Jude 1:20

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.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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 given—Faith 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 Lord’s 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 Believer’s 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 Lord’s 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 man’s work must stand this test—Does 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 life—“building up yourselves on the most holy faith”; one concerns the emotional life—“praying in the Holy Ghost”; one concerns the practical Christian life—“keep yourselves in the love of God”; and one concerns the imaginative Christian life—“looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.” St. Jude’s 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 firmly—that, 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 Christ’s 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 Taylor’s 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 this—if 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 Spirit’s impulse, but fail to respond to the Spirit’s 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 Christ’s 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. Jude’s 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 doing—that 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 you—“Have 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 God—these 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 imagination—and that is done by feeding and exercising it—is 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 Christians—in which lies the assurance of our safety in the midst of the enticing and entrancing evils of the day—concerns our all-round and harmonious daily culture. We are minds—but not minds only—and must grow in apprehension of truth. We are feelings—but not feelings only—and must nourish all hallowing emotions. We are actions—but not actions only—and must sanctify our doings. We are hopes—but not hopes only—and 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 keeping—a 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 privilege—keep yourselves in the love of God.

2. The way to do it—building, 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 enemy’s 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 principle—“Keep 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 life—of a right noble and heroic life—when he said, “The love of Christ constraineth us.” Our text means in part—

1. Keep yourselves in the full conviction of the truth of God’s 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 God’s 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 this—Keep yourselves in the justice of God; or this—Keep yourselves in the holiness of God; or this—Keep 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 God’s love, some of us feel as if we must shore the weak thing up, and buttress it with notions—theological notions—of 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 God’s 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 this—You 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 truths—“God is love.” “He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God.”

2. Keep yourselves in the comforting assurance of God’s 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 God’s 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 me”—which, to many of us, is the almost impossible of earthly calamity—“then the Lord will take me up.”

3. That we put ourselves under the daily constrainings of God’s 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 life—as we ought to be able to explain ours—by 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 you—Beware lest anything should take you from under the shadow of God’s 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 peculiarity—it 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 pure—the saintly ones, who walk in white—the 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 God’s 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 God’s Love.—If you had been born a Jew, it would not have seemed strange to you that you had to hear continually about God’s 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 this—the power of God’s 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 God’s 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 God’s 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 God’s love.

III. The one effort of our Christian life should be to keep in the sense of God’s 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 God’s love is more—far more—than 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 God’s 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 denunciator—a 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.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

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.’

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1:20 your most holy faith: As in 1:3, faith refers to what Christians believe, the doctrinal and ethical core of Christian identity, which false teachers threaten. Believers must therefore devote themselves to it.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Jud 1:20. Δὲ, but) Separating, and building yourselves up, are opposite terms; also animal, and in the Holy Spirit.—ἀγιωτάτῃ, most holy) than which nothing can be more holy. The superlative singular, with great force of exhortation and urgency.—ἐν Πνεύματι Ἁγίῳ προσευχόμενοι, 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.—προσευχόμενοι, praying) The attention of the righteous is requisite, but much more their prayers, by which they obtain Divine assistance.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Jud_1:20-21. Exhortation to the readers respecting themselves.

ὑμεῖς δὲ, ἀγαπητοί] as in Jud_1:17, in contrast to the persons and conduct of those mentioned in the last verse.

ἐποικοδομοῦντες κ.τ.λ.] The chief thought is contained in the exhortation ἑαυτοὺς ἐν ἀγάπῃ Θεοῦ τηρήσατε, to which the preceding ἐποικοδομοῦντες … προσευχόμενοι is subordinate, specifying by what the fulfilment of that exhortation is conditioned. Yet it is asked, whether προσευχόμενοι is connected with ἐποικοδομοῦντες, or is annexed as an independent sentence to the following imperative; and whether ἐν πν. ἁγίῳ is to be united with ἐποικοδ. or with προσευχόμενοι. These questions are difficult to decide with perfect certainty. Wiesinger and Schott apparently correctly unite ἐν πν. ἁγ. with προσευχόμενοι, and these taken together with what follows. Hofmann, on the other hand, unites ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ with what goes before, and προσευχόμενοι with what follows. In this construction, however, the structure of the participial clause becomes too clumsy; also ἐν πν. ἁγ. becomes superfluous, as ἐποκοδομεῖν ἑαυτούς cannot take place otherwise than ἐν πνεύματι ἁγ. It is true, Hofmann observes that ἐν πν. ἁγ. is superfluous with προσευχόμενοι, and that Jude could not intend to say how they should pray, but that they should pray. But this is erroneous, for τηρεῖν ἑαυτούς here mentioned depends not only on this, that one should pray, but that one should pray rightly, that is, ἐν πν. ἁγ. Wiesinger correctly observes, that the first clause gives the general presupposition; the second, on the other hand, the more precise statement how τηρήσατε has to be brought about.

τῇ ἁγιωτάτῃ ὑμῶν πίστει] Both the adjective and the verb show that πίστις 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 παραδοθεῖσα; so similarly Hofmann).

ἐποικοδομοῦντες ἑαυτούς] When verbs compounded with ἐπί are joined with the dative, as here, this for the most part is used for ἐπί τι, more rarely for ἐπί τινι (see Winer, p. 400 f. [E. T. 535]). If the first is here the case, then ἐποικοδομεῖν τῇ πίστει is to be interpreted, with Wiesinger: building on πίστις, so that πίστις 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 : ἐποικοδομεῖν ἐπὶ τὸν θεμέλιον τοῦτον. 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 : ἐποικοδομηθέντες ἐπὶ τῷ θεμελίῳ τῶν ἀποστόλων. The first is, however, to be preferred, because, as already remarked, with these verbs the dative mostly stands for ἐπί τι. Both explanations come essentially to the same thing.

ἑαυτούς is not here = ἀλλήλους; the discourse is indeed of a general, but not precisely of a mutual activity; ἑαυτούς with the second person creates no difficulty; comp. Php_2:12.

ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ προσευχόμενοι] The expression προσευχ. ἐν πν. ἁγ., it is true, does not elsewhere occur, but similar combinations are not rare (λαλεῖν ἐν πν. ἁγ., 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.

ἑαυτοὺς ἐν ἀγάπῃ Θεοῦ τηρήσατε] Θεοῦ 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, Fronmüller); 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 Gods love to us; comp. Rom_5:8 ff.

προσδεχόμενοι τὸ ἔλεος τοῦ κυρίου κ.τ.λ.] On προσδεχ., Tit_2:15.

τὸ ἔλεος τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν is the mercy which Christ will show to His own at His coming. Usually the idea ἔλεος 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.

εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον] may be joined either with ἔλεος (de Wette), or with προσδεχόμενοι (Schott), or with τηρήσατε (Stier, Hofmann); since the imperative clause forms the main point, the last-mentioned combination deserves the preference, especially as both in προσδέχεσθαι and in ἔλεος Ἰησ. Χρ. the reference to ζωὴ αἰώνιος is already contained. The prominence here given to the Trinity, πνεῦμα ἅγιον, Θεός, Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, 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] πίστις is the foundation, the θεμέλιος 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.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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.

Jud 1:20 . ὑμεῖς δὲ , ἀγαπητοί . Contrasted with the libertines, as in Jud 1:17 .

ἐποικοδομοῦντες ἐαυτοὺς τῇ ἁγιωτάτῃ ὑμῶν πίστει . For the spiritual temple, cf. 1Pe 2:3-5 ; Col 1:23 ; Eph 2:20-22 , ἐποικοδομηθέντες ἐπὶ τῷ θεμελίῳ τῶν ἀποστόλων καἰ προφητῶν , ὄντος ἀκρογωνιαίου αὐτοῦ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ κ . τ . λ ., 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, δυνηθήσεσθε οἰκοδομεῖσθαι εἰς τὴν δοθεῖσαν ὑμῖν πίστιν . Add Clem. Strom , v. p. 644, ἡ κοινὴ πίστις καθάπερ θεμέλιον ὑπόκειται . Usually Christ is spoken as the foundation or corner-stone of the Church, and we should probably assign an objective sense to τῇ πίστει here, as in Jud 1:3 above ( ἐπαγωνίζεσθαι τῇ πίστει ). Otherwise it might be explained of that faculty by which we are brought into relation with the spiritual realities (Heb 11:1 , πίστις ἐλπιζομένων ὑπόστασις , πραγμάτων ἔλεγχος οὐ βλεπομένων ), 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 , κομιζόμενοι τὸ τέλος τῆς πίστεως ὑμῶν , σωτηρίαν ψυχῶν ). 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 , ᾧ ἀντίστητε στερεοὶ τῇ πίστει .

ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ προσευχόμενοι . These words, contrasted with πνεῦμα μὴ ἔχοντες in Jud 1:19 , show how they are to build themselves up upon their faith. I understand them as equivalent to Jas 5:16 , δέησις δικαίου ἐνεργουμένη , where see note. Compare also Eph 6:18 , διὰ πάσης προσευχῆς προσευχόμενοι ἐν παντὶ καιρῷ ἐν πνεύματι , Rom 8:26-27 .

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Resuming Jde 1:17.

building up yourselves--the opposite to the "separate themselves" (Jde 1:19): as "in the Holy Ghost" is opposed to "having not the Spirit."

on--as on a foundation. Building on THE FAITH is equivalent to building on Christ, the object of faith.

praying in the Holy Ghost-- (Rom 8:26; Eph 6:18). The Holy Spirit teaches what we are to pray for, and how. None can pray aright save by being in the Spirit, that is, in the element of His influence. CHRYSOSTOM states that, among the charisms bestowed at the beginning of the New Testament dispensation, was the gift of prayer, bestowed on someone who prayed in the name of the rest, and taught others to pray. Moreover, their prayers so conceived and often used, were received and preserved among Christians, and out of them forms of prayer were framed. Such is the origin of liturgies [HAMMOND].

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

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.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

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. 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 (Romans 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.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(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 one’s foundation is the same as having Christ as one’s 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 virtues—Faith, Hope, and Charity—are inculcated here, although at first sight we are tempted to think so. God’s 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.”

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

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.”

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

But ye, beloved,.... See Gill on ,

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.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

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.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Building yourselves. That is, raising by your actions a spiritual building, founded 1. upon faith; 2. on the love of God; 3. upon hope, whilst you are awaiting for the mercies of God, and the reward of eternal life; 4. joined with the great duty of prayer. (Witham)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

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.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

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.

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.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 20-23. From these corrupters of the Church, who have occupied his pen so long and so painfully, Jude now turns direct to his readers and brings his "subject to a fitting close, with a couple of exhortations full of a wise and tender concern. One of the two counsels deals with what they should do for the protection of their own Christian position against the insidious evils of which he has written in words of passion. The other deals with what they should do for the preservation of others exposed to the same seductive perils. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith. The tone of pleading affection appears in the grave and earnest words by which he reminds his readers of the necessity of looking carefully to their own perseverance. As the condition of all else, he names the great duty of personal edification or up-building. They must strengthen themselves on their foundation, and that foundation is their "most holy faith." By this apparently Jude does not mean simply the subjective grace or virtue of faith. Peter, indeed, speaks of the strengthening and development of that as the secret of being neither barren nor unfruitful. But the idea and the phrase seem somewhat different here; for any spiritual gift of their own would be all too weak a security. It is rather the "faith" which has been already mentioned as "once delivered unto the saints" (verse 3), and is now conceived as possessed by the readers. In this faith, of which Christ himself is the Sum, they have a secure foundation for their renewed life, and on this faith they are to establish themselves more and more.

Praying in the Holy Ghost. These words go best together, though some attach the term, "in the Holy Ghost," to the former clause. They express a second condition which must be made good, if the readers are to be safe from the seductions which threaten them. Their Christian life, if it is to be proof against these evils, must be fed by prayer, and by prayer of the deepest and most effectual order prayer which takes its life and power from the Holy Spirit. (cf. Eph_6:18 Rom_8:26) Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. The "love of God" must have a sense parallel to that of the "mercy of Christ." It is, therefore, not our love to God, but his love to us. The love which God is revealed in Christ to have to us is that in which they are to keep themselves. So long as they live within its grace they cannot but be secure against the corruptions of men. If they fall away from it, they become an easy prey. And keeping themselves in this love, they are to "look for mercy." They are then entitled to expect that mercy, and the attitude of expectation will itself be an aid to the keeping of themselves in the love. The mercy of the future is here spoken of as specifically the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ; Jude having in view that advent of Christ which filled the immediate horizon of the early Christians, and to which they looked with an intensity of expectation to us very partially realizable, as the event which would speedily reveal every man"s work and in which mercy would triumph over judgment for the faithful. And this mercy, or, as it also maybe, this expectation, is further described as having nothing less than eternal life for its object and its certain end. So the central idea in this counsel is the necessity of holding by the revealed fact of God"s love in Christ. The first two clauses point to the means by which this is to be made good, and the last clause expresses an attitude of soul which is at once an extension of the central duty and a help to it. And of some have compassion, making a difference: and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire. The readings here are so diverse, and so difficult to determine, that some of our best critics take this to be one of the passages in which we have to recognize a corruption of the primitive text now past certain correction. The Received Text is clearly in error at least in one important term. The word which it renders "making a difference," as if it referred to the readers, is in the same case with the "some," and refers to the persons who are to be dealt with. It is doubtful, too, whether we have three different classes of persons referred to in three distinct hortatory sentences, or only two such classes. The most recent and best of our English students of the text, Messrs. Westcott and Hort, adopt readings which differ in some respects from those of the Authorized, but agree with it in presenting only two classes of persons. The Revised Version, following many good authorities, both ancient and modern, prefers another form of text with a triple division. Accepting this, we have still more than one uncertainty to take account of. In the first of the three clauses there is the difficulty of deciding between two readings, one of which gives us "on some have mercy," while the other yields the sense "some convict," that is to say, bring their sin home to them, or refute their error. The preference is to be given, on the whole, though with some hesitation, to the former of these readings, which is also the more difficult of the two. There is also the difficulty of determining the precise idea expressed by the participle in the same clause. It appears clear enough that it cannot have the sense assigned it by the Authorized Version, namely, that of "making a difference." But setting this aside, we have still to choose between two ways of taking it. It may have the sense of hesitating or doubting; in which case the class of persons referred to will be those who are not wholly gone in unbelief, but are on the way to it. Such persons are to be regarded as fit objects for anxious, considerate, pitiful treatment. This is a sense which the word undoubtedly bears in several passages of the New Testament. (Jam_1:6; also Mat_21:21 Mar_11:22 Rom_4:20) It has also the sanction of the Revised Version, which renders it, "And on some have mercy, who are in doubt." But it may also have the sense of contending, and the fact that it has already been so used in the present Epistle (verse 9) is a weighty consideration in favour of this view. The rendering then might be, "Some compassionate, when they contend with you" (so Alford, etc.). In tide case the class referred to will be the contentious, of whom there might be different kinds, some more hopeful and reasonable, others less so. Men of this spirit are to be tried first with kindness and consideration. Even when they oppose you and draw off from you, be pitiful toward them; take a compassionate, helpful interest in them. The second clause is best rendered with the Revised Version, "And some save, snatching them out of the fire." This brings a different class of persons into view those who have sunk into corrupt courses which will soon undo them, who are already, indeed, in the penal fires of wrong, but yet are not beyond the possibility of rescue if quick and vigorous measures are taken with them. It is generally supposed that Jude has in view here the figure of the "brand plucked from the burning," which occurs in Zec_3:2. If so, the position in which this second class stands is represented as one of the last possible peril. The terms are strong and vivid enough for this. They mean that there is no time to lose, that all depends upon the prompt use of efficient measures, however forcible and unwelcome. The third clause then runs, "And some compassionate with fear." It points to a class who are to be dealt with in the same way as the first class. Yet there is a difference between them. This third class of persons is more dangerous to those who seek their good. They too are to be tried with active, helpful pity; but this is to be done "with fear." In their case the life is so treacherous, the error so insidious, that their Christian benefactors incur grave risk in coming to close terms with them, and require to practice an anxious vigilance lest they be themselves led astray. Hating even the garment spotted by the flesh. The idea of "filthy garments" occurs in the same passage of Zechariah already referred to, and the term" garment" (here the tunic, or inner robe) is elsewhere used in a figurative sense. (Rev_3:4) Here it points to everything that is in contact with pollution. The clause seems to be added in order to give greater emphasis to the need of "fear" in dealing with men of the kind in question. Not only are their impurities to be zealously avoided, but all the accessories of these impurities everything, in short, that is in any way connected with them. If this is the case, then this last is the most dangerous and hopeless of the three clauses mentioned. They are those "on whom profound pity is all that we dare bestow, and that in fear and trembling, lest by contact with them we may be brought within the influence of the deadly contamination that clings to all their surroundings" (Plummet). Only the pity which is to be shown them is not mere feeling, but a compassion which implies some active, though anxious interest in their rescue.

Vers. 20, 21. The law of Christian safety to keep ourselves in the love of God.

"Keep yourselves in the love of God," etc. The soul"s one asylum and retreat is the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. The act of grace which calls us to the Christian life introduces us to the knowledge of that love, and brings us within its pavilion. The sum of all subsequent Christian duty is to be true to it; the sum of all Christian wisdom is to suffer nothing to turn us away from it. But our continuance within it demands that we persevere in building up the structure of a holy life on the foundation of the faith given us; that we nourish and strengthen that life by prayer, and that we keep the eye of expectation on the future. The Christian life, too, is necessarily a progressive life. Growth is its security against decay, and its protection against temptation. And the prayer that nourishes and strengthens is prayer in the" Holy Ghost prayer prompted by him, directed in its subjects and its frames by him, interpreted in its deep and unutterable longings by him. "So great is the sloth and coldness of our carnal nature," says Calvin, "that no one can pray as he ought unless moved by the Spirit of God; even as we are so prone to distrust and fear that no one dare call God "Father" save by the dictation of the same Spirit. Hence comes the desire, hence the earnestness and vehemence, hence the activity, hence the confidence of obtaining, hence, finally, those unutterable groanings of which St. Paul speaks. Therefore not without cause does Jude teach them that none can pray as he ought save by the guidance of the Spirit." The judicial decisions of the future are committed to the Son of man. The hope of mercy in the day of his coming is one of the gifts of the regenerating and sanctifying Spirit. That hope is the light which brightens the believer"s path in the darkened present, and makes him proof against the seductions of sin and error. The expectation of that mercy is the inspiration of his courage; it is the call from beyond the stars which makes it easy for him to hold by the love and truth of God, and bid away whatever would tempt him to depart from these.

Vers. 20, 21. Exhortation to the saints to build up their own spiritual life as the grand security against apostasy.

I WORKING UPON THE FOUNDATION OF FAITH IS THE ONLY MEANS OF OUR SPIRITUAL SELF-PRESERVATION. "But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God.

1. The foundation. "Your most holy faith." This is faith objective, not subjective; the doctrine of faith rather than the grace of faith. It is true that Christ is our only Foundation, but he is so as revealed to faith, and he can only become so through faith. We build upon Christ by building upon his Word. We receive him as he is offered in the gospel.

(1) It is "your faith," because it is "delivered to the saints" (verse 4); because the saints were "delivered into it"; (Rom_7:5) because it was for the salvation of their souls. (1Pe_1:9)

(2) It is "your most holy faith," because

(a) every word of God is pure;

(b) the covenant is holy;

(c) it works holiness in the heart and life. (Joh 15)

2. The building up upon this foundation.

(1) The saints are to build themselves up. This is addressed, not to sinners, but to saints who have been already placed upon the foundation. The counsel is the same as that of Php_2:12, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." Jude writes to those who already possess the Spirit, through whom they already enjoy that inward and habitual grace which is to be used by believers according to their need and upon a sense of their deep responsibility. Yet believers are still in a true sense "God"s workmanship"; (Eph_2:10) and it is "the Lord who builds the house". (Psa_127:1)

(2) The building implies a various and skilful use of the materials necessary to that end. Faith, love, hope, patience, watchfulness, knowledge, are to be the gold, silver, precious stones, built upon this broad foundation. We are to grow in grace, and grow up in Christ in all things, adding to faith all the virtues (2Pe_1:5-7) and all the graces of the Spirit. (Gal_5:22, Gal_5:23)

II TRUE PRAYER THE ONLY MEANS OF BUILDING OURSELVES UP. "Praying in the Holy Spirit.

1. There is no prayer without the Spirit. (Rom_8:26) The Spirit suggests the matter of prayer; without him "we know not what to pray for." He instructs us to ask for things according to God"s will. The Spirit suggests the true manner of prayer.

(1) It must be "in sincerity and truth.

(2) In fervour: "With groanings.

(3) In faith: "Nothing wavering.

(4) In holiness; for the Spirit of supplication is always a Spirit of grace.

(5) In love; for we are to lift holy hands without wrath, and the Spirit makes us at peace with ourselves.

1. Without prayer a man shows himself to be destitute of the Spirit.

2. What a resource have the saints in the building up of their spiritual life!

III THE SELF-PRESERVING END TOWARD WHICH ALL THIS SPIRITUAL EFFORT IS DIRECTED. "Keep yourselves in the love of God.

1. This is not our love to God, but God"s love to us, in which we dwell as in a region of safety in a watch-tower," says Calvin; for it is parallel to the saying of our Lord, "Abide ye in my love". (Joh_15:9) "How great," says Jenkyn, "how fall, a good is God!" In him is all fullness of grace, of joy, of safety, springing out of his infinite love. "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him". (1Jn_4:16)

2. Our preservation in the midst of heresy and impiety depends on our dwelling in God"s love.

3. We cannot keep ourselves in God"s love without having our own love deeply stirred. This breastplate of love will be a preservative against seduction. (1Th_5:8)

4. We ought continually to pray that the love of God may be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. (Rom_5:5)

5. Saints ought ever to know and believe that love. (1Jn_4:16)

IV THE EXPECTATION THAT IS LINKED TO THIS GUARDIANSHIP WITHIN THE SPHERE OF GOD"S LOVE. "Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

1. The object of this expectation.

(1) It is Christ"s mercy, because:

(a) He procured it by his merit.

(b) He applied it to us by his Spirit.

(c) He holds out its crowning blessings in the future day of judgment: "Come, ye blessed of my Father." There is "a crown of righteousness in that day." He is "to present us faultless before the presence of glory" (verse 24).

(d) There is no mercy apart from Christ.

2. The expectation itself. This implies

1. a confident belief in the reality of this mercy;

2. warm desire for it;

3. patient waiting for it; (Heb_6:12)

4. a joyful foretaste of it; (Rom_5:2 1Pe_1:8)

5. the love of his " appearance ". (2Ti_4:8)

3. The final issue of the expected mercy. "Eternal life." This is the true life of man. In its final glory it implies the function of God"s presence. Augustine says, "Heaven is a low thing without God." Our happiness finds its end in everlasting communion with God.

4. The effects which this expectation ought to exercise upon us. It ought

1. to preserve us against error and sin;

2. to quicken our zeal;

3. to make us faithful in the discharge of all duty;

4. to make us patient in the endurance of trial. T.C.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

But ye, beloved, not separating, but building yourselves up in your most holy faith - Than which none can be more holy in itself, or more conducive to the most refined and exalted holiness. Praying through the Holy Spirit - Who alone is able to build you up, as he alone laid the foundation. In this and the following verse St. Jude mentions the Father, Son, and Spirit, together with faith, love, and hope.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

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.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

20. “But you, beloved, building up yourselves in your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.”

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

20–23. Building up yourselves. Instead of separating from the faith. Praying in the Holy Spirit. See notes on Eph. 6:18.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

Connecting Statement:

Jude tells the believers how they should live and how they should treat others.

But you, beloved

"Do not be like them, beloved. Instead"

build yourselves up

Becoming increasingly able to trust in God and obey him is spoken of as if it were the process of constructing a building. (See: Metaphor)

Keep yourselves in God's love

Remaining able to receive God's love is spoken of as if one were keeping oneself in a certain place. (See: Metaphor)

wait for

"eagerly look forward to"

the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that brings you eternal life

Here "mercy" stands for Jesus Christ himself, who will show his mercy to the believers by making them live forever with him. (See: Metonymy)

translationWords

beloved

holy

faith

pray

Holy Spirit

love

mercy

Jesus

eternity

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

20. ἐποικοδομοῦντες … πίστει. Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians (iii. 2) seems to contain a reminiscence of this (Bigg and Mayor). “If you study the epistles of the blessed Apostle Paul, δυνηθήσεσθε οἰκοδομεῖσθαι εἰς τὴν δοθεῖσαν ὑμῖν πίστιν.” St Paul often uses the metaphor of building, notably in Eph 2:20 sqq. The solidarity of the brotherhood is contrasted with the divisions introduced by the ἀποδιορίζοντες.

πίστει, used very much as in Jud 1:3.

ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ προσευχόμενοι, cf. Eph 6:18 προσευχόμενοι ἐν παντὶ καιρῷ ἐν πνεύματι.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

20-23.] Concluding exhortation to the readers: and a) vv. 20, 21, as to their own spiritual life. But ye, beloved (resumed from ver. 17), building up yourselves (ἑαυτους, not = ἀλλήλους, but as in Php 2:12) upon (as a foundation) your most holy faith (the faith here is the foundation; viz., the fides quæ creditur, the object of faith. Bullinger (in Huther), “Vestræ 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 α and ω), praying in the Holy Spirit (as the means of thus building yourselves up. The expression προσεύχεσθαι ἐν πν. ἁγίῳ is not found elsewhere, but is in strict analogy with Scripture usage: cf. λαλεῖν ἐν πν. ἁγ., also Rom 8:26, Eph 6:18. Some, e. g. Luther, join ἐν πν. ἁγ. with what has gone before, and this is approved by De Wette: but surely προσευχόμενοι would not be left thus standing alone. De W. cites Œc. for this arrangement, but it is very doubtful whether he adopts it: ὑμεῖς δὲ τῇ ἁγιωτάτῃ ὑμῶν πίστει ἐποικοδομοῦντες, ἤτοι ἑαυτοὺς ἀνακτώμενοι ἐν πνεύματι ἁγίῳ, τουτέστι, κατὰ τὴν τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος διδασκαλίαν τὰς ἑαυτῶν ἀθροίσεις ἐν ταῖς προσευχαῖς ὑμῶν ποιούμενοι: where it is evident that there should be a period at ἀνακτώμενοι, and that προσευχόμενοι has been omitted, or perhaps was never expressed, after ἁγίῳ; at any rate the latter sentence is an explanation of ἐν πν. ἁγ. προσευχόυενοι), keep yourselves (aor. of the one great life-long act to be accomplished by the ἐποικοδομεῖν and προσεύχεσθαι) 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: θεοῦ being a subjective gen., “God’s love,” not objective, as Grot., Semler, Bengel, Vorstius, Arnaud, al. The expression is very like μείνατε ἐν τῇ ἀγάπῃ τῇ ἐμῇ, Joh 15:9, where κἀγὼ ὑμᾶς ἠγάπησα 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, ἐποικ. and προσευχόμενοι) the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ (viz. that which He will shew at His coming, τὸν εἰς τὴν ἐσχάτην ἡμέραν τῆς αἰωνίου ζωῆς βραβευόμενον ὑμῖν, Œc.: cf. Tit 2:13. Huther remarks that ἔλεος, 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 ἔλεος,—that mercy, whose issue shall be eternal life; or with προσδεχόμενοι,—as the issue and aim of the expectation; or with τηρήσατε,—as the final terminus of that watchful guarding. Perhaps the right choice between the three will be to combine the two last: for προσδεχόμενοι is subordinate and conditional to τηρήσατε: “keep yourselves … in expectation of … unto”). The direct and studied reference to the Blessed Trinity will not escape the reader.

b) vv. 22,

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

20. ἐποικοδομοῦντες … πίστει. Ἑαυτούς respresents ὑμᾶς αὐτούς; see Mat 3:9, Mat 3:16:8; Blass, p. 35. For the superlative, ἁγιωτάτῃ, see 2Pe 1:4. Here, as there, it is intensive (“most holy,” not “holiest”); the true superlative being exceedingly rare in the New Testament; see Blass, p. 33. Πίστις is again fides cui creditur, as in ver. 3. We may translate “building yourselves up by means of your most holy faith,” or “upon your most holy faith”; though, in this latter sense, ἐποικοδομεῖν is followed by ἐπί with accusative in 1Co 3:12, and by ἐπί with dative in Eph 2:20.

προσευχόμενοι is best taken with ἐν ἁγίῳ Πνεύματι: the believer prays in the Holy Spirit, as the prophet speaks in the Holy Spirit, 1Co 12:3. It is possible to translate, with Luther, “build yourselves up by (or on) faith, in the Holy Spirit, through prayer.”

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.