Jude 17-25

Jude 17-25 English Standard Version (ESV)
A Call to Persevere
17 But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. 18 They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.” 19 It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. 20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. 22 And have mercy on those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.

Doxology
24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

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We'll finish up the book of Jude here.  I recommend reading the entire book in one sitting if you can, but I simply split it up for the sake of how long the commentary was getting in the last blog.

Again we return to the idea of living in the end times and how the ungodly will feel even more emboldened to scoff and mock God with their words, their actions and their passions.  This is contrasted with the Christian who will build each other up instead of causing divisions and live by faith praying in the Holy Spirit instead of being devoid of the Spirit.

Jude then reminds us that we need to keep ourselves in the love of God (this goes back to the idea of abiding that we've talked about already).  It's something that we must actively do, even though it's something passive.  We must actively choose to find our rest in God's finished work.  We must choose to patiently wait for God's mercy (not getting what we do deserve) which will ultimately be fulfilled when we spend eternity in heaven with God.  Because we want mercy from God, we must be people who show mercy to others and because we wish to experience eternal life, we must want that for others and be about the work of the Great Commission.....going into all the world preaching the gospel to and making disciples of all people groups, teaching them to obey everything that has been commanded to them, but we must do so without corrupting ourselves and in so doing make God out to be a liar (essentially saying He didn't have the power to convert us and make us new) and lose our testimony and ruin the reputation of God in the process.

The book of Jude concludes with one of the most beautiful doxologies that many churches regularly use for their benediction. Christ is the one that gets all the praise and all the glory here and we simply enjoy the benefits of His protection and being presented to God blameless--not because of our work but because of His work that He has done on our behalf.  The Father has greatly exalted the Son so that Jesus will receive all the glory, majesty, dominion and authority--this is the way it has been, the way it is, and the way that it always will be.  Then Jude closes with the word "Amen" meaning we can all in agreement say "this is the truth."

For now, we're done talking about living in the end times.  We'll come back to this from time to time, but we will continue talking about living the Christian life and instructions that are given to Christians on how to live together, how to worship together and how to interact with those outside the Church.