dislodge, every opposing affection. If once there was produced in us an entire surrender of will and power, of fear and hope, to His most blessed direction–this would amount to the being actuated by the Divine Spirit; and so the sensuality that would separate us from the regard and obedience of Divine truth be entirely vanquished. But how shall we keep ourselves in the exercise of this purest and most efficient principle? The means of doing so are here enumerated:
1. In the first place, would we keep ourselves in the love of God?–let us build ourselves up on our most holy faith; that is in the grace of faith, and in its objects, the doctrines and promises of the gospel. The height of it indeed we shall never be able, through eternity itself, to form a perfect conception of. Let us heap together all those bright views, and glorious promises, which like so many sums in our shining treasure, should be added, for the purpose of giving us an idea of the riches of the Divine mercy. Let us become more deeply acquainted with, and more intensely interested in, the doctrines and the prospects of our most holy faith, and undoubtedly we shall be using one of the powerful, even as it is the appointed, means to keep ourselves in the love of God.
2. Would we succeed in these endeavours at laying our minds open to the truth, and to the efficacy of our most holy faith would we overcome the aversions, and surmount the difficulties, that stand in the way of all our apprehensions, and that oppose the exercise of all our sensibilities, on its high spiritual objects; would we see the designs of Christianity, and feel them, and continue under their influence; let us follow the next admonition, and pray in the Holy Ghost. The Divine Spirit dictated the Scriptures; and therefore, when we pray for things agreeably to the tenor of the revealed will of God, we are said, in one sense, to pray under this influence. Now supposing that on Scripture principles, in firm though humble dependence on the grace of God, and with constancy, fervour, and spirituality, we are enabled to cherish the affections of Christian piety; do we not see that we are thereby employing the direct means of improving ourselves, both in acquaintance with the objects of faith, and in the exercise of the grace of faith?
3. In the third place, however, the devout affections we have continually to lament, are with us so cold, even at the warmest, and so wavering, even at the utmost steadiness to which we can bring them; and in all the exercises of our minds, whether in the belief or in the practice of religious truth, we have attained to so little that we can look back on with unmingled satisfaction, that we should have no encouragement, either in devotion or active duty, were our hopes of eternal life made to rest on the perfection of our own righteousness. Hence our only relief in remembering the unworthy past, and our only encouragement in endeavouring after something better for the time to come, depend on the privilege granted to us of looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Sure, ample, blessed source of consolation and of hope! To this we flee, that the multitude of our sins may be blotted out, and thrown into perpetual forgetfulness. To this we repair, that the defects inherent even in our best duties, may be forgiven. Not to anticipate, with vividness, that future life, in which devotion shall be elevated into the sublimest purities of spiritual worship, and where faith shall have every promise and prospect realised–how the mind would faint under its frequent insensibilities and manifold lapses! But the assurance that the difficulties are all hereafter to be overcome–that the mercy of Christ which pardons, will gratuitously bestow the eternal life which it has purchased; this is what incites to persevere, and what will lead effectually in the course of devotion and practical faith. (W. Muir, D. D.)
Keeping in the love of God
1. In perseverance there is a concurrence of our care and diligence (Php 2:12-13). The main work is Gods (Php 1:6), and the same Jesus that is Author is also Finisher (Heb 12:2). The deeper radication of the habit, the defence of it, the growth and perfection of it, is all from God (1Pe 5:10); but yet a concurrence there is of our care and endeavours. Well, then, let us not neglect the means.
2. Men that have grace had need look to the keeping of it.
(1) We ourselves are prone to revolt (Jer 14:10; Psa 95:10).
(2) We are assaulted with continual temptations. An importunate suitor, by perseverance in his suit, may at length prevail. Long conversing with the world may taint the spirit.
(3) A man of long standing is apt to grow secure and negligent, as if he were now past danger (Rev 3:17-19).
(4) The worst is past, we have but a few years service more, and we shall be happy for ever (Rom 13:11). A little more and you will land safe at the expected haven; if we have a rough passage, it is a short one.
3. Of all graces, love needeth keeping.
(1) Because of all graces it is most decaying (Mat 24:12; Rev 2:4). Flame is soon spent, graces that act most strongly require most influence, as being most subject to abatement.
(2) Because love is a grace that we can ill spare; it is the spring and rise of all duties to God and man.
4. The next note is from the coupling of these two: The love of God, and looking for the mercy of Christ unto eternal life. See the like connection (2Th 3:5).
(1) Love allayeth fear (1Jn 4:18).
(2) Love quickeneth desire (2Pe 3:12).
5. From that looking for the mercy, etc., observe that looking earnestly for eternal life is a good means of perseverance.
(1) What this looking is. It implieth patience, but chiefly hope.
(a) Patience in waiting Gods leisure in the midst of present difficulties (Heb 10:36; Luk 8:15; 1Th 1:3; Rom 8:25).
(b) Hope. This looking or expectation is not that blind hope that is found in men ignorant and presumptuous, that regard not what they do. This hope which I press you to is a serious act, arising from grace aiming at its own perfection. Again, this looking is not some glances upon heaven, such as are found in worldly persons, who now and then have their good moods and sober thoughts; but alas! these sudden motions are not operative, they come but seldom, and leave no warmth upon the soul, as fruit is not ripened that hath but a glance of the sun. Again, it is not a loose hope or a probable conjecture; this hath no efficacy upon the soul. Thus negatively I have shown you what it is not, but now positively; it is an earnest, well-grounded expectation of blessedness to come. It bewrayeth itself–
(c) By frequent and serious thoughts. Thoughts are the spies and messengers of hope; it sendeth them into the promised land to bring the soul tidings from thence. A carnal expectation filleth men with carnal musings and projects, as Luk 12:18; Jam 4:13. It is usual with men to forestall the pleasure of their hopes. Now, so it is also in heavenly things; men that expect them will be entertaining their spirits with the thoughts of them.
(d) By hearty longings (Rom 8:23). As the decays of nature do put them in mind of another world, they begin to lift up the head and look out (Rom 8:19).
(e) By lively tastes and feelings. A believer hath eternal life (Joh 17:3). He beginneth it here.
(2) Let me show you the influence it hath upon perseverance.
(a) It sets us a-work to purge out sin (1Jn 3:3).
(b) It withdraweth our hearts from present things (Php 3:20).
(c) It maketh us upright and sincere; looking asquint on secular rewards is the cause of all our declinings (Mat 6:2).
(d) It supporteth us under those difficulties and afflictions which are wont to befall us in a course of godliness.
(e) It helpeth us to resist temptations.
6. The next point is from that clause, the mercy. The ground of our waiting and looking for eternal life is Gods mercy, not for any works or merits of ours; we cannot challenge it as a debt: sin and death are as work and wages, but eternal life is a donative (Rom 6:23).
7. This mercy is called the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thence observe, that this mercy which we look for is dispensed by Jesus Christ; He purchased it, and He hath the managing of it in the whole economy of grace.
(1) Get an interest in Christ, otherwise we cannot look for mercy in that great day (1Jn 2:28).
(2) It maketh for the comfort of Christs people and members. Our blessed hopes are founded upon the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in His hands to dispense them. From thence you may collect–
(a) The fulness of this blessedness. An infinite merit purchased it, an infinite mercy bestoweth it.
(b) The certainty of this blessedness. Christ hath the managing of it. He never discovered any backwardness to thy good nor inclination to thy ruin.
8. The last note is from that clause unto eternal life. The great benefit which we have by Christ is eternal life.
(1) There is life; all that you labour for is for life, that which you prize above other things is life.
(2) It is an excellent life. The life of sense, which is the beasts, is better than that vegetative life which is in the plants, and the rational life which is in men is better than the sensitive, and the spiritual exceedeth the rational, and the glorious life the spiritual.
(3) It is a happy life.
(4) It is eternal life. This life is but a flower that is soon withered, a vapour that is soon blown over; but this is for ever and ever. Well, then, let this press you to keep yourselves in the love of God till this happy estate come about. (T. Manton.)
Self-keeping
But ye, beloved. These three words, repeated within a few lines, come upon the reader with some unexpectedness. They tell us, what we may have forgotten since we read the beloved with which the Epistle opens, that the holy energy which pulses through this short letter, though sometimes it approaches to vehemence, is not the energy of a character that works to one side only. They tell us that the energy is one of sympathies, after all, and not of mere antipathies. His vehemence is to be traced to the depth and strength of His love. When this verse occurs, the turning-point of the Epistle has just been passed. The thunderstorm of invective, which the writer has been hurling against certain godless disturbers of the purity and peace of the Church, spends itself almost abruptly here, and the Epistle seems to gather to a close among the quiet sunset light of a sky that has been clarified by the storm. These last calm sentences are directly for the saints whom he loves. But ye, says he, see that ye make a contrast to all this vapid corruption. The contrast which already exists between your condition and theirs, your prospects and theirs–let it be carried forth into a contrast between your conduct and theirs, your habits and theirs.
I. The work of self-keeping.
1. To keep an eye upon ourselves–an eye that is clear and true; to keep a hand upon ourselves–a hand that is steady and strong; to maintain the right attitude of mind and heart from hour to hour. Is this, then, a work for which a man himself is competent? Can a man keep himself? Our thoughts may easily alight upon passages which seem to conflict with Judes words (1Pe 1:5; 1Pe 4:19; Joh 17:11; Joh 17:15). In older days the Psalmist, in that hymn about keeping which the Christian Church has taken to its heart, seems persistently out of tune with the strain of Jude (Psa 121:3-5; Psa 121:7). That, indeed, is the more usual language of Scripture concerning spiritual keeping. But neither is the language of the text without parallel (Pro 4:23; 1Jn 5:18; 1Jn 5:21). The two sets of passages make no discord. It is only the familiar, inexplicable mingling of the human and the Divine. It is only the working together–so incomprehensible, so practicable, so blessed–of mans weakness with Gods almightiness. Keep yourselves, for it is God that keepeth you.
2. Gods love to us is the element within which the keeping of ourselves becomes real keeping, safe keeping, happy keeping. That is the over-arching firmament, with its infinitude, within which our keeping is kept. We ourselves are to abide within our own poor keeping; yes, and our own poor keeping is to abide within Gods tender might of love. The flower is to be environed by the frail globe of glass–the frail globe is to be environed and penetrated by the sweet, warm sunlight that comes across the tracks of worlds to illumine our dark atmosphere with safety and life.
(1) These men and women, as being Christians, were in the love of God in a sense which did not apply to those who were not Christians.
(2) A man may be more, or may be less–consciously and efficiently–in the love of God. Give me a living assurance that my God is caring tenderly for me, for this danger-haunted sinner that I am–and that His great saving love is actually around me like shielding sunlight, I shall then have heart and motive to look to my ways. If I am worth Gods watching, I am worth my own. I will watch myself for Him. I will gird up my loins to keep myself, just because God is keeping me.
3. Note the harmony subsisting between this precept and this qualification of the precept. Being in the love cf God does not neutralise an atom of our utmost diligence in the task of self-keeping. If I feel that I am enclosed by the strong ramparts of a fortress-home, there is animating reason why I should guard myself from the lesser hazards that may still encompass me within that home; my keeping of myself is not at an end, but is only reduced to manageable dimensions. If I be on board a steam-liner, which holds her head before the wildest weather with undaunted majesty, and only fills the air above her bows with the smoke of billows she is shattering in the strong tremor of her power, I have still to care how I mount the companion-way, and pace the deck, and stow my valuables in my cabin. Indeed, it is only when I am secure from wreck or foundering, that all this minor care is of much account. Keep yourselves–in the love of God.
II. The means to be employed in self-keeping.
1. It is significant that the first sort of occupation here named as promotive of the work of keeping is so active an occupation as that of building up themselves. In order to conserve, they must construct. They are beset by forces which are busy to disintegrate and destroy. A Christian character is not reared as a coral structure is–by instinct. It demands a sustained effort of intelligent will The work is laboriously slow–slow, yet urgent. There is need we should bring to bear upon it something of the systematic steadiness which tells so marvellously in the meaner sphere of our worldly work–permitting to ourselves no half-heartedness in it; setting upon it the banded force of all the faculties of body and soul and spirit; pushing it on in frost and rain, and by light of torch when the daylight fails us. And there is danger, too, lest the durable qualities of our work should be imperfect. It would spare Christians many a pang of disappointment and much rebuilding of what had been built in their character, did they always make sure that they were building firmly and strictly after the plan of Christ. In any development of character which is slim and faulty, there can be no real contribution to the keeping, the staid security, which Jude would instruct us to accomplish. In that character-structure of ours there must be settlement and stability, mass and strength, and the geometric beauty of symmetry; that is, there must be proportions well balanced upon a sufficient foundation. And what is that sufficient foundation? A sea-rock, indeed, but yet a rock–our most holy faith. It is the truth of God in the gospel of His Son.
2. Prayer is an occupation, and a companion one to that of rearing a Christian character. Practically it is not very sound to dissociate the one occupation from the other, for prayer is not doing for us the whole that it might do unless it is breathing like an odour through all our changing activities. Yet there must be seasons when prayer is concentrated into specific labour of its own kind; then it is the most sacred manner of work, and the most productive. In this sense we can regard upbuilding and prayer as twin labourers, fitting to each other, like rampart and moat, towards the keeping of our souls.
3. We are to pray in the Holy Ghost. The pregnant phrase wraps up a very solemnity of privilege. It is a great thing to pray in the mere presence of the Divine Spirit, or under His loving glance. It is a greater thing to pray with the vouchsafed assistance of this Divine One, as He moulds and energises our petitions. It is a greater thing still, and enters the region of permanent miracle, that we should pray with the Eternal Spirit in us, abiding in our meagre hearts, identifying Himself with us, and mingling His own intercessions with ours. We, and our prayer, and our praying–all are to be within Him–encompassed by His power, impregnated by His efficacy, informed by His light. He is to be in us while we pray, as the ocean is in the chambers of the tiny shell which has dropped into its depths.
III. The encouragement to be sought in self-keeping. Looking for the mercy of our Lord, etc. Hard work and brighter hope; it is these together that make up the Christian life as God means it. When the two are most sharply set over against each other in the New Testament, it is that they may be mingled by us into one. God would not have His children to toil without heart. Ever follow that which is good. Rejoice evermore. Live soberly, righteously, and godly looking for the happy hope. It is not enough to have rest when the toil is over; there must be spirit while the toil is going on. Building up yourselves, praying, and so keeping yourselves. Is it a catalogue of labours? Well, there follows the complementary duty, as if he added, Cheering yourselves. Now, it is below the truth to say that while there may be other lines of activity in the world which are quite as arduous as that of the self-keeping of the Christian, there is not any line of activity which bears along it so magnificent a contingent of inspiriting considerations. But there is a practical peculiarity in the case of the Christian. It is a common thing for a man, when he throws his energies upon any pursuit, to be constantly animating himself by expectations that are exaggerated, and by data that are good only to disappoint him. The Christian, on the contrary, following the pursuit which God Himself has set along the highway to all blessed issues, is constantly underdoing his expectations–is habitually forgetting, or only half-believing, the splendid certainties by which his hope ought to be nerving his diligence. Thereby everything suffers. Thereby the reconstruction of character goes heavily, and prayer is dull; the self-custody of the soul is slack-handed and insecure. Hence the force of the great concluding exhortation of Jude: There is your sublime task; take thought of your sublimer prospects, that you may hold on to your task with unflagging hearts and unstaying hands. On what, then, is it that our eye is to be set as the focus of all our encouragement in the grand task of our life? Looking for–mercy. Still mercy–after all our hard work, our God-given work, in building, praying, keeping? Let us thank God that it is. Our work–it is blundering and inconstant; the worker–he is weak and unworthy: here, smiling around us out of the heaven which it makes so bright, is the Divine yet brotherly compassion of our Lord Jesus Christ. No other encouragement could be so complete as this. It is the sum of all tenderest things; the pledge of all that is most unimaginable in its gloriousness. (J. A. K. Bain, M. A.)
Keeping in the love of God
I. By building upon Christ. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith. Christ is the foundation; and other foundation can no man lay. Others may think lightly of that stone; but to you it is the only name given under heaven. You must go on, building upon Christ. And thus the Holy Spirit tells you (Col 2:6-7). All this is the work of faith. Faith lays your soul upon Christ, and faith keeps it there. He terms our faith most holy. It is so from its nature, and from its tendency. It has to do with a holy God. It has to mix in holy services. It has to prepare us for a holy heaven.
II. By praying in the Holy Ghost. What believer does not know his need of the Holy Spirit, that he may pray aright. How motionless were the wheels in Ezekiels vision, till the Spirit entered into them! How lifeless were the bones in the valley of vision, till the breath from the four winds came upon them! And how dead and formal are our devotions, when we neglect to seek Gods Spirit to animate our frame!
III. By expecting mercy through Christ. Looking also for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. We all need mercy, because we have all sinned.
IV. The effects of true spiritual religion. Kept in the love of God. And what is this? Why, this is that happiness at which we all should aim. Think how great a privilege it must be to have the love of God shed abroad in your hearts by the Holy Ghost. How sweet to go to Him as your Father! to commune with Him as a friend, like Abraham! to see the Lord always before you, as did David! What, then, do each of you know of this security? Are all of you shut up in this tower of refuge? (C. Clayton, M. A.)
A safe sphere–love
I. The sphere of the Christian life–In the love of God. The expression is beautiful and suggestive. The following thoughts amongst others–
1. The primary thought of redemption–God loves us.
2. The demonstration of that love–Jesus loves us.
3. The proof of that love–we feel it.
II. The expectation of the Christian life Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto life eternal. Hope has its objects future, and there are in the future of every believer–
1. The consummation of the present.
2. The expansion of the future. There is in store more than the present can supply. (T. Davies.)
How to keep in the love of God
I. Consider that central injunction–the very keystone of the arch of a devout Christian life–Keep yourselves in the love of God. Gods love to us is regarded as a kind of sphere or region in which the Christian soul lives and moves and has its being. It is the sweet home of our hearts, and a fortress whereinto we may continually resort, and our wisdom and security is to keep at home within the strong walls that defend us, compassed by the warmth and protection of the love which God has towards us. Then my text implies that Christian men may get outside of the love of God. No doubt His tender mercies are over all His works. There are gifts of the Divine love which, like the sunshine in the heaven, come equally on the unfaithful and on the good. But all the best and noblest manifestations of that love cannot come to men irrespective of their moral character and their relation to Him. Then another question is suggested by my text. I asked, Can a man get out of the love of God? And I have to ask now, Can a man, then, keep always in it? We need not discuss, for the guidance of our own lives and efforts, whether the entire realisation of the ideal is possible for us here. Enough for us to know that it is possible for Christian people to make their lives one long abiding in the love of God, both in regard of the actual reception of it and of the consciousness of that reception. The secret of all blessedness is to live in the love of God. Our sorrows and difficulties and trials will change their aspect if we walk in the peaceful enjoyment and conscious possession of His Divine heart. That is the true anaesthetic. No pain is intolerable when we are sure that Gods loving hand is round about us.
II. Further, notice the subsidiary exhortations which point out the means of obeying this central command. The two clauses in my text which precede that main precept are more minute directions as to the way in which it is to be observed. We might almost read, By building yourselves on your most holy faith, and by praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God. The first means of securing our continual abiding in the conscious enjoyment of Gods love to us is our continual effort at building up a noble character on the foundation of faith. What would you say of a man that had dug his foundations, and got in the first courses, and then left the bricks lying on the ground, and did no more? And that is what many people that call themselves Christians do, use their faith only as a shield against condemnation, and forget that if it is anything at all it works, and works by love. Then remember, too, that this building of a noble, God-pleasing character can only be erected on the foundation of faith by constant effort. You do not rear the fabric of a noble character all at a moment. No man reaches the extremity, either, of goodness or baseness by a leap; you must be content with bit-by-bit work. The Christian character is like a mosaic formed of tiny squares in all but infinite numbers, each one of them separately set and bedded in its place. Now, look at the second of the conditions laid down here by which that continual living within the charmed circle of the love of God is made possible. Praying in the Holy Ghost. Who that has ever honestly tried to cure himself of a fault, or to make his own some unfamiliar virtue opposed to his natural temperament, but has found that the cry O God! help me has come instinctively to his lips? The prayer which helps us to keep in the love of God is not the petulant and passionate utterance of our own wishes, but is the yielding of our desires to the impulses Divinely breathed upon us. Our own desires may be hot and vehement, but the desires that run parallel with the Divine will, and are breathed into us by Gods own Spirit, are the desires which, in their meek submissiveness, are omnipotent with Him whose omnipotence is perfected in our weakness.
III. Lastly, notice here the expectation attendant on the obedience to the central commandment. Looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. After all our efforts, after all our prayers, we all of us build much wood, hay, stubble, in the building which we rear on the true foundation. And the best of us, looking back over our past, will most deeply feel that it is all so poor and stained that all we have to trust to is the forgiving mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. That mercy will be confidently anticipated for all the future, nearer, and more remote, in proportion as we keep ourselves for the present in the love of God. The more we feel in our hearts the experience that God loves us, the more sure we shall be that He will love us ever. The sunshine in which we walk will be reflected upon all the path before us, and will illuminate that else dusky and foreboding sky that lies beyond the dark grave. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Keeping ourselves in the love of God
I. If we would keep ourselves in the love of God, We must carefully shun everything which would be likely to dampen the fervour of our affection, or extinguish this holy fire. The love of God cannot live in the heart where any known sin is allowed to enjoy quiet shelter.
II. If the Christian would keep himself in the love of God, he must be attentive to the duties of prayer, and the study of the Holy Scriptures. The neglect or the careless performance of either of these cannot but have the effect of cooling the ardour of godliness; and, in the end, of causing it to decay and perish.
III. If we would keep ourselves in the love of God, we must imitate Him in deeds of mercy and loving-kindness. (J. N. Norton, D. D.)
The love of God
I. Illustrate the import and extent of the precept–Keep yourselves in the love of God. To form a right notion of this duty, we must remember that our love to God is not such a familiar affection of the mind as we bear towards our equals–such as one friend has for another. The man who loves God will honour and reverence Him. Like a dutiful child, he will be fearful of offending the most tender and beneficent Parent. To keep ourselves in the love of God likewise imports the most ardent and affectionate desire of being united to Him, as the supreme good and the chief happiness of man. To keep ourselves in the love of God doth further imply, that we prefer His favour and service to everything that may come in competition with Him. In order to discover, therefore, whether our love to God be genuine, it will be necessary for us to consider what are the genuine effects which the genuine love of God is naturally calculated to produce on our minds and manners. It will produce a submission of our wills to the will of God; it will produce a love of the duties of religion; it will produce a sincere obedience to the Divine commandments; it will produce a quickness on our part in discovering our own frailties and imperfections; and lastly, it will produce an unfeigned charity to all mankind.
II. Suggest some of those motives and obligations we lie under to the observance of this precept. And in order to keep ourselves in the love of God, in order to inflame our souls with this holy and devout affection, let us only consider, first, how glorious a being God is in Himself; and second, how good and gracious He hath been to us, His unworthy creatures. Conclusion:
1. Let us consider how numerous those blessings are which we have received, and which we every moment receive from Almighty God.
2. Let us consider how much we stand in need of a continual supply of those mercies which we enjoy.
3. Let us reflect how miserable our lives would become by the want of those good things of which we are now possessed. (W. Macritchie.)
Keep yourselves in the love of God
I. A state implied. The love of God here obviously means Gods love to the believer, and the believers love to God, for every true Christian is in love to God, and in love from God.
1. Gods love to the believer. It is not only the complacency, which is the portion of angels–and the love of goodness, which pervades the universe; but the love of compassion, that pities–the love of sovereignty, that chooses–the love of grace, that calls and renews–the love of mercy, that pardons and redeems–the love of faithfulness, that fulfils every promise, perfects every grace, and surpasses every expectation the love that knows neither beginning, change, nor end; and which, after having attended its object through earths pilgrimage, will smooth and light his passage through the vale of death, and conduct him to a happy eternity.
2. The believers love to God. This is our first great duty, and it is the foundation of all pure and undefiled religion, and of all the moral excellence and beauty which a created intelligence can possess. There is nothing in it of animal passion, but it is exclusively intellectual and spiritual; and though it subordinates the faculties and passions of the mind to its own movements, it is perfectly distinct from them. It is the feeling, conviction, and tendency of a redeemed created spirit towards an Infinite and Uncreated Spirit. It includes admiration of the natural and moral perfections of God; holy delight in thinking of Him, communing with Him, and feeling that we are near to Him; humble gratitude for all His mercies; and an earnest desire to be with Him in heaven.
II. The means by which this spiritual state is to be maintained and preserved. Keep yourselves in the love of God.
1. This spiritual state is like a delicate flower, or exotic; without constant care and culture, it may soon be injured, and droop and fade. The soul of the believer may get into such a cold, wintry state–be so pervaded by the chilling frosts of indifference, and the disturbing elements of worldly-mindedness and conscious guilt, as to be totally unfit for the nourishment and growth of this celestial plant.
2. And the language of the text implies another thing, and that is, that Christians are themselves responsible for the preservation, or decay, of this spiritual state. Jude says, Keep yourselves in the love of God. It is true that in spiritual matters we can do nothing successfully without Divine aid and influence, but this is as true in the world of nature as it is in the kingdom of grace. The farmer can do nothing successfully without Divine aid and influence, and yet he would be thought very unreasonable to urge this as an evidence that no personal responsibility rests upon him for the state of his farm and crops.
3. But how are we to keep ourselves in the love of God?
(1) By praying very earnestly to God, so to exert upon us His mighty power and grace, as to keep us in that love.
(2) By carefully avoiding anything that would grieve and offend Him, and cause Him to withdraw the enjoyments of His love from us; and, on the other hand, by doing all we can to please Him, and to secure the continuance of His favour.
(3) By preserving our love to Him from injury and decay, and by diligently using all appropriate means for its growth and perfection. (W. Gregory.)
Christians keeping themselves in the love of God
And there be many reasons to move us to keep ourselves in the love of God.
1. The first is His commandment Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; and again, What doth the Lord thy God require of thee but to fear and love Him? This our Saviour calleth the great commandment. The Commander is great, the object is great, the use of the duty is great, and their reward is great that take care to do it.
2. A second reason to move us to keep ourselves in the love of God is in regard of equity. For seeing Almighty God doth love us, it is a matter of equity that we should requite love with love again.
3. Commodity should move us to keep ourselves in the love of God. For first, by this love, our faith produceth those good duties which we owe unto God. For faith is as one hand receiving love, as the other giving (Gal 5:6). Again, by the love of God, we may know what state we are in. St. Augustine saith two loves make two cities; the love of God maketh Jerusalem, the love of the world Babylon; therefore let every man but examine himself, what he loves, and he shall see in what state he is, and to what city he belongs. Again, the love of God engenders in us the love of the godly for God, for he that loves the Father cannot but love His children (1Jn 3:14). Again, from the love of God ariseth much grace and goodness, as much water from one spring. Good works wither except they be nourished by this love. As the love of money is the root and nourisher of all evil, so the love of God is the mother and nurse of all good, of all pious offices to God, and Christian duties to man.
4. We ought to keep ourselves in the love of God because He is our gracious Father, and of His own good will begat He us through the word of truth. Now if a child must love his father, of whom he hath received a part of his body, how much more ought he to love God, of whom he hath received his soul, and unto whose goodness he stands obliged both for soul and body? (S. Otes.)
Keeping the heart in the love of God
I. Directions.
1. Carefully shun all those circumstances and things which are known to have a tendency to damp the fervours of love, or to extinguish this holy fire. Above all, avoid every sinful indulgence. Fleshly lusts. Contention and strife. Pride and vainglory.
2. To keep ourselves in the love of God, we should often meditate on the superlative moral excellence of the Divine character, as displayed in His works and Word.
3. Every habit and affection is preserved in vigour and increased by frequent exercise.
4. The greatest hindrance to the exercise and increase of our love to God, is our blindness of mind and unbelief. In order, therefore, to preserve our souls in the lively exercise of the love of God, we must seek an increase of that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen–that faith which sees Him that is invisible–which looks not at the things which are seen and temporal, but at the things which are not seen, which are eternal.
II. motives.
1. By doing this we shall best glorify God upon earth.
2. The next motive which should influence us to perform faithfully the duty enjoined in the text, is, that this will be the most effectual method of promoting the welfare and salvation of our fellow creatures.
3. The more we keep ourselves in the love of God, the more meet shall we be for the heavenly inheritance, where perfect love reigns in every heart. Not only so, but the richer reward will be possessed. (A. Alexander, D. D.)
How to keep oneself in the love of God
Answer
1. In general: one whom God loves and favours, must do as the favourite of a prince useth to do, to keep himself in his princes love and favour, tie will study what the will of his prince is, and will do all that he can to please him. This is a great art to study–to know what is the will and pleasure of God (Eph 5:17) and to conform to it. The reason whereof is this–
1. Because the will of God is the sovereign will to all the world, therefore to thine and mine: there is no controlling of it.
2. Because the will of God is a holy will; and we can never keep ourselves in the love of God but by what is agreeable to His holiness: and that is, when we ourselves are holy (1Pe 1:15-16). Answer
2. But now more particularly:
I. He that will keep himself in the love of God, must he himself love God. For love deserveth love, and love begetteth love. Gods love worketh thus toward us, and therefore our love must work toward God.
II. He that loves God loving him, is drawn to God by the attractive beams of Divine love. He that loves God loving him, is inflamed with Gods love; as it is in a burning-glass.
III. He that will keep himself in the love of God, must mind and meditate on four attributes and properties of Gods love, which will have great influence upon his heart and love.
1. On the eternity of Gods love to him.
2. On the freeness of Gods love (Hos 14:4).
3. On the immensity of Gods love (Eph 3:17-19).
4. On the unchangeableness of Gods love (Heb 6:17-18; Jer 31:3; Rom 8:39).
IV. He that will keep himself in the love of God, must keep himself free from the love of the world. Because the love of this world is contrary to the love of God, and therefore inconsistent with it (1Jn 2:15-16).
V. He that will love God, and keep himself in the love of God, must not be a self-lover. There is no greater enemy to the love of God than to love ourselves (2Ti 3:2).
VI. If ye would keep yourselves in the love of God, be very shy of sin, both in the risings of it, and as to the temptations to it.
1. Sin is enmity against God in the abstract (Rom 8:7).
2. Sin is hateful to God (Pro 6:16; Psa 96:10).
3. Sin separates from God.
VII. He that will keep himself in the love of God, must clear up his interest and union to Jesus Christ.
VIII. An eighth way of keeping ourselves in the love of God, is by keeping Gods commandments (Joh 15:10; Joh 15:14).
IX. The way to keep ourselves in the love of God, is to walk closely with God in ways of strict holiness. This is a commendation and character upon record of Gods chiefest favourites. Thus it was with Abraham (Gen 17:1); thus it was with Enoch (Gen 5:22); thus it was with Noah (Gen 6:9): thus it was with Caleb (Num 14:24); and thus David (Psa 73:28).
X. They keep themselves in the love of God who do not wave or abate their profession and practice of godliness in evil times, and do not balk the ways of God under severe providences and sharp trials.
XI. Another means to keep ourselves in the love of God is to keep in our hearts a quick sense of the pardon of sin; of the wonderful love of the Lord to a poor sinful soul, to pardon great and many sins.
XII. A further means to keep ourselves in the love of God, is not only to love the Lord, but to keep up our love to Him to the height.
XIII. If we will keep ourselves in the love of God, let us labour to grow in grace, and to carry on the work of it in our souls to the highest perfection.
XIV. A great means of keeping ourselves in the love of God is this, to pray in the holy Ghost.
XV. We keep ourselves in the love of God when we declare a public spirit for the cause of God in His Church against the enemies of it by being zealous for His glory and valiant for His truth in our station.
XVI. A great means of keeping ourselves in the love of God is to be sincere and sound in the worship of God.
XVII. A great means of keeping in the love of God is keeping up the communion of saints in all the parts and duties of it.
XVIII. The last means I shall name is in the words immediately following my text (Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life), which, doubtless, the Holy Ghost points us to, as an effectual means to keep ourselves in the love of God.
1. Because it is the highest act of Gods love to us–to bestow eternal life on us.
2. The Lord, that hath provided eternal life for us, will have us always to walk in expectation of it (Gen 49:18; Tit 2:13).
3. We have no ground at all to expect eternal life from God without keeping ourselves in the love of God (Rom 8:23, compared with verse 39).
4. We keep ourselves in Gods love by being found in such a state and in such a way as leads to life, which is chiefly faith and obedience.
5. Now a son that is heir-apparent by adoption in Christ to such an estate of eternal life in heaven, he will not only be always in expectation of it, but will judge himself bound to study all the ways he can possibly do to please God, to keep in His love and favour, and withal fear and take heed of forfeiting the love of God. (W. Cooper, M. A.)
Keeping in the love of God
Some years ago I was holding a series of evangelistic meetings in a certain New England city, and was entertained at the house of a very dear friend. His accomplished and Christian wife had been ill for many weeks with rheumatic fever, but was now convalescent. Her illness had been very severe and long-continued. One distressing result had been a depression of spirits, and the clouding of her mind as to her Christian hope and her acceptance with God. One day I found her seated in a charming little parlour, with a large bay window toward the south. It was mid-winter, and the southern sun was streaming into that south window, making the flowers and plants beautiful in foliage and bloom, and filling all the room with light and genial warmth. My invalid friend was seated in the window, with her left shoulder lightly covered with a gauzy zephyr wool shawl, but otherwise bared to the rays of the sun. I fell into conversation with her once more concerning her spiritual state. She was still in utter darkness and distress of mind. I had quoted this precious text to her again and again, Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of Jesus Christ unto eternal life; but apparently all to no purpose. Finally, I thought to turn that south vision to purpose, and make it preach a sermon to her. So I said, Why do you come so often and sit so long in this south window? Why, she replied, you must know why I sit here every day. You know how long I have been ill with the rheumatic fever, and that since the fever has left me I have been the further victim of the sharp and excruciating pain of inflammatory rheumatism in almost every part and joint of my body? But latterly I have been delivered from it, except in this left shoulder. So the doctor told me, about three weeks ago, that he could do nothing more, but suggested to me that I might come into this parlour in the mornings, when the sun was at his strength, and sit here in the south window, with my shoulder bared to its warm rays, and see what a sun-bath would do for me. This is why I am here. Well, said I, and has the sun-bath done you any good? Oh, yes! Do you know, I had not taken my daily bath here for more than a week or ten days, until the last vestige of pain left me, and I am as well, apparently, as I ever was, so far as that is concerned; but it is so delicious just to sit in this sunshine, and feel its glad and genial warmth, that I come now every day for a little while, just for love of it. Ah, my friend, I replied, now you have been preaching my sermon. That is exactly what the apostle is exhorting you to do when he says, Keep yourselves in the love of God. Your poor soul has grown cold, and is full of the rheumatism of doubt and distress. In vain you have tried to expel your doubts and fears. There is but one remedy. Go and sit in the south window of Gods love, and let the warm, life-giving rays of His glad sunshine pour themselves into your heart, and you may be sure His love will chase out every doubt and fear, thaw away all coldness, and fill you with a joy and peace that will be more delicious to your soul than this material sunshine is to your poor body. And, moreover, after your doubts and fears have been dissipated, you will be glad of an hour every day. Yea, you will be glad of the privilege of sitting, or standing, or walking, or working all the day long in the love of God. This thought seemed to strike her very forcibly, and at last she exclaimed, Oh, I see it all now! How stupid of me not to have seen it before! I have been trying, out of my cold and wicked heart, to bring forth something good to offer to God, and then to find peace and comfort in something I have done or felt. Just keep yourselves in the love of God, she went on in a kind of soliloquy, and let that fill and quicken you. How simple! How beautiful! How I might have saved myself weeks and months of suffering, far worse than the pains of illness, if I had only known this, or at least acted upon it. (G.I.Pentecost, D. D.)
Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.–
Looking for mercy
I. The greatest of all spiritual blessings. The mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Mercy.
1. Deeply needed.
2. Freely offered.
3. Experimentally enjoyed.
4. Rises in value as every other good declines.
Mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ.
(1) It is the purchase of His agonies.
(2) It is applied to the heart by the agency of His Spirit.
(3) It is finally bestowed by His own hand.
II. The most important of all exercises. Looking. Supposes a belief in their reality, an aspiration after their enjoyment. A desirable state.
1. As a safeguard against dangerous errors.
2. As it damps the false lustre of the world.
3. As it is eminently conducive to holiness.
4. As it prepares.the soul for heaven.
III. The most glorious of all results. Eternal life. (The Study.)
The believers hope in the mercy of Christ
I. Mercy is the ground on which we are to look for eternal life, Mercy, as attributed to God and Christ, is to be taken either–
1. For that attribute whereby He is inclined to pity and help the miserable; His loving-kindness, grace, compassion, freely working to such as are in misery. Or–
2. For the effects and fruits of this; His help afforded; suitable blessings actually granted. In this latter sense it is to be taken here (2Ti 1:18).
II. How it is the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1. He is the purchaser of it (1Jn 5:11-12).
2. In point of preparation (Joh 14:2).
3. In respect of actual donation (Mat 25:34).
III. How well it deserves to be thus emphatically expressed, the mercy.
1. As it is that mercy which saints were chosen to, and which God always had them in His eye and heart to bring them to the possession of.
2. As it is most free. This is the pure fountain from which it springs, the gift of God.
3. As purchased with the most invaluable price. Not only the prayers and tears, but the precious blood of the Son of God.
4. The mercy promised as the crown and end of all others. This is the promise that He hath promised us, eternal life (1Jn 2:25), the grand comprehensive promise, into which all the foregoing mercies run as streams into the ocean.
5. The mercy, as inconceivably great and full, unmixed and complete; to be measured only by the infinite perfections of that God who is to be enjoyed, and the vast capacities of the immortal soul to be filled up.
6. The mercy, as most seasonable, and therein most sweet, upon account of foregoing misery.
7. The mercy, as most suitable.
8. The mercy, as reserved, and therein most sure.
9. The mercy, as peculiar and distinguishing: the inheritance of a few (Luk 12:32).
10. The mercy, as always to endure. Eternal life. It is life for its excellency, and eternal for its duration; a life free from all evil, and in the full possession of all good, of all that is desirable, all that is delightful.
IV. What is implied in looking for it?
1. That our minds and thoughts are much taken up about it.
2. It is keeping faith in exercise with reference to it.
3. It is a setting our hearts upon it, and entertaining earnest desires after it.
4. It is a patient waiting till you are called hence to enter into that eternal life the mercy of Christ will assuredly bestow (Heb 6:12).
5. Serious diligence in preparing for it, and watchfulness that we do not come short, or be found unready.
Application.
1. Is it mercy that bestows eternal life, how unreasonable is the sin of despair?
2. Is it the mercy of Christ, how destructive their folly who seek it anywhere else? (D. Wilcox.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 20. Building up yourselves] Having the most holy faith-the Gospel of our Lord Jesus, and the writings of his apostles, for your foundation; founding all your expectations on these, and seeking from the Christ who is their sum and substance; all the grace and glory ye need.
Praying in the Holy Ghost] Holding fast the Divine influence which ye have received, and under that influence making prayer and supplication to God. The prayer that is not sent up through the influence of the Holy Ghost is never likely to reach heaven.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Building up yourselves; he compares them to a house, which is to be built up, whereof faith is the foundation: the same metaphor is used, 1Co 4:9; Eph 2:20-22; 1Pe 2:5.
Most holy; so he calls faith, as being the means of purifying their hearts, and working holiness in them; and in opposition to the false faith of the heretics he warns them against, which did consist with so much impurity.
Faith; this may be understood either:
1. Of the grace of faith; and then that is compared to the foundation, as being the first and principal grace in a Christian, and of greatest necessity and use; and then they are here bid to build themselves up in other graces which follow upon faith, as 2Pe 1:5. Or:
2. Of the doctrine of faith, that on which their faith itself is founded; and then the meaning is, that they should not rest satisfied in what measure of faith they had already attained, but still be improving it, and making further progress in it, not only hold fast the truth of the gospel, the right foundation on which they had begun to be built, but get themselves, by the due study and meditation of the word, more and more confirmed in the belief of it.
Praying in the Holy Ghost; i.e. by the assistance of the Spirit, who teacheth what to pray for, and how; from whom faith, fervency, and all praying graces do proceed. Rom 8:26,27; The Spirit maketh intercession (prays) in us, to note the excitations of his grace; here we are said to pray in the Holy Ghost, to note the concurrence of our faculties.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
ResumingJud1:17.
buildingup yourselves the opposite to the separate themselves (Jud1:19):as in the Holy Ghost is opposed to having not the Spirit.
on as ona foundation. Buildingon THEFAITH is equivalent to building on Christ,the object of faith.
prayingin the Holy Ghost (Rom8:26;Eph6:18).The Holy Spirit teaches whatwe areto pray for, and how.None can pray aright save by being inthe Spirit,that is, in the element of His influence. Chrysostom states that,among the charisms bestowed at the beginning of the New Testamentdispensation, was thegift of prayer,bestowed on someone who prayed in the name of the rest, and taughtothers to pray. Moreover, their prayers so conceived and often used,were received and preserved among Christians, and out of them formsof prayer were framed. Such is the origin of liturgies [Hammond].
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
But ye, beloved,…. [See comments on Jude 1:17];
building up yourselves on your most holy faith; some copies, and the Complutensian edition, read, “our most holy faith”; meaning the doctrine of faith in all its branches, which is holy, a most holy doctrine; which displays the holiness of God, and is a means of beginning and increasing internal holiness in the saints, and of encouraging and exciting them to external holiness of life and conversation: this phrase, , “holy faith”, is in use with the Jews k: and it becomes the saints to build up one another upon this; the doctrine of faith, is a foundation to build upon, particularly what regards the person, offices, and grace of Christ, and is itself of an edifying nature; and they should not content themselves with their present knowledge of it, but seek for an improvement in it; and though they were passive when first built on Christ and his doctrines, and though ministers are greatly instruments in building of them up more and more; yet they are capable of building up themselves, and one another, by attending on the ministry of the word, and by private conversation, with each other, and particularly by
praying in the Holy Ghost; which is a special means of increase and establishment in the doctrine of faith; the Holy Ghost is the author and enditer of prayer, and an assister in it; without him saints cannot call God their Father, nor pray with faith and fervency, or with freedom and liberty.
k Zohar in Gen. fol. 47. 4.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Building up (). Present active participle of , old compound with metaphor of a house (), common in Paul (1Cor 3:9-17; Col 2:7; Eph 2:20).
On your most holy faith ( ). For the spiritual temple see also 1Pe 2:3-5. See (faith) in this sense (cf. Heb 11:1) in 2Pe 1:5 with the list of graces added. A true superlative here , not elative.
Praying in the Holy Spirit ( ). This is the way to build themselves up on their faith.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
PART V- THE SANCTIFIED ADMONISHED AND ASSURED
1) “But ye, beloved, building up yourselves” Jude turns from a scathing identity, exposure, and condemnation of the apostate infiltrators to a kind and firm admonition and assurance of the sanctified believing brethren. The term (Greek epiokodomoun tes heautous) means to build up, figuratively as here used, to edify, to advance, spiritually, yourselves.
2) “On your most holy faith “ – since every sanctified, redeemed believer has the gift of faith, (1Co 13:13; Eph 2:8-9) each is charged to advance or edify or build himself up, to make himself mature in that holy foundation faith. Since this holy faith comes by hearing, by the Word of God, Rom 10:14, Jude, like Paul, (Act 20:32) and Peter (2Pe 1:5-8), would have each add to his life the Christian virtues that would make him a fruit bearer and able to give a reason to any who asked of the holy faith he held, 1Pe 3:15.
3) “Praying in the Holy Ghost to pray in the Holy Ghost, (Greek proseuchomenoi) is to follow our Lord’s pattern of prayer from his baptism, first act of His public ministry. Luk 3:21-22 reads, Jesus also being baptized, and praying (Greek proseuchomenou) – the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him.” Paul too admonished brethren to take hold of the sword ofthe Spirit, the Word of God, always in the Spirit of prayer and watching with perseverance Eph 4:17-18. Thus Jude and Paul harmoniously joined hand, and heart in instructing the sanctified how to grow, mature, and resist Satan in the power of the Spirit, the Word, and Prayer.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
20. But ye, beloved. He shews the manner in which they could overcome all the devices of Satan, that is, by having love connected with faith, and by standing on their guard as it were in their watch-tower, until the coming of Christ. But as he uses often and thickly his metaphors, so he has here a way of speaking peculiar to himself, which must be briefly noticed.
He bids them first to build themselves on faith; by which he means, that the foundation of faith ought to be retained, but that the first instruction is not sufficient, except they who have been already grounded on true faith, went on continually towards perfection. He calls their faith most holy, in order that they might wholly rely on it, and that, leaning on its firmness, they might never vacillate.
But since the whole perfection of man consists in faith, it may seem strange that he bids them to build upon it another building, as though faith were only a commencement to man. This difficulty is removed by the Apostle in the words which follow, when he adds, that men build on faith when love is added; except, perhaps, some one may prefer to take this meaning, that men build on faith, as far as they make proficiency in it, and doubtless the daily progress of faith is such, that itself rises up as a building. (202) Thus the Apostle teaches us, that in order to increase in faith, we must be instant in prayer and maintain our calling by love.
Praying in the Holy Ghost. The way of persevering is, when we are endued with the power of God. Hence whenever the question is respecting the constancy of faith, we must flee to prayer. And as we commonly pray in a formal manner, he adds, In the Spirit; as though he had said, that such is our sloth, and that such is the coldness of our flesh, that no one can pray aright except he be roused by the Spirit of God; and that we are also so inclined to diffidence and trembling, that no one dares to call God his Father, except through the teaching of the same Spirit; for from him is solicitude, from him is ardor and vehemence, from him is alacrity, from him is confidence in obtaining what we ask; in short, from him are those unutterable groanings mentioned by Paul (Rom 8:26.) It is not, then, without reason that Jude teaches us, that no one can pray as he ought without having the Spirit as his guide.
(202) It is better to take “faith” here metonymically for the word or doctrine of faith, the gospel; and the sense would be more evident, were we to render ἑαυτοὺς, “one another,” as it means in 1Th 5:13
20. “But ye, beloved, building one another on your most holy faith, (on the most holy doctrine which you believe,) praying by the 21. Holy Spirit, keep one another in love to God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life. And on some, indeed, have compassion, making a difference; but others save with fear,” etc.
The whole passage would read thus better, when their duty towards one another is specifically pointed out. — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Jud. 1:20.This gives positive teaching. It answers the question, What can sincere and earnest believers do to guard themselves from the insidious influence of evil men, and imperilling surroundings and influences? The answer in the general is thus givenFaith is strengthened and preserved by growth in the Christian life, prayer of the meditative and fervent type, cherishing the sense of the personal divine love, and keeping up hope of the fulfilment of the promise in Christ Jesus. Most holy faith.This can only mean, a recognised and accepted set of first principles and truths, on which the apostolic stamp rested. Most holy faith as opposed to the most unholy quicksands of the doctrines condemned in this epistle. By building up is more especially meant, strengthening the foundations. Praying in the Holy Ghost.An expression not found elsewhere. What is meant is the ecstatic outpouring of prayer in which the words of the worshipper seem to come as from the Spirit who helpeth our infirmities.
Jud. 1:21. Love of God.In the sense of His love to us. See Joh. 15:9. Looking for.With a special anticipation of your Lords coming.
Jud. 1:22. Making a difference.The A.V. appears to have been taken from the later MSS. The R.V. gives the reading which has earlier and better authority, but its English is somewhat involved: And on some have mercy, who are in doubt [margin while they dispute with you]; and some save, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear, hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. The subject is the discrimination with which it was necessary to treat Christians who were not well established in the faith. There is a wise blending of tenderness and severity. Hating the garment.That is, avoiding all familiarity with them, as they would avoid touching the garment infected from the flesh of one who had died of pestilence.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Jud. 1:20-23
The Believers Daily Endeavour.St. Jude seems to have been almost carried away by the intensity of his feeling as he wrote of the mischievous influence of the false teachers. There was in him much of the spirit of the Jewish Zealot, as there was also in his brother James. The former part of his epistle is full of the fiercest denunciations, but it would have been in every way a mistake if he had carried it on to the end in the same spirit. Warnings may be most necessary and most valuable; but they are not wisely left to stand alone. In moral as well as religious training counsels as to what should be done must always blend with warnings as to what should not be done. What to do is even more important than What to avoid. Christian teachers need always to keep in mind the lesson of their Lords illustration of the house that was empty, swept, and garnished, but not filled up with good spirits, and so easily came to be the abode of more and worse spirits than dwelt in it at first. Turning out evil never can suffice. St. Jude therefore closes his epistle with positive advice to the Christian disciples, and suggestive directions concerning their daily life and daily endeavour. First, however, reminding them that the conditions of peril in which they found themselves had been anticipated by the teachings and prophecies of the apostles, who had given them the sure test by which to judge all who claimed to be teachers. The teacher is at once judged and condemned if his life shows licence of sensual indulgence; and the teaching is at once declared to be false, they who offer it have not the Spirit, if its practical influence is to relax the strictness of Christian purity, and give believers licence for any forms of sensuous gratification. It must never for one moment be lost from the Christian view, that the holy is the true, and the self-indulgent is the false. No excuse, no disguise, no persuasion, can ever make an unclean, sensual, or sensuous thing Christian. Christ is righteous. Christianity is righteousness. Without holiness no man shall see the Lord. It is the absolute and universally applicable test of all claimants to be teachers to-day as truly as in the days of St. Jude. Eloquence is nothing, emotional fervour is nothing; righteousness is everything. A mans work must stand this testDoes it lift men into a higher plane of Christian restraints, wise mastery of life, and holy living? But St. Jude felt that it was not enough to say this, and to say this firmly. He must also give plain indications concerning that holy living. He must remind them of the things that should be in their daily endeavour, if they were to walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing. And the thing that more especially arrests attention is the skilful way in which St. Jude makes his counsels cover all the departments of the Christian life. He has a suggestive word for each, and so in effect intimates that if the whole man is every day brought into the obedience of Christ, fully used in the effort to gain and to maintain the righteousness that Christ requires, the man will be absolutely safeguarded from the subtleties of false teachers, whose offered licence can be no possible attraction, and from the surroundings of evil, which can only be influential on the carnally-minded man. St. Jude has four practical counsels related to the daily Christian endeavours. One concerns the intellectual Christian lifebuilding up yourselves on the most holy faith; one concerns the emotional lifepraying in the Holy Ghost; one concerns the practical Christian lifekeep yourselves in the love of God; and one concerns the imaginative Christian lifelooking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. St. Judes covering in this way every department of the Christian life reminds us that we have to make an entire sacrifice of ourselves, make of ourselves a whole burnt offering, a living sacrifice; reserving nothing, but laying body, soul, and spirit upon the altar. The absoluteness of our safety from all evil depends on the entireness of our consecration.
I. Our daily endeavour concerns the intellectual Christian life.Building up yourselves on your most holy faith. We are familiar with apostolic advice as to the raising of an edifice of good character on the foundations of a Christian profession; but that is not in the mind of St. Jude. He is advising a continual daily endeavour to strengthen the foundations of faith; to get clearer, fuller, firmer apprehensions of the great Christian verities, the primary Christian principles. There is a necessary Christian knowledge. Growth in knowledge is necessary even to security of Christian living. Our Lord said, in His great prayer, This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. And St. Peter bids disciples grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. St. Jude speaks of our most holy faith as if in his day the primary Christian truths had been arranged into some sort of creed, which was well known, and which bore upon it the stamp of apostolic authority. No such creed is given in the New Testament, and no such creed remains among the Church traditions; but it is not difficult to gather from the various apostolic writings those truths which were common subjects of instruction by all the early teachers. It will be found that they mainly concern the person of Christ, and include His claims to Messiahship, His proper humanity, His essential Divinity, His personal sinlessness, His resurrection from the dead, His present claim to service. And perhaps it has not yet been sufficiently apprehended that one of the truths most deeply impressed on the apostolic mind was the absolute demand Christ made that He should be served by righteousness. St. Jude advises the disciples to make daily endeavour to get clearer apprehensions of these primary truths and principles, and a fuller recognition of their practical applications to life and conduct. It is easy to see how directly our security will depend on our systematic growth in Christian intelligence. Let a man be content with what he knows of Christian truths, and he will surely find that what he knows gradually fades down and becomes ineffective, unable to offer any sort of resistance to the subtle forms in which error may assail. The laws of mental life apply to religious truth. Only by enlarging our scientific knowledge can we keep the scientific knowledge we have. If we will not go on, we must inevitably go back. And good truth loosely and ineffectively held can present little or no effective resistance to the insidious attacks of intellectual error. We need to find out how to make a wise daily endeavour to add to the sum of our Christian knowledge; not satisfied with the mere luxury of some religious sentiment, and the satisfaction of having felt some feeling, but determined that we will see some truth more clearly, or grip some truth more firmlythat, and that alone, would be building ourselves up on our most holy faith.
II. Our daily endeavour concerns the emotional Christian life.Praying in the Holy Ghost. Many people in these days seem to have made up their minds that the Christian life is nothing but an emotional life, and so their daily endeavour is simply to arouse and increase emotion. And when effort is made to check the extravagance and get the emotional element to keep its fitting proportions, it is readily assumed that injury is being done. The emotional side of human nature is the cause of our gravest anxieties. The history of Christs Church reveals the fact that neither heresies nor inconsistencies have ever wrought mischiefs in the Church comparable for one moment to those wrought by the exaggerations and extravagances of religious emotion. For proofs reference may be made to Isaac Taylors books, The History of Enthusiasm and the History of Fanaticism. But the exaggeration unto perilous weakness must not prevent our pleading, under the leadership of St. Jude, for a daily culture of Christian emotion. There ought to be a daily glow of feeling, a fervour in our practical piety. That is indicated in the expression, Praying in the Holy Ghost; for what is peculiar in that sentence is not praying, but this particular kind of praying, in the Holy Ghost. No other New Testament writer uses the same term, though St. Paul indicates how we are helped by the Spirit in our prayer. What St. Jude has in mind is thisif the Holy Spirit dwells in us, we shall be subject to His impulses, and especially His impulses to prayer. Let us take care that we respond to those impulses, never resisting or quenching the Spirit. His work is largely a work in Christian emotion. He will inspire it; but He will tone it, and limit it, and keep it in wise bounds. So often men respond to the Spirits impulse, but fail to respond to the Spirits checks. They start with the Spirit, and then get altogether beyond Him; they, as it were, take the bit in their teeth, and are away on their own line, but are trying to persuade themselves and others that they still have the Holy Ghost. Praying then represents the emotional side of Christian life; we are to make daily endeavour harmoniously to culture and to express religious emotion. We are to pray in the impulse of the Holy Ghost; but we are to pray in the limitations of the Holy Ghost. Our praying, our whole emotional Christian life, is to be absolutely kept in the sphere of the Holy Ghost. And St. Jude intimates that in this will be found our best security from the influence of false teachers. In exaggerated religious emotion the sectarian, and the teacher of moral licence, have always found their most promising seed-beds.
III. Our daily endeavour concerns the practical Christian life.Keeping yourselves in the love of God. That will keep us in the love of God which will keep us in any right human relations. How does the wife keep herself in the love of her husband, the child in the love of the home, the friend in the love of the friend? There is no new condition for the maintenance of our relations with God our Father. The Lord Jesus told us very plainly how He kept Himself in the love of God. I do always the things that please Him. It is the universal law for all Christs disciples. The daily endeavour to live a life of practical obedience and service can alone keep us in the love of God. Jesus said, If a man love Me, he will keep My word: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him. This counsel of St. Judes is needed in every age, as a caution against the errors into which men readily fall. It is so easy to overpress the intellectual element in Christian life, and become merely doctrinal and sectarian, spending all the force of our regenerate life in contending for opinions, and making particular settings of truth the occasion for separations and wranglings and bitterness. And it is so easy to overpress the emotional element in Christian life, and waste our spiritual strength in sighs and groans and feelings, and imagine that we are unusually pious on the ground of our religious excitements. Therefore our Lord and His apostles so constantly urge upon the disciples that religion is practical. It is the conduct, the tone, the doings, the maintaining of right relations, the putting of good principles into practice. St. John stamps for ever the Christly claim to real, practical, daily, godliness of doing when he says, He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He [Christ] is righteous. And He was righteous in this, that He went about doing good. Never be afraid of doingthat is the expression of your new life in Christ; for it is that alone which can keep you in the love of God. Doing in order to make a claim upon Divine favour is hopelessly wrong. But doing to express our sense of Divine favour is hopefully right. It is what God looks for. It is what the world asks of all professors. You may hear the voice of men around you every day, saying to youHave you faith, and new life through faith? Then let us see it; show it in your works. Righteousness, service, and charity before men; obedience, submission, and holiness before Godthese alone can keep us in the acceptance of men or in the love of God.
IV. Our daily endeavour concerns the imaginative Christian life.Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. Essential to the completeness of human nature is the imaginative faculty, on which rests the possibility of conceiving the future, and creating an inspiring hope. Only in imagination has the Christian anything before him. Perfect holiness and happy heaven are our hope. No doubt hope well-grounded, but still hope only, the creation of our imaginations. Faith says a hope that maketh not ashamed. But how seldom do we put it to ourselves that the culturing of the Christian imaginationand that is done by feeding and exercising itis part of our daily endeavour. Look down on the book of truth we must. Look in on the moods of the soul we must. Look around on the duties of the hour we must. Look on and away to the battlements of the Golden City, and the markets of the Golden Year, we must. The man who keeps hope bright, well proportioned in its culture to the other Christian faculties, will be secure against the subtleties of evil. He is satisfied with the substance of things hoped for. Our daily endeavour as Christiansin which lies the assurance of our safety in the midst of the enticing and entrancing evils of the dayconcerns our all-round and harmonious daily culture. We are mindsbut not minds onlyand must grow in apprehension of truth. We are feelingsbut not feelings onlyand must nourish all hallowing emotions. We are actionsbut not actions onlyand must sanctify our doings. We are hopesbut not hopes onlyand must keep imaginations filled with the visions of the King in His beauty and the home over there. In a word, we must be complete in Him.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Jud. 1:20-21. The Secret of being kept.Thus arranged the participles represent the means by which the injunction is followed. Compare 1Pe. 1:13, which is exactly similar in construction and closely akin in sentiment. Jude is the prophet of the apostasy. He sounds the final note of warning. The key-word is kept. Those who embrace the faith and contend for the faith are preserved unto the day of presentation; those who reject and oppose the faith are reserved unto the day of retribution. Those who kept not their first estate, and are kept for judgment, are contrasted with those who keep themselves in the love of God, and are kept by His power. There are two sides to this keepinga divine side (Jud. 1:24) and a human side (Jud. 1:20-21). The words preserve and persevere are so much alike that one can be spelt from the other; and so if we are to be preserved, it is equally true that we must persevere. How to persevere is the subject of this text. The text itself supplies the divisions:
1. The great duty and privilegekeep yourselves in the love of God.
2. The way to do itbuilding, praying, looking. We begin with the three means of perseverance:
1. A perseverance of growth. Building up yourselves on your most holy faith means carrying up character and conduct toward perfection. The foundation is laid, which is Jesus Christ. We have simply to add stone to stone and story to story, and use material consistent with the foundation (1Co. 3:10-15). Faith seems to stand here, as it often does, for the truth held in faith; what is believed and the belief of it both being included. And the disciple is to go on adding to faith, virtue, etc., until the whole life is complete (see 2Pe. 1:5-7). Two conditions are essential to this growth:
(1) growing knowledge of the word of God, which supplies the material for faith;
(2) growing obedience of the word, which incorporates the truth in the life. The word is the quarry from which obedience takes the blocks that are built into conduct. To study the Scriptures daily and practise what we learn builds this building up, and nothing else will; it also insures that right material shall be used.
2. A perseverance of prayer. As the word of God supplies the truth to be embraced by faith, so prayer supplies the energy and force to appropriate truth, and incorporate it into our life. If the word of God is the quarry, prayer is the power which turns the stone into building material and puts it in its place. The phrase is peculiar, praying in the Holy Ghost. Elsewhere the Holy Ghost is represented as praying in us (Rom. 8:26-27). Both representations are true. Here the Spirit of God is represented as an atmosphere necessary to prayer. We can only persevere in prayer as we abide in the Spirit. A worldly atmosphere stifles prayer. We must breathe in the Spirit, and then prayer is the breathing out of the Spirit unto God. Here again is a twofold condition of praying: first there must be daily fellowship with the Spirit, or we shall not have the spirit of prayer; and again there must be daily exercise of prayer itself as communion with God. Such prayer becomes both a protection from temptation and a means of assimilation to God.
3. A perseverance of hope (compare 1Pe. 1:1-13). Hope looks forward into the future. The final consummation of the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ waits to be revealed. We are pilgrims journeying toward a better country, and are passing through an enemys territory. Here we are to have only our tent; our permanent home is beyond. Hence the importance of fastening our gaze upon the city which hath foundations. All apostasy comes from looking at the past or at the present. To dwell on past attainments makes progress impossible. To be absorbed in the present is to follow the spirit of the age, always contrary to God. If faith provides the quarry and prayer the energy for building up Christian life, hope presents the ideal of the structure, and teaches us how to build. It becomes to us a perpetual, inspiring, heavenly vision, and the building grows into conformity with it. We are now prepared to appreciate the injunction, Keep yourselves in the love of God. This suggests, first, that our only hope is in positive culture of holiness. Negative resistance to evil is not enough; we must overcome evil with good. We must learn the expulsive power of a new affection which drives out evil and replaces it by good. Ulysses sought to escape the sirens by being bound to the mast of his vessel. Orpheus drowned their voices with his lyre and sacred songs. Secondly, it is in the love of God; not our love to Him, but His love to us, that we must find keeping power. Archbishop Ussher, when an old man, lacked animal heat, and he used to seek to be constantly bathed in sunshine. When too feeble to go out of doors, he would be wheeled in his chair to an eastern window in the morning, a southerly window at noon, and a western window toward evening, and abide in the sunshine.A. T. Pierson, D.D.
Jud. 1:21. Keeping in the Love.St. Jude wrote his epistle with an evident and direct purpose. He found, as St. Paul also found, that in Churches formed among the Gentile peoples there was exceeding danger lest the truth should be debased through the self-indulgence, the immoralities, and the false teachings by which such indulgences and moral evils were supported. St. Jude pleads with those on whom he could exert an influence, that they should earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints; and, in very vigorous language, he denounces the iniquity of these inconsistent and unworthy professors. Then, in the closing of the epistle, he gives the principle on which alone members can be guarded from surrounding evils. The text is part of a loving and faithful persuasion of the believers.
Our most pressing Christian duty.It may often be helpful to us to gather up the various claims and requirements of a religious profession into some very simple, but suggestive and inspiring principle. There are, in the New Testament, many, various, and minute injunctions and counsels for the guidance and regulation of a Christian life; and yet we cannot fail to observe that the apostles seem much more anxious to implant, and thoroughly establish, quick, living truths and principles, than to take the mere shaping and moulding of the details of Christian conduct into their control. They would rather make the tree good, and leave the fresh, strong, healthy sap to fashion its own leafage and flowering and fruiting. And it is well that we should follow apostolic models, and seek with much more anxiety to culture into vigour and health godly principles, than merely to fashion into set forms the minute details of Christian relations and Christian conduct. Let us make the tree good, and we need not fear for the fruit. But here we are met by a seriously hindering difficulty. There is not usually among Christian people a proper faith in the quickening, inspiring, controlling, and guiding power of established moral principle. Even good people persist in asking exactly what they ought to do in such and such circumstances; and so we have, again and again, to throw men back on the power of simple first principles. If we really know what the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is, what the foundation laws of the new spiritual kingdom are, then we cannot fail to be delicately sensitive in all the details of Christian conduct, to that which becometh the gospel. Our Christian duty is here set before us, not in a series of minute and carefully adjusted counsels, but in one simple, comprehensive, searching, yet glorifying principleKeep yourselves in the love of God. Our Saviour pressed this upon His disciples as if it were the very essence of their duty, Continue ye in My love. And the apostle Paul states what he had found could be the glorifying principle of a lifeof a right noble and heroic lifewhen he said, The love of Christ constraineth us. Our text means in part
1. Keep yourselves in the full conviction of the truth of Gods love.That truth is the one special and distinctive revelation of God that was made to us by Christ and in Christ. That is the life and immortality which He brought to light by His gospel; for our future can only be properly seen in the light of Gods love. That is the central foundation truth of the Christian religion; it is the thing in which it differs from all other religious systems; it is the one truth concerning which we ought to be unspeakably jealous. Before Christ came men had some weak notions that love was one of the Divine attributes, but it was only one of them, and by no means prominent, certainly not the ruling one. The apostle John clearly marks off the Christian man from all the rest of the world by this as his peculiarity, We have known and believed the love which God hath to us. To believe in the love of God, and to come into the forgiving, cleansing, quickening, correcting, sanctifying power of that love, is to become a Christian. And this is but another way of saying it is coming to Christ, it is believing on Christ. We may have expected to find such a counsel in the sacred word as thisKeep yourselves in the justice of God; or thisKeep yourselves in the holiness of God; or thisKeep yourselves in the commandments of God. But there is nothing of the kind, because for renewed, right-hearted Christian men and women justice is quite safe, holiness is quite safe, the commandments are quite safe, if only they will believe in the love which God hath unto them. And yet what a half-fear there is in some of our hearts that this cannot be sufficient, that to state things in this way is to imperil something very vital. But that can only be because we do not fill the word love with the fulness of its meaning. We have a half-fear that love is weak and easyful. Thinking of frail human love, we fancy that it may do things that are not absolutely right; it can carry away on its impulses the judgment, the conscience, and the will. Men and women do, too often, make their fond affections excuse unworthy things. And therefore, even when we speak of Gods love, some of us feel as if we must shore the weak thing up, and buttress it with notionstheological notionsof His justice, His moral government, His holiness, and His law. And because our hearts are filled with these unworthy and hindering notions, we cannot receive the fulness of the revelation of Gods love to us in Christ Jesus. We will not let Christ show us how just, how holy, how searching, how inexorable, that love of God is. We should be satisfied if we could see it as Christ saw it, if we could feel it as Christ felt it. What is love as applied to God? What is the love of God as it is shown to us in Christ? The answer is thisYou must know what the love of the Man Christ Jesus was, when He tarried among the ignorant and the suffering; and watching Him, correcting, counselling, comforting, you will learn the greatness and the graciousness of the love of God. You will see that love can reprove, can chastise, can say, Get thee behind me, Satan, to an erring disciple. You will see that love keeps rods for smiting, and refining fires for cleansing. No law, no judge, is so inexorable as love, which will not take its strong, stern hand off its beloved, until they are whiter than snow, cleansed so as no fuller on earth can whiten them. Love is the corner-stone, on which the whole superstructure of the faith rests securely. It underlies the exceeding great mystery of the Incarnation. Love is the very life and strength of the day by day earthly humiliation. Love is the all-satisfying explanation of the great Atonement. Love gives the life-force to the message of grace sent forth from the cross to every creature. We preach Christ. We set Him forth in all His thousand-fold forms of grace, in order that we may bring sinful men to know and believe the love which God hath unto them. Now St. Jude tells us that of this great truth we must be, personally and individually, most anxious. You and I must take care that we keep in the love of God. We must never let any theories, any teachings, any passing excitements of the hour, any exigencies of theological opinion, any class or sectarian sentiments, put in peril, or cast into the shadow of neglect, this first of Christian truths. We must be jealous with a godly jealousy over any aspect of the Divine Being which men may try to press in the front of this. In the sphere of Christian doctrines remember that this is the absolute first of truthsGod is love. He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God.
2. Keep yourselves in the comforting assurance of Gods love.We should be able to say, not only, He loved me, and gave Himself for me, but also, with an actual, present application, He loveth me, and giveth Himself for me. For that love is actually over us and around us now; it wraps us about, as an enfolding and enveloping atmosphere; in it we live, and move, and have our being. If it be indeed so, then we hold the secret key that unlocks the meaning of all our cares, all our trials, all our losses, all our perplexities, and all our fears. We make our mistakes; we come into calamities; we stumble in our waywardness; we walk where the road is rough, and the clouds hang down low and darken; we lift burdens on our own shoulders; we have to carry burdens for others: but in all these things let us keep ourselves in the love of God. He rules and overrules. He, just like the holy father, trains His children through their mistakes and follies. Our lots in life may be very suffering ones, very anxious ones; but however dark they may be, let us never doubt Gods love to us. In that assurance we may find unfailing consolation and strength. The light of that love is our guide through the gloom; and with fuller, deeper feeling than even the ancient psalmist knew, we may sing and say, When my father and my mother forsake mewhich, to many of us, is the almost impossible of earthly calamitythen the Lord will take me up.
3. That we put ourselves under the daily constrainings of Gods love.Here in our common earthly relations there is no persuasion urging us to goodness like the daily influence of a true and faithful love. How that dear earthly friend, that beloved companion of our life, moves and sways and inspires us, guards and keeps and purifies us! We feel as if we could not do wrong and disgrace that love. We must be beautiful for the honour of that love. We cannot go where our beloved one would be grieved to find us. We cannot speak what would pain our friend to hear. That earthly love is, in gracious measures, a sweet and sanctifying influence. But how much more should this be upon us the constraining power of the love of God! Surely His love should be the supreme impulse to holy living, the inspiration of all high Christian attainment, the constraint of all holy and earnest labour. The apostle Paul is the great human example of the holy, devoted, self-denying Christian, and he can only explain the Divine beauty and consecrated energy of his lifeas we ought to be able to explain oursby saying, The love of Christ constraineth us. That I may be very direct and practical, let me show you that the counsel of the text bears this further persuasion upon youBeware lest anything should take you from under the shadow of Gods love. I need only suggest what things may do this. Pride of heart will. All forms of subtle self-reliance will. There is a tender gentleness, a gracious humility, a trustful dependence, a self-forgetting love, about everybody who really believes in the love of God, and lives in the sanctifying warmth of it. If you have lost these things, or at least, if you have lost the bloom off these things, if you feel very well satisfied with yourselves, and very confident that you can stand steady in your own strength, then you may be sure that you have come from under the shadow of the love. For it has this for its peculiarityit always makes men meek, dependent, gentle. Pandering to the appetites and passions of the body, or to the pride of the intellect, will be sure to take you away from the love. That love can only dwell with the temperate, the purethe saintly ones, who walk in whitethe self-restrained, the modest; so that, if any of us are determined to be self-indulgent, or if we will cherish conceit of our intellectual superiority, the love will be sure to remove afar off. All the manifold phases of unbrotherliness put in peril our relations with the Divine love. For if we do not love our brother whom we have seen, how can we love God whom we have not seen? Unwatchfulnesses and wilful disobediences also take us away from the love. For the Master Himself said, If ye love Me, keep My commandments; and My Father will love you. So it is made quite plain for us all that Gods love is no weak thing. It is, indeed, a most searching thing, a most sensitive thing. It is most quickly grieved. It is wounded with a rough touch. It may be hurt by our commonplace, every-day Christian frailties. If we fear that we have got away from that life-constraining love of God, let us hear the voice of His servant, calling us back under the shadow, and bidding us keep ourselves in the love of God.
The Sense of Gods Love.If you had been born a Jew, it would not have seemed strange to you that you had to hear continually about Gods law. It was daily read. There were times of special rehearsal (Josiah, Nehemiah). As born a Christian, it is not strange that you should continually hear about love. This is the central force of the gospel; it wields the moral power, the bands of a man. The love that is characteristic of the gospel gathers round the revelation of the Father. Divine Fatherhood was shadowed over in Judaism; it was there, but it was not made prominent. It takes the first and front place in Christianity. Fatherhood is clearly seen in the patriarchal religion. And that was the universal religion of its day. Fatherhood is in Judaism; and realised at least by the pious and spiritually-minded Jew. But Fatherhood gains a fuller meaning in Christianity. The gospel is really thisthe power of Gods love on human souls.
I. The beginning of the Christian life is the revelation to the soul of the love of God.It seems that a special revelation was needed to teach men Gods love. Nature alone cannot teach it, because of its uniformity; Providence alone cannot, because of its perplexity; Judaism could not, because of the sternness of its law; and heathenism could not, because of its coarse polytheistic and sensual associations. The difficulty of receiving it lies in our own natures, enfeebled and degraded by sin. Our consciousness of sin makes us think God unloving, just as the erring child thinks the father cruel, and the faithless man with the one talent thought his master hard and unjust. As revealed, the love of God is no mere statement; it is an exhibited love, exhibited in a recovering purpose, in a priceless gift, in a mysterious sacrifice. But, as revealed, it needs appropriation by us. When appropriated it becomes a power to change our spirit and our life. It changes our views of God, life, duty, eternity, etc. We see all in the light of crucified love.
II. The continuance of Christian life depends on keeping up the sense of Gods love.That alone can keep us sincere and earnest. Love is more exacting than law, more inexorable than law. Love is jealous lest its object should lose one of the smallest blessings of obedience and goodness. Love is jealous lest its object should find and experience one of the sorrows that attend upon evil. Illustrate by the greater jealousy over a son than over an apprentice. Nothing will keep us so pure, so steadfast, and so humble, as urging upon us, ever afresh, the assurance of Gods love.
III. The one effort of our Christian life should be to keep in the sense of Gods love.In our earthly life we know the help and the joy of keeping in the love of mother, wife, or friend. It must be more helpful and more blessed to keep in the love of God. To lose the light of Gods love is morefar morethan losing the sunlight off the flowers. How shall we keep in the love?
1. Cherish every loving thought of God that may be suggested to you.
2. Walk in righteousness, and you will ever be in the smiles of the love.
3. Watch over all your opportunities of heart-fellowship with Christ, for friendship needs communion.
4. Cultivate the child-spirit. Illustrate by our Lord putting the child in the midst of the men. No doubting in the child-heart. But can this counsel apply to all, keep in the love? Do we all believe the love which God hath unto us? Are any living on in sin, because they do not believe the love? Have you felt how Gods love to sinners shines forth from Calvary? I beseech you then, Come into the love, that we may be able to say also unto you, Keep yourselves in the love of God.
Jud. 1:22-23. Mercy for the Victims of Evil Influence.The beautiful turn of these verses exhibits in full force the Christian disposition of St. Jude. The former part of the epistle, taken by itself, conveys the impression that the apostle was a mere declamator and denunciatora master of withering censure. But now the very men whom he had severely reprimanded are to be sought and reclaimed. We have no room to give the learned criticism of the text supplied by our great scholars. The Revisers have accepted it, with a marginal note, to remind the reader that the first part is doubted. After carefully reading the pros and cons, we see no valid reason for rejecting the portion in dispute, nor is there any difficulty in the rendering. Those disputing with you, have mercy upon them; and save some, by snatching them as brands from the burning; have mercy on some with caution; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. The method of treating the three classes on Christian grounds is laid down here, and is as applicable to-day as it then was.
1. The doubters. They are to be treated with consideration and kindliness. Doubt is sometimes the result of imperfect training, or a misapprehension of the truth. There was a class then who were not able to judge between the teaching of the apostles and that of the false teachers. They needed a tender treatment to bring them to a knowledge of the truth. This is a very large class in our own day. They say, We do not know what to believe. Then they will adduce what they have heard against the Church, in opposition to the teaching of the Church. This is not a hopeless class by any means. Patience, perseverance, and compassion, accompanied by lucid teaching, will lead them into the way of truth. Many, who once were disputers, are now firm believers of the truth.
2. Scoffers. There was a class, not the leaders of the schism, that had been led away, to whom warning must be adminstered. To reclaim them terrible earnestness was needed, just as a man plucks the brand from the burning, which he desires to save. The suggestion is that the authority of the truth be used. Not persuasion, but admonition, exhibiting the power of the truth. The scoffer is a man who ridicules tenderness and love, but is a coward before the attacks of the sword of the Spirit. Let him know that there is a God in heaven, and a judgment at whose bar he must soon stand, and his conscience will tremble and make a coward of him. No asperity or bitterness is to be used, but forcibly bring home to him a sense of his guilt by the earnest care for his soul which your manner will manifest. We do not hear of many scoffers converted in our own day, owing to the loving manner which the Church assumes towards everybody. Let the arrow of conviction have its own barb, and let it fly.
3. The sensualists. They must be approached with fear, or with caution. By these the apostle must mean the false teachers themselves, who preached sodomy, and other forms of immoral practices. Although sunk very deep in sin, they were not to be abandoned; yet, inasmuch as their garment was defiled by sin, they were not to be approached too nearly or too tenderly. They were within the bounds of conviction, although very near the circumference. The lesson for the Church to learn is to approach men according to their condition. Somebody in a hurry gave a tract on the sin of dancing to a man with two wooden legs. We fear that worse mistakes, if possible, are committed frequently. When the Saviour preached to publicans and sinners, His method was simple, and His message loving; but when He preached to the Pharisees, Scribes, and Sadducees His manner was more dignified, and His message more authoritative.W.P.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
A BELIEVER WHO GUARDS HIMSELF BY BUILDING UP A GROWING FAITH
Jud. 1:20-23
Text
20.
But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit,
21.
keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
22.
And on some have mercy, who are in doubt;
23.
and some save, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.
Queries
88.
Who is responsible for having faith according to verse twenty?
89.
What does the word building infer as to the speed of attaining a full strength Christian life?
90.
Who is the object of faith in verse twenty, i.e. belief in whom?
91.
What does the Holy Spirit have to do with our prayers? (See Rom. 8:26-27).
92.
Notice also who is responsible for keeping ourselves in the love of God in verse twenty one. In this sense, who protects us from outside interference with the love of God? (See Rom. 8:37-39).
93.
By mercy out of the love of God we will receive eternal life in only one way in Jud. 1:21. What is that way?
94.
The some of verse twenty-three refers to what people?
95.
Who is in doubt, and what do they doubt?
96.
What is the fire out of which we snatch some?
97.
Notice that hate is involved with the Christian where there is such apostasy. What does the Christian hate?
Paraphrases
A. 20.
Finally, beloved brethren, see to it that you grow in trusting the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, praying to God as a Spirit-filled person.
21.
See to it that you do not walk out on the love of God, but that you keep your eye upon the eternal life offered through the mercy of Jesus Christ.
22.
Have pity on some of these wayward brethren, for when they separate themselves from you they really doubt that this is the right thing to do.
23.
Some of these souls can be saved from eternal damnation; but walk in fear, brethren, for the things they do are rotten and against God, and the Christian should hate every expression of sin.
B.*20.
But you, dear friends, must build up your lives ever more strongly upon the foundation of our holy faith, learning to pray in the power and strength of the Holy Spirit.
21.
Stay always within the boundaries where Gods love can reach and bless you. Wait patiently for the eternal life that our Lord Jesus Christ in His mercy is going to give you.
22.
Try to help those who argue against you. Be merciful to those who doubt.
23.
Save some by snatching them as from the very flames of hell itself. And as for others, help them to find the Lord by being kind to them, but fear the possibility of being pulled along into their sins. Hate every trace of their sin while being merciful to the them as sinners.
Summary
Beloved, see to it that you grow in Christ while you walk carefully among these apostates, though some of them may be brought back to Jesus.
Comment
With a final appeal, Jude turns to the sincere brethren. Out of a deep love he has written to them, and now with a burning heart he urges them to build up their faith. Some may read this, as other scriptures they so read, that there is virtue in faith itself. Not so. Most all men believe something, yet most men are on the broad road that leads to destruction. The most holy faith certainly places the faith in the proper scriptural object: Jesus Christ. The heart of the gospel and the object of our faith is many places set forth as Christ. There is no need that a reminder be made of this at every mention of the word faith. We do not build our lives on confidence; but on Christ, in whom we have confidence.
Praying in the Holy Spirit is an unusual expression. To determine the meaning we should let other scriptures do the interpreting. Nowhere are we instructed, or do we have the example, to pray to the Holy Spirit. This, then, is not the meaning. Nor do we have any teaching nor example that would indicate that the Holy Spirit completely submerges us and overwhelms our will to enable us to pray. Likewise the baptism of the Holy Spirit is not linked with our ability to pray.
What can the expression mean? Rom. 8:26-27 says And in like manner the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered; and he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And so we do have specific instruction as to the part the Holy Spirit has in our prayers. Because we are saved, and have the first-fruits of the Spirit, and have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, then the Spirit intercedes on our behalf, interpreting our very will, before God. This is especially beneficial when we are unable to frame our hearts desires with the proper words.
It may be said that we are to pray to God as Spirit filled Christians; and not as these libertines who follow sensuousness and have not the Spirit. Hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which He gave us. (1Jn. 3:24) We know the Spirit of God because of the confession made with the lips and with the life. (1Jn. 4:2-6). John also adds that this is the boldness which we have toward him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us: and we know that he heareth us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of him. (1Jn. 5:14-15).
We might also note a linking of the God, the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit in this section. We pray in the Holy Spirit, we keep ourselves in the love of God, and we look for mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. All have a part in our being kept for heaven, and all fulfill their parts with unexcelled flawlessness.
There is a fourth party to our being kept, however. This party is ourselves. Our decision to stay with Him and to remain in His fold is not so flawless. And so we have the careful admonition to build up yourselves, to keep yourselves, and to look for the mercy. These are all admonitions that demand our active participation. We can by default or by choice neglect the object of our faith and so drift away from Him, (Heb. 2:1). We can choose to go out from among the brethren. We can choose the way of apostasy, as Jude has so carefully warned. Even here he urges, with a burning heart, that we work with these apostates with fear; for a danger is involved!
Finally, we are admonished to hate. Sin is the mortal enemy. The wages of sin is death. Sin caused the death of Christ, and of every man. Sin made these apostates what they are, and can overthrow the Christian if he will not keep himself in Christ.
The particular sin of these apostates is the love of the flesh. Their danger is in the spread of lust to the saint. So it is the saint should hate the fleshly lusts, and even more, hate even the garment spotted by the flesh. The lust of the flesh is a possibility within every man and woman who is yet alive on this earth. The Christian is no exception, for he still resides in a body of flesh. Therefore have mercy with fear, says Jude.
If only the saints of God could realize the terrible result of sin, they would then hate every aspect of sin. The world is not just spotted with sin, it is engulfed in the crimson tide. In the most protected situation, such as the Christian home, or the church of Jesus Christ, there are still spots of sin. These spots must be seen in their true light, and hated, and resisted.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(20, 21) Exhortation to strengthen themselves in the faith by prayer, godliness, and hope.
(20) But ye, beloved.Exactly as in Jud. 1:17 : ye in emphatic contrast to these sensuous and unspiritual men.
Building up yourselves.Making yourselves firm on the sure foundation of faith, in contradistinction to those who separate, and fancy themselves firm in their impious conceits. The notion is not so much that of increasing and completing an edifice as of strengthening its foundations. Faith and its object are here almost identified. To have faith as ones foundation is the same as having Christ as ones foundation. Your faith, that which has been once for all delivered to you (Jud. 1:4). Most holy faith, as opposed to the most unholy quick sands of the doctrines condemned in this Epistle.
Praying in the Holy Ghost.Only in this way can Christians make firm their foundation. The Greek admits of in the Holy Ghost being taken with the previous clause; but our version is better. The expression praying in the Holy Ghost is not found elsewhere. It means that we pray in His strength and wisdom: He moves our hearts and directs our petitions. (See Notes on Rom. 8:26.)
(21) Keep yourselves in the love of God.Not our love of God, but His love of us. Consequently it is not the case that the three great Christian virtuesFaith, Hope, and Charityare inculcated here, although at first sight we are tempted to think so. Gods love is the region in which those who are built up on faith, and supported by prayer, may continually dwell.
The mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.The mercy which He will show as Judge at the Last Day. By prayer in the Spirit we are kept in the love of the Father for the mercy of the Son.
Unto eternal life.These words may be taken either with keep yourselves, or with looking, or with mercy: best with keep yourselves.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
20-24. A two-fold passage; first telling the beloved how to preserve themselves, 20, 21; and second, how they must endeavor to save others even these sensualists.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
20. As to yourselves, there must be a building up, instead of a tearing down, as the errorists are doing. And the four elements of this self-building are, faith, which must be your own act; prayer, which must be impregnate with the Holy Ghost, the spirit of man and the Spirit of God cooperating, love of God, the element in which you keep yourselves; and mercy, resulting in the sublime and divine ultimate eternal life.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘But you, beloved, building up yourselves 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 now seeks to turn their minds from all the error and from all the distraction that he has been describing towards the triune God, Who alone is God. They are to pray in the Holy Spirit, keep themselves in the love of God, and look for the mercy of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Compare for this combination of the three members of the Godhead together Mat 28:19; 2Co 12:14 ; 1Pe 1:2.
Once again the term ‘beloved’ is a reminder of what is central to the Christian faith. ‘By this will all men know that you are my disciples if love one another’ (Joh 13:35).
And they are to ‘be building themselves up on their most holy faith.’ The necessity for the continual building up the body of Christ is constantly emphasised in the Apostolic letters, and the aim of it is so as to achieve a central oneness in Him as His church grows more and more like Him. They are being built into a holy Temple in the Lord. Compare 1Co 3:9-17; Eph 2:20-22; Eph 4:12-13; Col 2:6-7; 1Th 5:11 ; 1Pe 2:5; 2Pe 3:18.
And the building up is to be continual and it is ‘on their most holy faith’, in other words it is to be on the central teaching about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, having in mind especially Their work in bringing about the full and final salvation of the people of God to His glory.
Notice the contrast between these words and the divisions and the lust of the previous verse. The aim is not to be a dividing but a building up. It is not to be aiming at sensuality but to be aiming at holiness. It is not to be devoid of the Spirit but to be dependent on Him. And he then stresses how they are to do this.
They are to pray in the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself emphasised that those who would worship God must worship Him in Spirit and in truth (Joh 4:24). Prayer, in other words, is meaningless unless it is inspired by His Spirit and in accordance with the truth. In the same way when Paul spoke of combating the activities of Satan and his minions by putting on the armour of God his final exhortation was that we should ‘pray at all seasons with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit and watch thereunto in all perseverance and supplication for all saints’ (Eph 6:10-18).
How then do we pray in the Spirit? It is by being filled with the Spirit (Eph 5:16) as a result of our lives being open and transparent before God, with all our sin dealt with (1Jn 1:7), so that we have become dead to ourselves in order that we might walk in newness of life (Rom 6:4). It is by presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to Him, which is our reasonable service, and not being conformed to this world, but being transformed by the renewal of our minds in order that that we might prove that good, acceptable and perfect will of God (Rom 12:1-2), with the result that we continue instant in prayer (Rom 12:12). It is by walking step by step with the Spirit (Gal 5:24) and praying without ceasing (1Th 5:17).
And the reason that we can pray in the Spirit is because ‘God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts crying “Abba, Father” (Gal 4:6). Nevertheless if we would pray in the Spirit our hearts must be forgiving, for if they are not neither will God forgive us (Mat 6:14-25). And if we regard iniquity in our hearts the Lord will not hear us (Psa 66:18).
They are to keep themselves in the love of God. Nothing is more important for us than to maintain our awareness that we are within God’s love (Eph 3:16-19). It is in that love that we have peace and security. Jude has already told us that we are ‘beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ’ (Jud 1:1), and his point is now that this is an awareness that we must continually maintain by the study of the word and through prayer. Once we have truly believed in Jesus Christ then being in His love is not something that we actually have to do anything about. We do not fall in and out of His love. Our place is secure in Him, because our lives are hid with Christ in God (Col 3:4). What Jude is stressing is the importance of keeping ourselves aware of the wonder of it, and of, by obedience, maintaining the assurance of His love. For those who know that they are hidden in the love of God in Christ live at perfect peace and nothing can disturb their peace. We remember that ‘Herein is love, not that we love God but that He loves us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins’ (1Jn 4:10). In Him then we have all.
They are to look for the mercy of our Lord, Jesus Christ, to eternal life. In contrast to the ungodly persons who look to a number of saviours they are to keep all their hopes fixed in the Lord, Jesus Christ Himself. They are to remember that it is in Him, and in His mercy alone, that forgiveness and life is secure. Jesus Christ is to be all.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Jud 1:20. But ye, beloved, &c. The false teachers corrupted the faith, turned the grace of God into lasciviousness, and would have made parties, tearing in pieces the church of God. The Christians, therefore, both here and Jud 1:3; Jud 1:17 are exhorted to preserve one another through divine grace in that true, pure, unmixed faith, as it was taught them by the apostles of our Lord. Their faith was called most holy, as it did not lead to licentiousness, like the corrupt doctrine of the false teachers, but promoted the most holy tempers and conversation. See 2Pe 2:21. The Christian faith, which makes Christ the All in All, is here considered as the foundation of a building, and they were to build up each other on that foundation, the architect style is often made use of in the New Testament. They were to pray in the Holy Ghost, and, by his influences vouchsafed in answer to their prayers, were to make swifter advances in the divine life. The false teachers were sensual, and had not the Spirit: most probably they had once had the Spirit, but by departing from the true faith, and falling into vice, they had quenched the Spirit, and it was withdrawn from them. But the true Christians, building up one another upon their most holy faith; that is, not having quenched the Spirit by departing from the truth, or falling into vice, were to assemble together frequently, and make use of their spiritual gifts.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Jud 1:20-21 . Exhortation to the readers respecting themselves.
, ] as in Jud 1:17 , in contrast to the persons and conduct of those mentioned in the last verse.
. . .] The chief thought is contained in the exhortation , to which the preceding is subordinate, specifying by what the fulfilment of that exhortation is conditioned. Yet it is asked, whether is connected with , or is annexed as an independent sentence to the following imperative; and whether . is to be united with . or with . These questions are difficult to decide with perfect certainty. Wiesinger and Schott apparently correctly unite . . with , and these taken together with what follows. Hofmann, on the other hand, unites with what goes before, and with what follows. In this construction, however, the structure of the participial clause becomes too clumsy; also . . becomes superfluous, as cannot take place otherwise than . It is true, Hofmann observes that . . is superfluous with , and that Jude could not intend to say how they should pray, but that they should pray. But this is erroneous, for here mentioned depends not only on this, that one should pray, but that one should pray rightly, that is, . . Wiesinger correctly observes, that the first clause gives the general presupposition; the second, on the other hand, the more precise statement how has to be brought about.
] Both the adjective and the verb show that is here meant not in a subjective (the demeanour of faith, Schott), but in an objective sense (Wiesinger: “appropriated by them indeed as their personal possession, yet according to its contents as ;” so similarly Hofmann).
] When verbs compounded with are joined with the dative, as here, this for the most part is used for , more rarely for (see Winer, p. 400 f. [E. T. 535]). If the first is here the case, then is to be interpreted, with Wiesinger: “building on , so that is the foundation which supports their whole personal life, the soul of all their thinking, willing, and doing” (so also hitherto in this commentary); [46] comp. 1Co 3:12 : . If, on the other hand, the second is here the case, then it is to he explained, with Hofmann, “their faith is the foundation which supports their life; and accordingly, in the further development of their life it should ever be their care that their life rests upon this foundation;” comp. Eph 2:20 : . The first is, however, to be preferred, because, as already remarked, with these verbs the dative mostly stands for . Both explanations come essentially to the same thing.
is not here = ; the discourse is indeed of a general, but not precisely of a mutual activity; with the second person creates no difficulty; comp. Phi 2:12 .
] The expression . . ., it is true, does not elsewhere occur, but similar combinations are not rare ( . ., 1Co 12:3 ; see Meyer in loc .); it means so to pray that the Holy Spirit is the moving and guiding power (Jachmann, unsatisfactorily: “praying in consciousness of the Holy Ghost”); comp. Rom 8:26 .
] may either be the objective genitive (Vorstius: charitas Dei passiva i. e. qua nos Deum diligimus; so also Jachmann, Arnaud, Hofmann, and others), or the subjective genitive, “the love of God to us” (so de Wette, Schott, Wiesinger, Fronmller); in the latter case the thought is the same as in Joh 15:9-10 ; this agreement is in favour of that interpretation, nor is the want of the article opposed to it (against Hofmann). This keeping themselves in the love of God is combined with the hope of the future mercy of Christ, which has its ground, not in our love to God, but in God’s love to us; comp. Rom 5:8 ff.
. . .] On ., Tit 2:15 .
is the mercy which Christ will show to His own at His coming. Usually the idea is predicated not of the dealings of Christ, but of God; in the superscriptions of the Pastoral Epistles and of the Second Epistle of John, it is referred to God and Christ.
] may be joined either with (de Wette), or with (Schott), or with (Stier, Hofmann); since the imperative clause forms the main point, the last-mentioned combination deserves the preference, especially as both in and in . . the reference to is already contained. The prominence here given to the Trinity, , , , as frequently in the N. T., is to be observed. With the exhortation contained in Jud 1:20-21 , Jude has accomplished what he in Jud 1:3 stated to be the object of his writing.
[46] is the foundation, the on which Christians should build themselves (more and more), by which the representation at the bottom is that they are not yet on all sides of their life on this foundation.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.
The Apostle here enters upon the subject of the Church, in pointing out her safety in Christ, amidst all that he had said before of reprobates. And a very sweet close on this subject he makes of his Epistle. By building up in their most holy faith, and praying in the Holy Ghost, and keeping themselves in the love of God, and looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life, we must not suppose that the Apostle meant as if the Church was her own keeper, or that she could create faith in her heart whenever she pleased. All the parts of Scripture teacheth, and every child of God’s heart is in full testimony to the same, that they who are kept, are kept by the power of God, unto eternal life. And the Lord himself confirms the sweet assurance that the Church is preserved in Jesus Christ. Yes, he saith to her, “In that day, sing ye to her a vineyard of red wine. I the Lord do keep it. I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day”. (Isa 27:2-3 ; 1Pe 1:5 ) But, by building up ourselves in our most holy faith, and praying in the Holy Ghost, is meant a continual waiting for the influences of the Spirit, and, under those influences, attending diligently on the several means of grace and ordinances of the Lord, and strengthening each other’s hands and hearts in the Lord. And a sense of our daily need of Christ, will, through the Spirit’s blessing, lead the soul to a daily abiding in Christ, and acting faith upon Christ. And, by looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, unto eternal life, implies a sure, fixed, and certain hope of being interested in all the blessed and glorious events of that great day of God. I admire the Apostle’s expression, when he calls it the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. For, surely, it can be nothing but mercy, it is a sure mercy. For a soul, truly regenerated, is truly justified, and truly sanctified in the Lord, and nothing remains doubtful as to the issue of that day. (2Pe 1:3-4 ; 1Co 1:301Co 1:30 ; Isa 45:24-25 ) The Apostle Jude would not have been taught by the Holy Ghost to give the Church this confidence, had a question of uncertainty remained. Neither could the Apostles Paul or Peter have called the very expectation of it blessed, had not an assurance of glory in Christ been wrapped up in it. (Tit 2:13 ; 2Pe 3:12 )
Reader! what saith your experience to these things? Doth your heart correspond with the Apostle’s?
There is somewhat most affectionate and tender in the love of brethren in Jesus. The compassion shewn to wanderers, and backsliders, and those that are tempted and fallen, and those that are ignorant and out of the way, is sweet. We are propelled, by grace, to stretch forth the helping hand, in any way, and every way, to raise up the fallen. And, as we are ignorant who is, and who is not among the Lord’s people, while no work of regeneration appears by outward testimony; we wish to save, as from the fire, those who are in the confines of extreme danger. And though we loath their sins as we loath our own garments, which, by wrapping round our bodies of corruption, are spotted and defiled, yet we love their persons, when the Lord leads out our souls in desire after their salvation.
The concluding clause of this beautiful Epistle is very striking. “Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory, with exceeding joy; to the only wise God, our Savior, be glory, and majesty, dominion, and power, both now and ever. Amen.” What a long and beautiful sermon might a preacher, taught of God the Spirit, find in these words! We cannot for a moment hesitate to know whom the Apostle means. He that hath all along preserved his Church, must be the same that keeps her from falling. And it is the special and personal office of Christ, to present his Church to himself at the last day. We nowhere read in Scripture, concerning the person of God the Father, or God the Holy Ghost, presenting the Church before the throne. It is God the Son’s personal office, as Mediator, to bring her home as a bride adorned for her husband, and present her to himself. Hence that beautiful description given to the Church by Paul. Christ “loved the Church, ” saith Paul, “and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word; that he might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy, and without blemish.” (Eph 5:25-27 ) But, in addition to what is here said, it may be remarked, that all along, from one eternity to another, it is Christ’s charge, and Christ’s care, yea, and this Scripture saith, his exceeding joy, to watch over his Church, which is part of himself, and to keep her from falling, as well as to present her to himself at last, finally and fully prepared by himself, in body, soul, and spirit, for his everlasting spouse and companion, to run the whole round of eternity with him, in his glory forever.
Let the Reader pause over this subject, for the meditation of it is sweet. The Church, chosen in Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world, is as Jude saith, in the opening of this Epistle, preserved in Jesus Christ. And, in the close of it, is commended to Christ Jesus, to be kept faultless, and at length presented in glory. Jude saith, he is able. And no one can doubt his willingness. And if, as he hath represented it himself, it becomes a subject of such delight to him, to bring home one poor lost sheep, which had strayed from his fold, as to induce him to call his friends and neighbors around him, to rejoice with him over this one which was lost; what exceeding joy may we suppose it will be to the Lord Jesus Christ, when he shall bring home his whole flock, consisting of millions of people, to and before a congregated world, saved with an everlasting salvation, so as to wander no more.
Reader! have you been much accustomed to consider the subject in this view? Do you, in your own instance, know what it is to be preserved in Christ Jesus, called to Christ Jesus, kept by Christ Jesus, and are now living upon Christ Jesus? If so, you will need nothing from me to shew you the blessedness of it. But you will feel both the sweetness of Jude’s words, as well as those of Paul to the Church, upon the same occasion, when he said, “Now the very God of peace sanctify you wholly: and I pray God your whole spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.” (1Th 5:23-24 )
The doxology must not pass unnoticed, for it is very blessed. “To the only wise God our Savior!” That this hymn is suited to each, and to all the Persons of the Godhead, as being all engaged, and having all co-operated in the salvation of the Church, is very certain, and all regenerated believers in Christ will gladly join in so sweet a song. But, that Christ is here specially and personally meant, is evident, because he is specially and personally our Savior. Moreover, it is the Lord Jesus, who is particularly spoken of in the preceding verse, with which this is connected. And, as in those two gracious acts of Christ, as mentioned before, namely, “keeping the Church from falling, and presenting the Church faultless, at last, before the presence of his glory, with exceeding joy, ” these are Christ’s special and personal offices; the praise here ascribed appears to be the immediate consequence the Church desires to give him. And there is one circumstance more, which, in my view, renders it particularly proper, namely, that those ascriptions of praise appear to be the Redeemer’s personal right.
The Reader will not need that I should tell him, that God only wise, our Savior, very blessedly suits him, because, when upon earth, he was upbraided by men for ignorance. How knoweth this man letters, (say they), having never learned. (Joh 7:15 ) Jesus is worthy of all possible glory; because, when he came to redeem his people, he emptied himself of all glory, and took upon him the form of a servant. (Phi 2:7 ) And surely majesty was his inherent right, though, when on earth, he hid not his face from shame and spitting. (Isa 1:6 ) Dominion belongeth to the Lord, and an eternal monarchy over all, though, while below, he had not where to lay his head. (Luk 9:58 ) though the insult offered him on the cross was, he saved others; himself he cannot save. (Mar 15:31 ) Glorious almighty Savior! God only wise, thy Church hails thee! Be thou eternally loved, and praised, and adored: thou art worthy to receive all glory, and honor, and power, and might “for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood.”
REFLECTIONS
Reader! Hath God the Holy Ghost in his gracious teachings blest to your perusal and mine, this precious portion of his sacred Word? Are we that of distinguished people, who are sanctified by God the Father, preserved in Jesus Christ, and called? Oh! Then let us both beg another blessing from our bountiful God, and ask for grace, that on our bended knees we may cry out with the Apostle, “thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift!”
And we desire to praise the Almighty Minister of his Church, even God the Holy Ghost, for the grace he hath shewn, in forewarning, and fore-arming his people, concerning the last days heresies. Truly, Lord, we live to see them. We live among them. And thanks to our God, for giving his Church such plain features of character, as are here drawn by his servant, and by which, under the Lord’s teaching, we cannot fail to know them. Oh! What shall thy people say; what praise shall thy people offer, while reading the striking distinction, which mark thy redeemed from the world. The one, sanctified, preserved, and called; the other, ordained of old to this condemnation, denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ!
We bless our God for the faithfulness of his servant Jude, in this Scripture. And, while we look to the eternal Spirit with praise for making him faithful, we would honor the instrument, whom God so graciously made use of in the work. Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, we thank thee for thy labor of love. The whole Church, in all ages have found cause to thank thee for it, from thy time to the present hour. And, oh! Lord the Spirit, give grace to thy faithful now to testify their sense of the mercy vouchsafed the church in this precious Epistle, “by earnestly contending for the faith, once delivered unto the saints.” Oh! Keep thy people, Lord, from being led away with the speciousness of the times! Oh! For an holy boldness, from the Lord, to stand up for the Lord, and to resist the bait of supposing we can honor God’s glory, while silently sitting and mingling with those who dishonor his Godhead, disown the person and Work of the Spirit, and boldly deny the electing love of God the Father. Unto such assemblies, my soul, be not thou united! Lord Jesus! Do thou keep all thine from this, and every other evil until thou shalt bring all thy redeemed home, and “present them faultless before thy presence of thy glory with exceeding joy.” Amen
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
20 23 .] CONCLUDING EXHORTATION TO THE READERS: and a) Jud 1:20-21 , as to their own spiritual life . But ye, beloved (resumed from Jud 1:17 ), building up yourselves ( , not = , but as in Php 2:12 ) upon (as a foundation) your most holy faith (the faith here is the foundation; viz., the fides qu creditur , the object of faith. Bullinger (in Huther), “Vestr fidei superstruentes vos ipsos.” Elsewhere in Scripture, CHRIST is this foundation, see 1Co 3:11 ; which in fact comes to the same, for He is the Author and Finisher of our Faith, the and ), praying in the Holy Spirit (as the means of thus building yourselves up. The expression . is not found elsewhere, but is in strict analogy with Scripture usage: cf. . ., also Rom 8:26 , Eph 6:18 . Some, e. g. Luther, join . . with what has gone before, and this is approved by De Wette: but surely would not be left thus standing alone. De W. cites c. for this arrangement, but it is very doubtful whether he adopts it: , , , : where it is evident that there should be a period at , and that has been omitted, or perhaps was never expressed, after ; at any rate the latter sentence is an explanation of . . ), keep yourselves (aor. of the one great life-long act to be accomplished by the and ) in the love of God (within that region of peculiar love wherewith God regards all who are built up on the faith and sustained by prayer: being a subjective gen., “God’s love,” not objective, as Grot., Semler, Bengel, Vorstius, Arnaud, al. The expression is very like , Joh 15:9 , where preceding fixes the meaning to be Christ’s love to them), looking for (present part. as in Tit 2:13 , where see note. It is to be the habit of the life, as those other pres. participles, . and ) the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ (viz. that which He will shew at His coming, , c.: cf. Tit 2:13 . Huther remarks that , more usually predicated of the Father, is in the addresses of the Pastoral Epistles, and of 2 John, attributed to the Father and Son jointly) unto eternal life (these words may be joined with , that mercy, whose issue shall be eternal life; or with , as the issue and aim of the expectation; or with , as the final terminus of that watchful guarding. Perhaps the right choice between the three will be to combine the two last: for is subordinate and conditional to : “keep yourselves in expectation of unto”). The direct and studied reference to the Blessed Trinity will not escape the reader.
b) Jud 1:22-23 .] Exhortation as to their conduct with reference to the persons previously stigmatized in the Epistle. And some indeed convict when contending with you (or, “when separating from you.” These appear to be the only two meanings which suit the context. c. takes the latter, but apparently including in it the idea of hostile disputation: , , where the Latin renders, “illos vero si vobis resistant, nam id significat disceptantes ” The Vulg. renders it passive: “et hos quidem arguite judicatos,” which can hardly stand as giving the pres. part. , and representing rather . De Wette, following Bengel, understands it “doubting” “convince,” “persuade in the right direction,” “those who doubt.” But thus the sense of is missed, which is never simply to convince, but always carries the punitive idea with it, to convict . Grot. gives another meaning, “reprehendite eos qui se cteris prferunt.” Huther goes with c. The sense of contending , for , is found both in classical writers and in the N. T., e. g. Act 11:2 , and our Epistle, Jud 1:9 (which is no slight indication of the meaning here): cf. Herod. ix. 58, . Demosth. p. 163. 15 al. in Palm and Rost’s Lex.
This is the first class: that of those who oppose themselves, who must be convicted and down-argued. According to the rec. , the rendering will be, as E. V., “ of some have compassion, making a difference ,” viz. between them and the others); but others save (pres., attempt to save; not , which would imply that you had the power, and must do it effectually), snatching them from the fire (the same passage in the prophets, Zec 3:1-3 , which has already been before St. Jude’s mind in Jud 1:9 , again furnishes him with the material of this figure. There we read ; cf. also ref. Amos. Notice too the repetition of in close connexion, which speaks not a little for the sense above given to it. The is most probably not future eternal fire, as c. : but the present hell into which their corrupt doctrines and practices have cast them, not however without reference to its ending in fire eternal. This is the second class; as c., : or rather perhaps, any over whom your influence extends, as younger members of the Church, &c., whom you can thus rescue by snatching them out of the fire of temptation and peril), and others compassionate (the form , for the usual is also found in reff. Rom.; and Rom 5:13 (in [1] ( [2] )), Phm 1:18 . See Winer, edn. 6, 15) in fear (on what account, is shewn by what follows. c. rightly, except that (see below) he identifies this class with the last, , , , . This is the third class: consisting of those whom not falling in the way of so as personally to convict, nor having influence over so as to rescue, the believers could only compassionate (and on occasion given, lovingly help) as led away hopelessly to their ruin: but in shewing such compassion, they were to maintain a wholesome fear of their deadly error, for fear they themselves should become defiled by it. It may suffice to repudiate at once Bengel’s interpretation of , “clementer, metu duntaxat incusso.” The following clause is epexegetical of ), hating (not, “seeing that ye hate,” as De W., nor “though ye hate,” as Jachm.: the pres. part. simply falls under and expands the verbal clause – – , thus forming part of the command) even the (or, “ their ,” cf. c. below) garment which has received defilement from the flesh ( , , , , , . And so Bengel, understanding of their garment, which you are to loathe, and to be afraid even to touch: “ tunica est totius vit habitus exterior, qua ab aliis attingimur.” This may be, but it is more probable that the is literal, and the saying a proverbial one hating not merely fleshly pollution itself, but even the traces and outskirts of it; even that, be it what it may, which has its mark and stain upon it. On the sense, see Rev 3:4 ).
[1] The MS. referred to by this symbol is that commonly called the Alexandrine, or CODEX ALEXANDRINUS. It once belonged to Cyrillus Lucaris, patriarch of Alexandria and then of Constantinople, who in the year 1628 presented it to our King Charles I. It is now in the British Museum. It is on parchment in four volumes, of which three contain the Old, and one the New Testament, with the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians. This fourth volume is exhibited open in a glass case. It will be seen by the letters in the inner margin of this edition, that the first 24 chapters of Matthew are wanting in it, its first leaf commencing , ch. Mat 25:6 : as also the leaves containing , Joh 6:50 , to , Joh 8:52 . It is generally agreed that it was written at Alexandria; it does not, however, in the Gospels , represent that commonly known as the Alexandrine text, but approaches much more nearly to the Constantinopolitan, or generally received text. The New Testament, according to its text, was edited, in uncial types cast to imitate those of the MS., by Woide, London, 1786, the Old Testament by Baber, London, 1819: and its N.T. text has now been edited in common type by Mr. B. H. Cowper, London, 1861. The date of this MS. has been variously assigned, but it is now pretty generally agreed to be the fifth century .
[2] The CODEX SINAITICUS. Procured by Tischendorf, in 1859, from the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. The Codex Frederico-Augustanus (now at Leipsic), obtained in 1844 from the same monastery, is a portion of the same copy of the Greek Bible, the 148 leaves of which, containing the entire New Testament, the Ep. of Barnabas, parts of Hermas, and 199 more leaves of the Septuagint, have now been edited by the discoverer. A magnificent edition prepared at the expense of the Emperor of Russia appeared in January, 1863, and a smaller edition containing the N.T. &c., has been published by Dr. Tischendorf. The MS. has four columns on a page, and has been altered by several different correctors, one or more of whom Tischendorf considers to have lived in the sixth century. The work of the original scribe has been examined, not only by Tischendorf, but by Tregelles and other competent judges, and is by them assigned to the fourth century . The internal character of the text agrees with the external, as the student may judge for himself from the readings given in the digest. The principal correctors as distinguished by Tischendorf are: A, of the same age with the MS. itself, probably the corrector who revised the book, before it left the hands of the scribe, denoted therefore by us -corr 1 ; B (cited as 2 ), who in the first page of Matt. began inserting breathings, accents, &c., but did not carry out his design, and touched only a few later passages; C a (cited as 3a ) has corrected very largely throughout the book. Wherever in our digest a reading is cited as found in 1 , it is to be understood, if no further statement is given, that C a altered it to that which is found in our text; C b (cited as 3b ) lived about the same time as C a , i.e. some centuries later than the original scribe. These are all that we need notice here 6 .
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Jud 1:20-23 . The Final Charge to the Faithful . Use all diligence to escape this danger. Make the most of the privileges vouchsafed to you. Build yourselves up on the foundation of your most holy faith by prayer in the Spirit. Do not rest satisfied with the belief that God loves you, but keep yourselves in His love, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ which leads us to eternal life. And do your best to help those who are in danger of falling away by pointing out their errors and giving the reasons of your own belief; and by snatching from the fire of temptation those who are in imminent jeopardy. Even where there is most to fear, let your compassion and your prayers go forth toward the sinner, while you shrink from the pollution of his sin.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Jud 1:20 . , . Contrasted with the libertines, as in Jud 1:17 .
. For the spiritual temple, cf. 1Pe 2:3-5 ; Col 1:23 ; Eph 2:20-22 , , . . ., 1Co 3:9-17 , a passage which the writer may have had in his mind here and in Jud 1:23 . Dr. Bigg compares Polyc. Phi 3 . “If ye study the epistles of the blessed apostle Paul, . Add Clem. Strom , v. p. 644, . Usually Christ is spoken as the foundation or corner-stone of the Church, and we should probably assign an objective sense to here, as in Jud 1:3 above ( ). Otherwise it might be explained of that faculty by which we are brought into relation with the spiritual realities (Heb 11:1 , , ), that which is the introduction to all the other Christian graces, see note on 2Pe 1:5 , and which leads to eternal life (1Pe 1:5 ; 1Pe 1:9 , , ). The faith is here called “most holy,” because it comes to us from God, and reveals God to us, and because it is by its means that man is made righteous, and enabled to overcome the world (1Jn 5:4-5 ). Cf. 1Pe 5:9 , .
. These words, contrasted with in Jud 1:19 , show how they are to build themselves up upon their faith. I understand them as equivalent to Jas 5:16 , , where see note. Compare also Eph 6:18 , , Rom 8:26-27 .
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Jude
KEEPING OURSELVES IN THE LOVE OF GOD
Jud 1:20-21 .
Jude has been, in all the former part of the letter, pouring out a fiery torrent of vehement indignation and denunciation against ‘certain men’ who had ‘crept’ into the Church, and were spreading gross immorality there. He does not speak of them so much as heretics in belief, but rather as evil-doers in practice; and after the thunderings and lightning, he turns from them with a kind of sigh of relief in this emphatic, ‘But, ye! beloved.’ The storm ends in gentle rain; and he tells the brethren who are yet faithful how they are to comport themselves in the presence of prevalent corruption, and where is their security and their peace.
You will observe that in my text there is embedded, in the middle of it, a direct precept: ‘Keep yourselves in the love of God’; and that that is encircled by three clauses, like each other in structure, and unlike it- ‘building, ‘‘praying,’ ‘looking.’ The great diamond is surrounded by a ring of lesser jewels. Why did Jude put two of these similar clauses in front of his direct precept, and one of them behind it? I think because the two that precede indicate the ways by which the precept can be kept, and the one that follows indicates the accompaniment or issue of obedience to the precept. If that be the reason for the structure of my text, it suggests also to us the course which we had best pursue in the exposition of it.
I. So we hare, to begin with, the great direct precept for the Christian life.
‘Keep yourselves in the love of God.’ Now I need not spend a moment in showing that ‘ the love of God’ here means, not ours to Him, but His to us. It is that in which, as in some charmed circle, we are to keep ourselves. Now that injunction at once raises the question of the possibility of Christian men being out of the love of God, straying away from their home, and getting out into the open. Of course there is a sense in which His ‘tender mercies are over all His works.’ Just as the sky embraces all the stars and the earth within its blue round, so that love of God encompasses every creature; and no man can stray so far away as that, in one profound sense, he gets beyond its pale. For no man can ever make God cease to love him. But whilst that is quite true, on the other side it is equally true that contrariety of will and continuance in evil deeds do so alter a man’s relation to the love of God as that he is absolutely incapable of receiving its sweetest and most select manifestations, and can only be hurt by the incidence of its beams. The sun gives life to many creatures, but it slays some. There are crawling things that live beneath a stone, and when you turn it up and let the arrows of the sunbeams smite down upon them, they squirm and die. It is possible for a man so to set himself in antagonism to that great Light as that the Light shall hurt and not bless and soothe.
It is also possible for a Christian man to step out of the charmed circle, in the sense that he becomes all unconscious of that Light. Then to him it comes to the same thing that the love shall be non-existent, and that it shall be unperceived. If I choose to make my abode on the northern side of the mountain, my thermometer may be standing at ‘ freezing,’ and I may be shivering in all my limbs on Midsummer Day at noontide. And so it is possible for us Christian people to stray away out from that gracious abode, to pass from the illuminated disc into the black shadow; and though nothing is ‘ hid from the heat thereof,’ yet we may derive no warmth and no enlightening from the all-pervading beams. We have to ‘keep ourselves in the love of God.’
Then that suggests the other more blessed possibility, that amidst all the distractions of daily duties, and the solicitations of carking cares, and the oppression of heavy sorrows, it is possible for us to keep ourselves perpetually in the conscious enjoyment of the love of God. I need not say how this ideal of the Christian life may be indefinitely approximated to in our daily experiences; nor need I dwell upon the sad contrast between this ideal unbrokenness of conscious sunning ourselves in the love of God, and the reality of the lives that most of us live. But, brethren, if we more fully believed that we can keep up, amidst all the dust and struggle of the arena, the calm sweet sense of God’s love, our lives would be different. Nightingales will sing in a dusty copse by the roadside, however loud the noise of traffic may be upon the highway. And we may have, all through our lives, that song, unbroken and melodious. That sub-consciousness underlying our daily work, ‘like some sweet beguiling melody, so sweet, we know not we are listening to it,’ may be ever present with each of us in our daily work, like some ‘hidden brook in the leafy month of June,’ that murmurs beneath the foliage, and yet is audible through all the wood.
And what a peaceful, restful life ours would be, if we could thus be like John, leaning on the Master’s bosom. We might have a secret fortress into the central chamber of which we could go, whither no sound of the war in the plains could ever penetrate. We might, like some dwellers in a mountainous island, take refuge in a central glen, buried deep amongst the hills, where there would be no sound of tempest, though the winds were fighting on the surface of the sea, and the spindrift was flying before them. It is possible to ‘keep ourselves in the love of God.’ And if we keep in that fortress we are safe. If we go beyond its walls we are sure to be picked off by the well-aimed shots of the enemy. So, then, that is the central commandment for the Christian life.
II. Now let me turn to consider the methods by which we can thus keep ourselves in the love of God.
These are two: one mainly bearing on the outward, the other on the inward, life. By ‘ building up yourselves on your most holy faith’: that is the one. By ‘praying in the Holy Ghost’: that is the other. Let us look at these two.
‘Building up yourselves on your most holy faith.’ I suppose that ‘faith’ here is used in its ordinary sense. Some would rather prefer to take it in the latter, ecclesiastical sense, by which it means, not the act of belief, but the aggregate of the things believed.-’ Our most holy faith,’ as it is called by quotation-I think misquotation-of this passage. But I do not see that there is any necessity for that meaning. The words are perfectly intelligible in their ordinary meaning. What Jude says is just this: ‘Your trust in Jesus Christ has in it a tendency to produce holiness, and that is the foundation on which you are to build a great character. Build up yourselves on your most holy faith.’ For although it is not what the world’s ethics recognize, the Christian theory of morality is this, that it all rests upon trust in God manifested to us in Jesus Christ. Faith is the foundation of all supreme excellence and nobility and beauty of character; because, for one thing, it dethrones self, and enthrones God in our hearts; making Him our aim and our law and our supreme good; and because, for another thing, our trust brings us into direct union with Him, so that we receive from Him the power thus to build up a character.
Faith is the foundation. Ay! but faith is only the foundation. It is ‘the potentiality of wealth,’ but it is not the reality. ‘All things are possible to him that believeth’; but all things are not actual except on conditions. A man may have faith, as a great many professing Christians have it, only as a ‘fire-escape,’ a means of getting away from hell, or have it only as a band that is stretched out to grasp certain initial blessings of the spiritual life. But that is not its full glory nor its real aspect. It is meant to be the beginning in us of ‘all things that are lovely and of good report.’ What would you think of a man that carefully put in the foundations for a house, and had all his building materials on the ground, and let them lie there? And that is what a great many of you Christian people do, who ‘ have fled for refuge,’ as you say,’ to the hope set before you in the Gospel’; and who have never wrought out your faith into noble deeds. Remember what the Apostle says, ‘Faith which worketh ‘; and worketh ‘by love.’ It is the foundation, but only the foundation.
The work of building a noble character on that firm foundation is never-ending. ‘Tis a life-long task ‘ till the lump be leavened.’ The metaphor of growth by building suggests effort, and it suggests continuity; and it suggests slow, gradual rearing up, course upon course, stone by stone. Some of us have done nothing at it for a great many years. You will pass, sometimes, in our suburbs, a row of houses begun by some builder that has become bankrupt; and there are mouldering bricks and gaping empty places for the windows, and the rafters decaying, and stagnant water down in the holes that were meant for the cellars. That is like the kind of thing that hosts of people who call themselves Christians have built. ‘But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith . . . Keep yourselves in the love.’
Then the other way of building is suggested in the next clause, ‘praying in the Holy Ghost’-that is to say, prayer which is not mere utterance of my own petulant desires which a great deal of our ‘ prayer’ is, but which is breathed into us by that Divine Spirit that will brood over our chaos, and bring order out of confusion, and light and beauty out of darkness, and weltering sea:-
‘The prayers I make will then be sweet indeed, If Thou the Spirit give by which I pray.’
As Michael Angelo says, such prayer inspired and warmed by the influences of that Divine Spirit playing upon the dull flame of our desires, like air injected into a grate where the fire is half out, such prayers are our best help in building. For who is there that has honestly tried to build himself up ‘for a habitation of God but has felt that it must be ‘through a Spirit’ mightier than himself, who will overcome his weaknesses and arm him against temptation? No man who honestly endeavors to reform his character but is brought very soon to feel that he needs a higher help than his own. And perhaps some of us know how, when sore pressed by temptation, one petition for help brings a sudden gush of strength into us, and we feel that the enemy’s assault is weakened.
Brethren, the best attitude for building is on our knees; and if, like Cromwell’s men in the fight, we go into the battle singing,
‘Let God arise, and scattered Let all His enemies be,’
we shall come out victorious. ‘Ye, beloved, building and praying, keep yourselves.’
III. Now, lastly, we have here in the final clause the fair prospect visible from our home, in the love of God.
‘Looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.’
After all building and praying, we need ‘the mercy.’ Jude has been speaking in his letter about the destruction of evil-doers, when Christ the Judge shall come. And I suppose that that thought of final judgment is still in his mind, coloring the language of my text, and that it explains why he speaks here of ‘ the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ’ instead of, as is usual in Scripture, the mercy of God.’ He is thinking of that last Day of Judgment and retribution, wherein Jesus Christ is to be the Judge of all men, saints as well as sinners, and therefore he speaks of mercy as bestowed by Him then on those who have ‘kept themselves in the love of God.’ Ah! we shall need it. The better we are the more we know how much wood, hay, stubble, we have built into our buildings; and the more we are conscious of that love of God as round us, the more we shall feel the unworthiness and imperfection of our response to it. The best of us, when we lie down to die, and the wisest of us, as we struggle on in life, realize most how all our good is stained and imperfect, and that after all efforts we have to cry ‘God be merciful to me a sinner.’
Not only so, but our outlook and confident expectation of that mercy day by day, and in its perfect form at least, depends upon our keeping ourselves ‘in the love of God.’ We have to go high up the hill before we can see far over the plain. Our home in that love commands a fair prospect. When we stray from it, we lose sight of the blue distance. Our hope of ‘the mercy of God unto eternal life’ varies with our present consciousness and experience of His love.
That mercy leads on to eternal life. We get many of its manifestations and gifts here, but these are but the pale blossoms of a plant not in its native habitat, nor sunned by the sunshine which can draw forth all its fragrance and colour.
We have to look forward for the adequate expression of the mercy of God to all that fullness of perfect blessedness for all our faculties, which is summed up in the one great word-’ life everlasting.’
So our hope ought to be as continuous as the manifestation of the mercy, and, like it, should last until the eternal life has come. All our gifts here are fragmentary and imperfect. Here we drink of brooks by the way. There we shall slake our thirst at the fountainhead. Here we are given ready money for the day’s expenses. There we shall be free of the treasure house, where lie the uncoined and uncounted masses of bullion, which God has laid up in store for them that fear Him. So, brethren, let us hope perfectly for the perfect manifestation of the mercy. Let us set ourselves to build up, however slowly, the fair fabric of a life and character which shall stand when the tempest levels all houses built upon the sand. Let us open our spirits to the entrance of that Spirit who helps the infirmities of our desires as well as of our efforts. Thus let us keep ourselves in the charmed circle of the love of God, that we may be safe as a garrison in its fortress, blessed as a babe on its mother’s breast.
Jude’s words are but the echo of the tenderer words of his Master and ours, when He said, ‘As My Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide ye in My love. If ye keep My commandments ye shall abide in My love.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
building up. See Act 20:32.
faith App-150.; i.e. the object of faith Compare 1Co 3:11.
praying. App-134.
Holy Ghost = holy spirit. App-101.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
20-23.] CONCLUDING EXHORTATION TO THE READERS: and a) Jud 1:20-21, as to their own spiritual life. But ye, beloved (resumed from Jud 1:17), building up yourselves (, not = , but as in Php 2:12) upon (as a foundation) your most holy faith (the faith here is the foundation; viz., the fides qu creditur, the object of faith. Bullinger (in Huther), Vestr fidei superstruentes vos ipsos. Elsewhere in Scripture, CHRIST is this foundation, see 1Co 3:11; which in fact comes to the same, for He is the Author and Finisher of our Faith, the and ), praying in the Holy Spirit (as the means of thus building yourselves up. The expression . is not found elsewhere, but is in strict analogy with Scripture usage: cf. . ., also Rom 8:26, Eph 6:18. Some, e. g. Luther, join . . with what has gone before, and this is approved by De Wette: but surely would not be left thus standing alone. De W. cites c. for this arrangement, but it is very doubtful whether he adopts it: , , , : where it is evident that there should be a period at , and that has been omitted, or perhaps was never expressed, after ; at any rate the latter sentence is an explanation of . . ), keep yourselves (aor. of the one great life-long act to be accomplished by the and ) in the love of God (within that region of peculiar love wherewith God regards all who are built up on the faith and sustained by prayer: being a subjective gen., Gods love, not objective, as Grot., Semler, Bengel, Vorstius, Arnaud, al. The expression is very like , Joh 15:9, where preceding fixes the meaning to be Christs love to them), looking for (present part. as in Tit 2:13, where see note. It is to be the habit of the life, as those other pres. participles, . and ) the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ (viz. that which He will shew at His coming, , c.: cf. Tit 2:13. Huther remarks that , more usually predicated of the Father, is in the addresses of the Pastoral Epistles, and of 2 John, attributed to the Father and Son jointly) unto eternal life (these words may be joined with ,-that mercy, whose issue shall be eternal life; or with ,-as the issue and aim of the expectation; or with ,-as the final terminus of that watchful guarding. Perhaps the right choice between the three will be to combine the two last: for is subordinate and conditional to : keep yourselves in expectation of unto). The direct and studied reference to the Blessed Trinity will not escape the reader.
b) Jud 1:22-23.] Exhortation as to their conduct with reference to the persons previously stigmatized in the Epistle. And some indeed convict when contending with you (or, when separating from you. These appear to be the only two meanings which suit the context. c. takes the latter, but apparently including in it the idea of hostile disputation: , , where the Latin renders, illos vero si vobis resistant, nam id significat disceptantes The Vulg. renders it passive: et hos quidem arguite judicatos, which can hardly stand as giving the pres. part. , and representing rather . De Wette, following Bengel, understands it doubting-convince, persuade in the right direction, those who doubt. But thus the sense of is missed, which is never simply to convince, but always carries the punitive idea with it, to convict. Grot. gives another meaning, reprehendite eos qui se cteris prferunt. Huther goes with c. The sense of contending, for , is found both in classical writers and in the N. T., e. g. Act 11:2, and our Epistle, Jud 1:9 (which is no slight indication of the meaning here): cf. Herod. ix. 58, . Demosth. p. 163. 15 al. in Palm and Rosts Lex.
This is the first class: that of those who oppose themselves, who must be convicted and down-argued. According to the rec. , the rendering will be, as E. V., of some have compassion, making a difference, viz. between them and the others); but others save (pres., attempt to save; not , which would imply that you had the power, and must do it effectually), snatching them from the fire (the same passage in the prophets, Zec 3:1-3, which has already been before St. Judes mind in Jud 1:9, again furnishes him with the material of this figure. There we read ; cf. also ref. Amos. Notice too the repetition of in close connexion, which speaks not a little for the sense above given to it. The is most probably not future eternal fire, as c. : but the present hell into which their corrupt doctrines and practices have cast them, not however without reference to its ending in fire eternal. This is the second class; as c., : or rather perhaps, any over whom your influence extends, as younger members of the Church, &c., whom you can thus rescue by snatching them out of the fire of temptation and peril), and others compassionate (the form , for the usual is also found in reff. Rom.; and Rom 5:13 (in [1] ([2])), Phm 1:18. See Winer, edn. 6, 15) in fear (on what account, is shewn by what follows. c. rightly, except that (see below) he identifies this class with the last,- , , , . This is the third class: consisting of those whom not falling in the way of so as personally to convict, nor having influence over so as to rescue, the believers could only compassionate (and on occasion given, lovingly help) as led away hopelessly to their ruin: but in shewing such compassion, they were to maintain a wholesome fear of their deadly error, for fear they themselves should become defiled by it. It may suffice to repudiate at once Bengels interpretation of , clementer, metu duntaxat incusso. The following clause is epexegetical of ), hating (not, seeing that ye hate, as De W., nor though ye hate, as Jachm.: the pres. part. simply falls under and expands the verbal clause –, thus forming part of the command) even the (or, their, cf. c. below) garment which has received defilement from the flesh ( , , , , , . And so Bengel, understanding of their garment, which you are to loathe, and to be afraid even to touch: tunica est totius vit habitus exterior, qua ab aliis attingimur. This may be, but it is more probable that the is literal, and the saying a proverbial one-hating not merely fleshly pollution itself, but even the traces and outskirts of it; even that, be it what it may, which has its mark and stain upon it. On the sense, see Rev 3:4).
[1] The MS. referred to by this symbol is that commonly called the Alexandrine, or CODEX ALEXANDRINUS. It once belonged to Cyrillus Lucaris, patriarch of Alexandria and then of Constantinople, who in the year 1628 presented it to our King Charles I. It is now in the British Museum. It is on parchment in four volumes, of which three contain the Old, and one the New Testament, with the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians. This fourth volume is exhibited open in a glass case. It will be seen by the letters in the inner margin of this edition, that the first 24 chapters of Matthew are wanting in it, its first leaf commencing , ch. Mat 25:6 :-as also the leaves containing , Joh 6:50,-to , Joh 8:52. It is generally agreed that it was written at Alexandria;-it does not, however, in the Gospels, represent that commonly known as the Alexandrine text, but approaches much more nearly to the Constantinopolitan, or generally received text. The New Testament, according to its text, was edited, in uncial types cast to imitate those of the MS., by Woide, London, 1786, the Old Testament by Baber, London, 1819: and its N.T. text has now been edited in common type by Mr. B. H. Cowper, London, 1861. The date of this MS. has been variously assigned, but it is now pretty generally agreed to be the fifth century.
[2] The CODEX SINAITICUS. Procured by Tischendorf, in 1859, from the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. The Codex Frederico-Augustanus (now at Leipsic), obtained in 1844 from the same monastery, is a portion of the same copy of the Greek Bible, the 148 leaves of which, containing the entire New Testament, the Ep. of Barnabas, parts of Hermas, and 199 more leaves of the Septuagint, have now been edited by the discoverer. A magnificent edition prepared at the expense of the Emperor of Russia appeared in January, 1863, and a smaller edition containing the N.T. &c., has been published by Dr. Tischendorf. The MS. has four columns on a page, and has been altered by several different correctors, one or more of whom Tischendorf considers to have lived in the sixth century. The work of the original scribe has been examined, not only by Tischendorf, but by Tregelles and other competent judges, and is by them assigned to the fourth century. The internal character of the text agrees with the external, as the student may judge for himself from the readings given in the digest. The principal correctors as distinguished by Tischendorf are:-A, of the same age with the MS. itself, probably the corrector who revised the book, before it left the hands of the scribe, denoted therefore by us -corr1; B (cited as 2), who in the first page of Matt. began inserting breathings, accents, &c., but did not carry out his design, and touched only a few later passages; Ca (cited as 3a) has corrected very largely throughout the book. Wherever in our digest a reading is cited as found in 1, it is to be understood, if no further statement is given, that Ca altered it to that which is found in our text; Cb (cited as 3b) lived about the same time as Ca, i.e. some centuries later than the original scribe. These are all that we need notice here6.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Jud 1:20. , but) Separating, and building yourselves up, are opposite terms; also animal, and in the Holy Spirit.-, most holy) than which nothing can be more holy. The superlative singular, with great force of exhortation and urgency.- , praying in the Holy Spirit) Eph 6:18; Zec 12:10; Joh 4:24. Jude makes mention of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: he also makes mention of faith, of love and hope, in this and the following verses.-, praying) The attention of the righteous is requisite, but much more their prayers, by which they obtain Divine assistance.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Self-Keeping
But ye, beloved, building up yourselves 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.Jud 1:20-21.
1. Jude is the prophet of the Apostasy. He sounds the final note of warning. The key word is kept. Those who embrace the faith and contend for the faith are preserved unto the day of presentation; those who reject and oppose the faith are reserved unto the day of retribution. Those who kept not their first estate, and are kept for judgment, are contrasted with those who keep themselves in the love of God, and are kept by His power.
Most travellers in foreign countries follow about the same route of travel. They see the same cathedrals, art galleries, and bits of scenery that thousands before them have seen. Once in a while some one insists on leaving the well-beaten routes and exploring less frequented places of interest. It is safe to say that there are many beautiful things in those countries which do not lie along the frequented routes. There are mountains, and lakes, and brooksscenes of beauty that cannot be countedwhich only those who step out of the well-beaten paths ever see.
There are well-beaten routes in the Scripture, chapters that are read over and over again by the multitude who are content to see and know what the multitude sees and knows. But whoever goes into the unfrequented places finds beautiful things. Here in Judehidden away where those who follow the usual Biblical route would never see itis this: Keep yourselves in the love of God.1 [Note: G. W. Hinckley.]
2. When this verse occurs, the turning-point of the Epistle has just been passed. The thunder-storm of invective, which the writer has been hurling against certain godless disturbers of the purity and peace of the Church, spends itself almost abruptly, and the Epistle seems to gather to a close among the quiet sunset-light of a sky that has been clarified by the storm. These last calm sentences are directly for the saints whom he loves. But ye, says he, see that ye make a contrast to all this vapid corruption. The contrast which already exists between your condition and theirs, your prospects and theirs, let it be carried forth into a contrast between your conduct and theirs, your habits and theirs. Keep yourselves in the love of God.
Keep yourselves in the love of God does not mean keep yourselves loving God, but keep believing and rejoicing that God loves you. Conviction is a good word there, because it comes from con and victumconquered, or vinculuma chain. Be conquered, be enchained, by the thought that God loves you. Keep means guard, protect, as in a fortress. Live in this castle, and no enemy of doubt or fear can by any means hurt you.1 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 16.]
I
The Duty of Self-Keeping
1. The central thought that lies in this passage is that we are in charge of ourselves. To keep ourselvesto be ever vigilant amid the perils that beset us, and steer our course arightthis is the main work of life.
There is a law pervading all animate and inanimate nature called by the scientists of to-day the law of conformity to type. By this law every living thing is compelled to stamp upon its offspring the image of itself. The fish produces its like, and the bird its like. The basis of all forms of animal and herbal life is one. There is no difference between the protoplasm which is destined to develop into a man, and that which is to become a herb, or one of the lower animals. How then does the difference arise? What is the secret of varieties in Nature? Scientists tell us it is this law of conformity to type. Bird life builds up a bird. Man life builds up a man. Now, if man were only the stuff of which trees are made he would still be subject to this law of conformity to type. But it would be automatically. He would have no conscious individual share in helping on the process. But add the elements of free will, and intellectual faculties, and moral sense, and spiritual affections, and we have a creature both subject to and greater than this law. We cannot, indeed, evade or overcome the law. But we can determine the way in which it will act through us. God gives up to us the power of forming character. Our birth was His. Our vital powers are His. Our heredities are His. But our truest, vitallest, God-aspiring or God-shunning selfthat is our own. By what means shall we assist this law of conformity to type to mould our lives after the image of our Creator? Let us keep ourselves in the love of God; let no meaner ends of life so engross us that we lose sight of this our high calling of God.
2. There are two sides to this keeping: a Divine side and a human side.
(1) Our Lord keeps us.Perhaps it is difficult for some to believe that we who are upon the earth can really know ourselves to be always, without interruption, in our Lords hands and under His power. How much clearer and more glorious does the truth become when the Spirit discovers to us that Christ is in us; and that, not only as a tenant in a house, or water in a glass, in such a fashion that they continue quite distinct, but rather as the soul is in the body, animating and moving every part of it, and never to be separated from each other except by a violent death. It is thus that Christ dwells in us, penetrating our whole nature with His nature. The Holy Spirit came for the purpose of making Him thus deeply present within us. As the sun is high in the firmament above us, and yet by his heat penetrates our bones and marrow and quickens our whole life, so the Lord Jesus, who is exalted high in heaven, penetrates our whole nature by His Spirit in such a way that all our willing, and thinking, and feeling are animated by Him. Once this fact is fully grasped, we no longer think of an external keeping through a person outside of us in heaven, but rather become convinced that our whole individual life is itself quickened and possessed by One who, not in a human but in a Divine, all-penetrating manner, occupies and fills the heart. Then we see how natural, how certain, how blessed it is that the indwelling Jesus always maintains the fulness of the Spirit.
Some maimed bird from the woods is brought into the house and the children want to tend it with all the gentleness of hospital nurses. They stretch out entreating hands and make pretty speeches, spread for it royal banquets, offer it a generous partnership in the use of their toys. But there is no common groundwork of ideas between them. It cannot read these signs of friendship, and the poor thing is as unhappy as though hawks were hovering in the clouds. If it has not already died of fright, the first time the window sash is open it flies away to the woods. It cannot appreciate or interpret the love which would fain woo its friendship in a strange world. It lacks power to perceive. But Gods love is conscious of all other loves, and has the power, moreover, of interpreting itself to willing and lowly hearts. It knows where to find the first sign of this ethereal affection, and how to enter into fellowship with it.1 [Note: T. G. Selby, The Alienated Crown, 363.]
The love of God in our hearts is a gift from the Lord; it is a fire which lights up all things arid, and whoever is so disposed can instantly feel it warm and inflame his heart.2 [Note: Savonarola.]
Lord, a happy child of Thine,
Patient through the love of Thee,
In the light, the life divine,
Lives and walks at liberty.
Leaning on Thy tender care,
Thou hast led my soul aright;
Fervent was my morning prayer,
Joyful is my song to-night.
O my Saviour, Guardian true,
All my life is Thine to keep;
At Thy feet my work I do,
In Thy arms I fall asleep.3 [Note: A. L. Waring.]
(2) We must keep ourselves.This can only mean that we ought to love the Lord our God with the full force of decision and purpose. In the sovereign faculty of will metaphysicians find the centre and strength of personality. Our love to God must not be vague sentiment tincturing our talk with a pale poetry, but the settled purpose and determination of the soul commanding, compelling, triumphing in all the crises of life. Love without will is the merest froth; but springing from the depths of the soul, expressing a firm and hearty conviction and resolution, it passes into the master-passion of life. Let it, then, be our settled purpose to keep a warm heart. I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. I will not permit abounding iniquity to chill my heart, or abounding prosperity to steel it. I will not allow Nature, humanity, self, or any idols of the world, to have dominion over me, but I will love Thee; I will watch, and, lest time and circumstance should spoil the fervour and freshness of the heart, I will ever welcome new awakenings and inspirations.
It is not a command to love Him, but to keep yourselves in His love, objects of His loving. Do you know how to do it? If a mother should write to her boy and at the close of the letter should say, You have a good teacher, keep yourself in his love, he would know what to do. He would be careful not to disobey, thoughtful not to displease, watchful to render any service in his power. If there were some sickly boy, and we should tell him he was to be excused from school for a few weeks, and should say to him, Keep yourself in the sunshine, would he know what to do? He would keep out of the shadows, and that is easily done. If this building were casting a shadow, he would keep on the sunny side. If yonder tree were casting a shadow, he would keep away from it. He would remember the injunction, Keep yourself in the sunshineout of the shadow. There is a place where the unmanly and the impure congregate. The influence of the place is balefula dark, damp shadow. Keep out of it; and keep in the love of God.1 [Note: G. W. Hinckley.]
3. The best way to keep ourselves in the love of God is to be always in the fulness of the Spirit.There is a touchstone about the Holy Ghost that discovers evil, and evil cannot live before Him. This is a highly organized age. We are all living in the midst of environments of many kinds. There are streams of influences that bear in upon us from without, and there is a peculiar joyousness about the consecrated life,a spiritual exhilarationand with that exhilaration there is an accessibility to human sympathy and influence, and in all these there are perpetual dangers which we must be on our guard against so that we may not be drawn away from the love of Jesus Christ.
Love is not to be a rare mood of the soul, but its sublime habit. Travellers in the East tell of the striking difference in the appearance of the same tract of country at different seasons of the year. What at one time is a garden, glowing with brilliant hues, and rich with pasture, at another is an absolute waste, frightful and oppressive from its sterility. So is it too commonly with the soul, which at one time is like a watered garden glowing in the heavenly sunshine and then directly cold and desolate. It ought not so to be. Gods love to us is ever glowing, revealing itself in new and richer tokens, and our love to Him should reflect the same constancy.1 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, Themes for Hours of Meditation, 157.]
The brightest lamp will burn dim in an impure or rarefied atmosphere, but William Burns was enabled so to keep himself in the love of God that he was but little affected by his surroundings. Prayer was as natural to him as breathing, and the Word of God his God as necessary as daily food. He was always cheerful, always happy, witnessing to the truth of his own memorable words: I think I can say, through grace, that Gods presence or absence alone distinguishes places to me.2 [Note: Hudson Taylor in Early Years, 346.]
At cool of day, with God I walk
My gardens grateful shade;
I hear His voice among the trees,
And I am not afraid.
He is my stay and my defence;
How shall I fail or fall?
My helper is Omnipotence!
My ruler ruleth all.
The powers below and powers above
Are subject to His care;
I cannot wander from His love
Who loves me everywhere.
Thus dowered, and guarded thus, with Him
I walk this peaceful shade;
I hear His voice among the trees,
And I am not afraid!3 [Note: C. A. Mason.]
II
The Means of Self-Keeping
The means of self-keeping are twofoldbuilding up yourselves on your most holy faith, and praying in the Holy Spirit.
1. Jude here employs an architectural expression to set forth his meaning. In the various temples and public buildings of an Eastern city were furnished beautiful and chaste examples of the builders art, and the transition to man as a wonderful piece of architecture would be easy. Hence we find such expressions as Ye are Gods building, Ye are temples of the Holy Ghost, and the words of the text, Building up yourselves on your most holy faith.
This metaphor of building, so common in the New Testament, suggests patient industry, thoughtful method, graduated progress, upward aspirations. It indicates a design and plan. The house of the soul is being fashioned. The inward man is growing towards the pattern of the Heavenly Man, the type to which the Spiritual Architect conforms His handiworks. The structural principles are embodied in the faith.
(1) The Christian character is like a mosaic formed of tiny squares in all but infinite numbers, each one of them separately set and bedded in its place. You have to build by a plan; you have to see to it that each day has its task, each day its growth. You have to be content with one brick at a time. It is a lifelong task, till the whole be finished. And not until we pass from earth to heaven does our building work cease. Continuous effort is the condition of progress.
A Christian character is not reared as a coral structure is, by instinct. It demands a sustained effort of intelligent will. The work is laboriously slowslow, yet urgent. There is need we should bring to bear upon it something of the systematic steadiness which tells so marvellously in the meaner sphere of our worldly workpermitting to ourselves no half-heartedness in it; setting upon it the banded force of all the faculties of body and soul and spirit; pushing it on in frost and rain, and by light of torch when the daylight fails us.1 [Note: J. A. Kerr Bain, For Heart and Life, 87.]
Few things can be so offensive to an architect as a building erected in such a way as to show all the traces of the hurry, carelessness, and incapacity of the workmen. There are structures whose very defects have gained them a world-wide notoriety. We have all heard of the leaning tower of Pisa, the top of which projects fifteen feet farther out than the base, and which presents the appearance of a building about to fall. The same impression is produced by the spire of a certain church in Yorkshire. Both structures are altogether out of plumb, and afford ocular demonstration of bad construction. Such buildings are like some characters we meet with, into the building-up of which there have entered an unskilful handling of tools and a neglect of the proportions requisite in a properly constructed edifice. If we are to have a true character we must build wisely and well, looking for our specifications to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, the dictates of conscience, the precepts of the Bible, and the peerless character of Christ.1 [Note: M. Johnson.]
In the elder days of art,
Builders wrought with equal care
Each minute and unseen part;
For the gods see everywhere.
Let us do our work as well,
Both the unseen and the seen;
Make the House where God should dwell,
Beautiful, entire, and clean.
Else our work is incomplete
Standing, in these walls of time,
Broken stairways, where the feet
Stumble as they seek to climb.
(2) The only adequate foundation is to be found in a right relation to Jesus Christ. This is involved in the expression, building up yourselves on your most holy faith. Faith as a mere act is the same in all cases; it involves the same conditions, and follows the same processes, in all its operations. Considered in itself, faith has nothing in it to make one of its acts higher than another. What, then, constitutes the most holy faith? We answer, the object that faith apprehends and appropriates. The higher and holier the object believed, to that degree the faith exercised becomes higher and holier. And as the infinite Christ of God is the most holy object of faith, so the belief that brings about a right relation to Him deserves to be called the most holy faith. Such a foundation involves every other, just as the greater necessarily includes the lesser. There is involved in it every real good. It embraces every department of life, and enters into all its complex and diversified aspects. The social and political, the mental, moral and religious, are all alike parts of its vast empire; and whatever relates to these in their development and operation receives its sanction and benediction. While it has an essentially Godward aspect, it has, at the same time, to do with all the relations in which men stand to their fellows. It makes our relation to Christ the principle and motive for fulfilling our duties to others.
Ministering, some years ago now, in Switzerland, I was sorry as I left the beautiful little mountain church to observe that the rock upon which one of the buttresses of the chancel was built was crumbling. My friend said to me: You could not quote that as an illustration of the safety of the house built upon a rock. I said, No, but I can quote it as an illustration of the insecurity of a house built upon what looks like a fair foundation. That rock looked fair and strong, or it would never have been chosen. We know how St. Paul had built for many years upon the fair appearance of morality and ceremonial observance, and how at length he cast them to the winds, not having his own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.1 [Note: E. W. Moore, in The Keswick Week, 1905, p. 165.]
2. Praying in the Holy Spirit.
(1) Prayer of some sort marks every religion, for prayer in its most general sense is an appeal to God. But Christian prayer is the prayer of faith, and not merely of form; it is prayer of the heart, and not merely of the lips; it is prayer which rests not in bodily posture, but in spiritual power. The Christian prays as he lives and lives as he prays. But his power for prayer is not in himself, for it is the Spirit dwelling within him that enables him to pray. Nor is true prayer merely by the Holy Ghost; it is in the Holy Ghost, for spiritual life is the sphere of spiritual prayer. Pray then, pray always, if you would keep in touch with things unseen, if you would keep your hearts open to God and heaven. Pray by the Holy Ghost by yielding your will to Him if you would worship in spirit and in truth, and feel the power of prayer and obtain the blessings you seek. But pray in the Holy Ghost by honouring His presence within you, and hearkening to His voice, if you would know the peace and joy of heavenly fellowship and maintain a lively sense of the love of God.
The prayer which helps us to keep in the love of God is not the petulant and passionate utterance of our own wishes, but is the yielding of our desires to the impulses divinely breathed upon us. As Michael Angelo says, The prayers I make will then be sweet indeed, If Thou the spirit give by which I pray. Our own desires may be hot and vehement, but the desires that run parallel with the Divine will, and are breathed into us by Gods own Spirit, are the desires which, in their meek submissiveness, are omnipotent with Him whose omnipotence is perfected in our weakness.1 [Note: A. Maclaren, The Unchanging Christ, 178.]
(2) Praying in the Spirit is the surest defence against the evils that arise from a low moral temperature. In some parts of the world, malaria and tropical heat speedily turn healthy and capable colonists into sickly loiterers and rickety neer-do-weels. No race seems able to toil under the frightful conditions of climate which prevail on the Isthmus of Panama. And, on the other hand, some climates are so crisp and exhilarating that the laggard finds it difficult to do less than a fair days work. Unknown ingredients in the air seem to accelerate the blood and spur to strenuous exertion. The qualities of the work done by poet, painter, musician, may almost be told in the terms of the atmospheric pressure prevailing at the time. Genius, just as much as the unopened flower bud, needs the bright, bracing day to bring out its splendour.
And the soul requires for the reaching out of its highest powers towards God a refined and well-balanced element, which we can describe only as climate or atmosphere. The difference between praying on the mere level of our natural perceptions and sympathies, and praying in a realm pervaded by the unfailing inspirations of the Spirit, is not unlike the difference between drudgery on a tropical swamp and movement on a glorious tableland. In the one case prayer is an effort, a burden, a vexation, and an idle penance; in the other, a joy, a sunrise, a melodious outrush of upper springs, glad spontaneity, life pulsating with the sense of power and victory. The prayer imposed upon us by slavish conventions or habits, the prime motives of which have shrivelled away, seems to open all the channels of the life to poison, disease, religious degeneration. But when the breath of the Spirit pervades the shrine in which we pray, and calls up a gracious environment which we can carry about with us in our daily walk, prayer acquires new attributes, assumes fresh attractions, and springs to unknown victories.
The under side of every leaf is furnished with thousands of tiny mouths, through which the leaf breathes back upon the world the air it has purified and sweetened for human uses. And so the foliage of a mighty forest is like a cluster of fountains from which health and quickening alchemies are ever pouring, which supply the needs of all those kingdoms of life gathered under its shadow. And in the same way the Holy Spirit of God breathes upon us from every point of our environment. Through countless mouths His soul-quickening influences flow silently into us, neutralizing the doubt, sloth, and sin exhaled from the lower nature, so that we can breathe back our souls to God in faith and desire continuous as the river from Gods throne.1 [Note: T. G. Selby, The Holy Spirit and Christian Privilege, 176.]
III
The Inspiration of Self-Keeping
Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
1. On what is it that our eye is to be set as the focus and fountain of all our encouragement in the grand task of our life? Is it the abundance of our labours? Is it certain rightful wages that those labours are earning? Is it even the satisfaction that the memory of them may bring us? No, it is nothing so poor as this. Looking formercy. Still mercyafter all our hard work, our God-given work, in building, praying, keeping? Let us thank God that it is. Our workit is blundering and inconstant; the workerhe is weak and unworthy; here, smiling around us out of the heaven which it makes so bright, is the Divine yet brotherly compassion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, no other encouragement could be at all so complete as this. It overflows upon every other. It is the sum of all tenderest things; it is the pledge of all that is most unimaginable in its gloriousness. Is our heart burdened about our passing fatigues or troubles or perils? It may be, till we look onward to that towards which mercy is ripening; then, present ills shall feel lighter, and past ones shall appear more utterly past. We must cultivate a busy-handed expectingness; if we do, it will almost become an expectant seeinga looking upon the actual dawn of the hastening day.
Heard of a poor woman in Windsor Forest who was asked if she did not feel lonely in that exceeding isolation. Oh no; for Faith closes the door at night and Mercy opens it in the morning.1 [Note: 1 Journals of Caroline Fox, ii. 141.]
Now wilt me take for Jesus sake,
Nor cast me out at all;
I shall not fear the foe awake,
Saved by Thy City wall;
But in the night with no affright
Shall hear him steal without,
Who may not scale Thy wall of might,
Thy Bastion, nor redoubt.
Full well I know that to the foe
Wilt yield me not for aye,
Unless mine own hand should undo
The gates that are my stay;
My folly and pride should open wide
Thy doors and set me free
Mid tigers striped and panthers pied
Far from Thy liberty.
Unless by debt myself I set
Outside Thy loving ken,
And yield myself by weight of debt
Unto my fellow-men.
Deal with my guilt Thou as Thou wilt,
And hold I shall not cry,
So I be Thine in storm and shine,
Thine only till I die.2 [Note: Katharine Tynan.]
2. Mercy is kindness to the undeserving, and in that point it rises higher than even grace. Grace is kindness to the non-deserving, to those who have no claim upon it, but yet who may be in themselves no unworthy recipients. But mercy implies demerit; it is kindness to the sinful, it is kindness to the lost. Now, this is what Christians have to look for even to the end. Never will they be claimants of right; always will they be suppliants of want. They would have it so. It would be no comfort to them to hear that ten years or a thousand years hence they will have earned their title to stand in an erect posture or with head covered before the great King. They know better. They are making new discoveries day by day, as of grace so of sin, as of good so of vice. Mercy they ask and mercy they look for, only with a growing sureness and certainty that that mercy bought with blood is theirs. Eternal life fills the far horizon of the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christis its security and its safeguard.
I was one day working hard in my study and a message came to me to say that a certain person was ill. The first feeling in my heart was one of vexation. I crushed that, and rose up and put on my hat and coat, and went away as fast as I could. I was going down one of the Edinburgh streets, and all of a sudden this thought came to me: Death will come like that. You will be in the midst of your work, and the message of the Master will come all of a sudden, and you will have to rise and go. Even that one saw as simply an incident in the progress that is to be eternal. Death does not matter. The Master may come and call us right away into the glory, or it may be His will that we should die; but that is just simply an incident, a forward step, as we keep resting daily on mercy unto eternal life.1 [Note: John Smith, in The Keswick Week, 1905, p. 164.]
Though waves and storms go oer my head,
Though health and strength and friends be gone,
Though joy be withered all and dead,
And every comfort be withdrawn;
On this my steadfast soul relies
Jesus, Thy mercy never dies!
Fixed on this ground will I remain,
Though my heart fail and flesh decay;
This anchor shall my soul sustain
When earths foundations melt away:
Mercys full power I then shall prove,
Loved with an everlasting love.
Self-Keeping
Literature
Alford (H.), Quebec Chapel Sermons, i. 395.
Arnold (T.), Sermons, vi. 277.
Bain (J. A. K.), For Heart and Life, 77.
Binney (T.), Sermons Preached in Kings Weigh-House Chapel, 1st Ser., 202.
Burrell (D. J.), The Spirit of the Age, 211.
Davies (T.), Sermons, ii. 392, 395.
Garbett (E.), The Souls Life, 305.
Hoare (E.), Fruitful or Fruitless, 130.
Holland (C.), Gleanings from a Ministry, 221.
Hughes (H. P.), The Philanthropy of God, 3.
Jerdan (C.), For the Lambs of the Flock, 33, 155.
Jones (J. M.), The Cup of Cold Water, 63.
Macgregor (G. H. C.), Praying in the Holy Ghost, 1.
Macgregor (G. H. C.), Rabboni, 34.
Meyer (F. B.), Calvary to Pentecost, 52.
Mudie (F.), Bible Truths and Bible Characters, 156, 172, 185, 199, 213, 226.
Murray (A.), The Full Blessing of Pentecost, 92.
Selby (T. G.), The Holy Spirit and Christian Privilege, 161.
Vallings (J. F.), The Holy Spirit of Promise, 189.
Watkinson (W. L.), Themes for Hours of Meditation, 150.
Waugh (T.), Mount and Multitude, 30.
Christian World Pulpit, ii. 24 (Binney); xxviii. 408 (Statham); xxxvii. 165 (Brown).
Church of England Magazine, xl. 256 (Clayton); xliii. 25 (Dwarris); lxiv. 416 (Champneys).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
Reciprocal: Lev 2:1 – pour oil Jos 23:11 – love 1Ki 2:4 – That the Lord Job 22:23 – built up Pro 22:5 – he Zec 12:10 – of supplications Mat 10:22 – but Luk 11:1 – teach Luk 12:36 – men Joh 4:23 – in spirit Joh 14:26 – Holy Ghost Joh 15:4 – Abide Joh 15:9 – continue Joh 16:27 – the Father Act 2:42 – and in prayers Act 9:31 – were edified Act 14:22 – exhorting Act 15:29 – if ye Act 20:32 – to build Rom 8:26 – but Rom 11:22 – if thou Rom 15:14 – able 1Co 14:3 – edification 1Co 14:15 – I will pray with the spirit 2Co 3:8 – the ministration Gal 3:14 – might Gal 4:6 – crying Gal 5:1 – Stand Eph 2:18 – by Eph 4:5 – one faith Eph 6:18 – in the Phi 3:3 – worship Phi 4:1 – so Phi 4:6 – in Col 2:7 – built 1Th 5:11 – and edify Heb 12:15 – Looking
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Jud 1:20. Building up means to edify themselves by the word which is the source of the most holy faith (Rom 10:17). Praying in the Holy Ghost (or Spirit) means to pray according to its teachings in the scriptures.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Jud 1:20-21. But ye (strongly emphatic), beloved, as against those dividers of the Church who are pulling it down stone by stone, ever building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, awaiting the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. Every clause is antithetic and suggestive: the overthrow of the Church and of each of its members, and Divine edification;grace turned into licentiousness, and holy character built on faith;swelling words of self-sufficiency, no Spirit; and praying in the Spirit;murmuring, complaining, and denying the Lord that bought them; and keeping yourselves in the love of God, and awaiting the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ;for whom the blackness of darkness is kept for ever, and waiting for Christs mercy unto eternal life. Our safety depends on growth in the faith, on prayer in the Spirit, and, after all is done, on receiving the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hereby we keep ourselves, and are kept, in the love which God bears to us, and in the love which we are to bear to Him. The love of God to us, however, is the true origin of all, though not to the exclusion of the Spirit and of Christ, who have each His own part in the great work of our redemption. Looking for may mislead. Looking for is the word found in 2Pe 3:12-13, and in 1Th 1:10, where it is translated waiting for, and is applied to what after all may never come. The word here really means, especially in the present tense, waiting to receive, and even receiving itself (Heb 10:34; Heb 11:35). It occurs again in Tit 2:13, in the same sense as here, expecting to receive.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Our aostle having, in the former part of this chapter, warned the Christians of the danger of seducers, he closes his epistle with directions and advice how they may be preserved from seduction, and what means they should use for their perseverance and establishment in the doctrine of Christ.
First, he directs them to build up themselves in their most holy faith; that is, in the doctrine of faith contained in the gospel.
Where note, 1. The faith of Christians is a most holy faith; holy in its principles, holy in its pattern, holy in its encouragements and rewards.
2. That it is the duty, and ought to be the endeavour, of every Christian to build up himself, and others also, in the faith of the gospel; the best way for Christians not to be losers of what they have, is to be labourers for what they want; progress in Christianity is the best means to preserve us from apostasy.
Secondly, He exhorts to prayer, Praying in the Holy Ghost; that is, with holy reverence, with humble confidence, with fervent importunity, with those holy affections and desires which the Spirit of God exciteth in us; the concurrence of the Holy Spirit is necessary both to assistance and acceptance in prayer; it enables us to pray in faith and love, with sincerity and importunity; without the Spirit there is no acceptable praying, and without prayer vain is the pretence to the Spirit. Breathing is the first evidence of life: St. Paul was no sooner converted, but behold he prayed.
Thirdly, He directs that they keep themselves in the love of God; no such way to keep ourselves from error, as to preserve ourselves in that love which God bears to us, and in that love we bear to him; take we care that there is no intermission in the acts of love, and no remission of the degrees of love, but that we be rooted and grounded in love, and then we are proof against seducers and false teachers.
Fourthly, he directs them to look up to heaven, if they would be steady and steadfast in the faith here on earth, Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
Here observe, That heaven, or eternal life, is the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Mercy it is called, because bestowed on the miserable, that could never merit or deserve it, and because it is the effect and fruit of free and special mercy, and because bestowed on the vessels of mercy, and because it is the perfection and consummation of all mercy; and it is the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, because he purchased it, he prepared it, he exhibits and gives it.
Observe farther, That Christians are to look for eternal life, as the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ; that is, to believe it, to meditate upon it, to have ardent desires after it, and patiently to wait for it: Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
The Believer and the Faith
Clearly, the lost can be divided into two categories. There are those lost through being honestly mistaken and those intentionally lost. Jude urged Christians to be patient and loving with those honestly doubting the truth so they could be led to Christ. However, he warned them to exercise care with those in deeper trouble than the honest doubters. They would have to be snatched away from the very fires of hell. Of course, anyone trying to save them would have to beware lest, in pulling them out of trouble, they too should be spotted with the sins of the flesh ( Jud 1:22-23 ).
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
Jdg 1:20-21. But ye, beloved Not separating yourselves from your Christian brethren, but building up Or edifying one another in knowledge and grace; on, or in, your most holy faith The true Christian faith, having for its object all the doctrines, precepts, and promises of the gospel; a faith, than which none can be more holy in itself, or more conducive to the most refined and exalted holiness; praying in, or through, the Holy Ghost By a principle of grace derived from him, and by his enlightening, quickening, sanctifying, and comforting influences, showing you what blessings you may and ought to pray for, inspiring you with sincere and fervent desires after those blessings, and enabling you to offer these desires to God in faith, with gratitude for the blessings which you have already received. And by these means, and through divine grace communicated therein, keep yourselves in the love of God That is, in love to God, arising from a sense of his love to you; looking for the mercy, &c. Continually possessing a confident expectation of that eternal life, which is purchased for you and conferred upon you through the mere mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
20. But you, beloved, building up yourselves in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
B. The Positive Instruction of the Readers VV. 20-23
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The contrast Jude introduced with "But" distinguishes Jude’s readers from the false teachers. Since we are God’s temples under attack by hostile enemy forces, we need to build ourselves up, to strengthen ourselves spiritually (cf. 1Co 3:9-17; Eph 2:20-22; 2Pe 3:18).
"The best thing believers can do to withstand the malady is to develop their spiritual immunological resources." [Note: A. Duane Litfin, "A Biblical Strategy for Confronting the Cults," Bibliotheca Sacra 135:539 (July-September 1978):235. Cf. 1Pe 1:5-7.]
This is the first of several commands, and it is a general order. What follows clarifies how to do this.
"’Building up’ (epoikodomountes) depicts this growth under the familiar figure of the erection of a house or temple. The compound verb points to the superstructure being reared on an existing foundation. The present tense underlines the fact that the building of a strong and stable Christian character is an ongoing process." [Note: Hiebert, "An Exposition . . . 17-23," p. 360. Cf. Php 2:12.]
". . . one can destroy in just a few hours that which has taken years to construct. However, to be a builder is much more fulfilling than being a destroyer!" [Note: Cedar, p. 258.]
"Your most holy faith" is the faith "once for all delivered to the saints" (Jud 1:3). This is the foundation of our Christian life.
Second, true believers are not devoid of the Spirit (Jud 1:19). We have Him and can pray in Him, namely, pray for God’s help in harmony with the Spirit’s desires (Eph 6:18; Rom 8:26-27; 1Co 12:3; Gal 4:6). Our greatest resource is God Himself. We secure His help through prayer.
"The development of spiritual maturity is vitally related to the practice of prayer at all times and in all places." [Note: Hiebert, "An Exposition . . . 17-23," p. 361.]