Jude 21: Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
One of the most treasured and cherished attributes of God is His love for us. The oft repeated demonstration of the love of God for us was in the death of Jesus Christ on the cross for our sins. But “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son [to be] the propitiation for our sins.” This love of God through Christ is the basis of our fellowship with Him.
Jude exhorts us to keep ourselves in the love of God. How do we keep ourselves in the love of God? Jesus said, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” If you think that Jesus is referring to a new list of commandments by which we keep ourselves in the love of God, you are missing the point. It is God’s grace that saves us and keeps us. We read “now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present [you] faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.” Because we are prone to have a legalistic fellowship with God and God desires through Jesus to have a loving relationship with us, we are exhorted to keep ourselves in the love of God. Jude tells us that we keep ourselves in the love of God by looking for the mercy of God. Thus, we keep ourselves in the love of a God as as we focus on the love and mercy of God through the cross of Jesus.
Dear ones, my exhortation to you this morning is to meditate on the love of God in sending His Son to die on the cross for our sin. Allow the truth of that love of God motivate you in all that you do in your prayer life and service.
