If you are struggling with sin, a guilty conscience, and not knowing how you can overcome a particular sin, I think the first thing you need to know is that Jesus Christ loved you and gave himself for you. The apostle Paul says the secret to his ministry was that the love of Christ compelled him. If we are not putting sin to death and repenting of sin, if we are living careless and sloppy lives, it is because we have forgotten that God is love and that Christ loved us and died for us. Because when we remember the love of God and keep ourselves in the love of God, we will not want to sin, because we will remember what Christ did for us. And we will be motivated by that grace and that love to live for him who died for us and rose again.
It is beautiful the way that the gospel works. We think the gospel is this thing that just kind of gets us out of jail, when it is really this thing that fuels our entire life to live unto the Lord because he first loved us. It was not that you loved him...in fact, you hated God and you hated Jesus Christ before you were in him. That is what the Bible emphasizes—we hated God and one another, and God loved us and sent his Son to die for us. It is miraculous when you think about the love of Jesus. You have no idea how deep and great that love actually is. Paul calls it the length and depth and width and height of the love of Christ that passes knowledge, the infinite ocean of Jesus' love and the love of God the Father, for us. That is what transforms us. That is what protects us. We often times have this thought that if we just beat ourselves up when we are struggling with sin, or if we get tough with someone else when they are struggling with sin, then we are going to change and then they are going to change. But Jude does not say that. Notice what he says: keep yourselves in the love of God. That is God's love for you: keep yourselves meditating on, believing in, and resting in the love of God for you. Because if you are, you will not go and live a sexually immoral, openly sinful, and proud, unbelieving life.1
Nick Batzig
21 keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.