In Jude 1:20–21 Jude tells us that there are three ways in which we are to keep ourselves in the love of God: we are to build, pray, and wait.
The work of building is something we considered in the sermon outline for Jude 1:1–3 where we talked about loving, learning, and teaching doctrine. Like a soldier putting on armour for battle or an athlete training with weights, a Christian must grow in his knowledge and understanding of the most holy faith. If we are to be kept from false teaching, we must be well trained in the real thing.
It is almost like recognising fake money. If you want to help people recognise a fake, you could give them a nice PowerPoint presentation or you can give them a few examples to look at. But a better way is to give them lots of exposure to the real thing, so that they know how it smells, feels, and looks. The more familiar you are with real money, the easier it is to spot a fake. The same holds true for the Christian life. We do not prepare ourselves to resist false teaching by lots of exposure to clickbait sermons on YouTube or reading books of unorthodox people. That road leads to confusion and error. Instead, we prepare by making sure that we know the Bible and the key doctrines of the Christian faith, the doctrines we find in the confessions of the church.
A second way in which we remain in God’s love is to pray in the Spirit. Praying in the Spirit is not a reference to some special heavenly language or out of body experience, it simply means that we are to pray to our Father. You might remember in the book of Romans that Paul writes that it is the Spirit who prompts us to cry: Abba, Father
and it is the Spirit who testifies that we are God’s children (Romans 8:16–17). In reality there can be no other prayer than the one that is prompted by the Spirit. Presumably Jude mentions him specifically because he wants to contrast it with the false teachers. Where false teachers claim to have dreams and visions which allow them to indulge their sin, Christians pray for God’s help to fight against sin. We speak to our Father, we communicate with him. For any relationship to endure, it requires communication and we are to do the same if we seek to be kept in God’s love.
Finally there is the waiting. We are to wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Psalm 130:1–8 we sing about Israel waiting for the Lord and the same holds true for us. Even though we have the forgiveness of sins and the certainty of peace with God through the blood of Jesus, we are still looking forward to the final redemption. We are looking forward to the day when our sinful natures will finally be removed and we will be in the presence of God for all eternity. This reality encourages us not to go along with evil but to stand firm knowing that good will come.
This then is how we are to keep ourselves in the love of God: building, praying, and waiting. Where false teachers follow their instinct we seek to live as adopted sons and daughters in God’s family. Where false teachers divide we build up on the basis of God’s Word. Where false teachers are devoid of the Spirit we pray in the Spirit and where they scoff at the idea of Christ’s return we wait eagerly for it.
Remaining in God’s love does not mean that we are passive, sitting back, waiting for change to happen; it involves work. It is the work of keeping Christ’s commands, the work of gathering for worship, studying doctrine, being disciplined in prayer, the work of fighting sin as we patiently wait for our new resurrection bodies.
20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit,