Having urged his readers to contend for the faith and learn from the past, Jude used the closing section of his letter to call them to remembrance, perseverance, and mercy. As Alistair Begg reminds us in the sermon “Keeping and Remembering,” while our salvation is grounded in the work of Christ, the evidence of our salvation is in our continuance. Looking to the Puritan writer William Jenkyn for guidance, Alistair points out three practical ways we can follow Jude’s instruction to “keep yourselves in the love of God” (v. 21):
Number one: Keep yourself “in a constant hatred of all sin.” … For “as love to sin grows, love to God [diminishes].”1 So I cannot keep myself in the love of God if I’m playing fast and loose with willful sin, if I’m allowing myself luxuries, privileges that are not those that are to be enjoyed by the child of God. …
Secondly, keeping ourselves in the love of God means “keeping ourselves in the delight of [the friends of God].”2 “In the delight of [the friends of God].” Now, we understand that we do not isolate ourselves from the world, you know? The Bible makes that clear. The boat has to be in the water, but the water hasn’t got to be in the boat. But, you know, there are only a few friends you can have in the world in any case, and we want to make friends of the friends of God to help us. I need people who are godly. …
And also, thirdly, he says that you need to keep yourself … “in [the] delight of the ordinances.”3 “In [the] delight of the ordinances”—baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the importance of these signs and seals of our relationship with God. … You can’t keep yourself in the love of God while you avoid the means of grace, for the means of grace are given to enable us to keep ourselves in the love of God.
William Jenkyn, An Exposition upon the Epistle of Jude (London: Samuel Holdsworth, 1839), 345. ↩︎
Jenkyn, 345. ↩︎
Jenkyn, 345. ↩︎
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