Jude 20-21 – But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.
Over the Church universally, and churches locally like the one Jude writes to, is God. Throughout Jude, the entire Trinity appears. At the beginning of the letter, “God the Father” is mentioned. The Son of God is referred to as “Jesus Christ” twice, “Jesus” once, “our Lord Jesus Christ”, and “the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” On one occasion, “the Holy Spirit” is also mentioned as the power in our prayer and living in the love of God.
Jude keeps pointing believers up to God ruling and reigning over all the nonsense in culture that seeks to corrupt and compromise the church like a cancer. A doxology (taken from the ancient Greek word referring to a song or praise, honor, and glory) closes the book with an epic glorifying of God in triumph, “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, 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.”
In our day, like the days of Jude, there is generational apostasy commonly referred to as “wokeism”. Hard woke churches are, tragically, surrendering to a spiritual invasion from false teaching wolves on everything from gender to marriage, sexuality, and the embracing of beliefs and behaviors that are celebrated in parades but should be repented of by God’s people. Soft woke churches will not say hard things or speak much about what they are against but rather only what they are for. This is often fear of man, cowardice, and leads people into confusion rather than clarity.
As Jude exhorts, God’s people in every age need to “contend” for the unchanging truths of God’s Word. To do that, we need to get vertical, find God in glory as the true north on the compass of our soul, and spend much time in prayer and worship, going up to God to gain discernment about the spiritual war that rages around us.
What are the evil behaviors, which will result in eternal punishment from Jesus Christ, that Jude uses to warn people?
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