Alexander MacLaren :: Keeping Ourselves in the Love of God (Jude 1:20, 21)

Keeping Ourselves in the Love of God

'But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, 21. Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.' — Jude 1:20, 21.

Jude has been, in all the former part of the letter. pouring out a fiery torrent of vehement indignation and denunciation against 'certain men' who had 'crept' into the Church, and were spreading gross immorality there. He does not speak of them so much as heretics in belief, but rather as evil-doers in practice; and after the thunderings and lightning, he turns from them with a kind of sigh of relief in this emphatic, 'But,ye! beloved.' The storm ends in gentle rain; and he tells the brethren who are yet faithful how they are to comport themselves in the presence of prevalent corruption, and where is their security and their peace.

You will observe that in my text there is embedded, in the middle of it, a direct precept: 'Keep yourselves in the love of God'; and that that is encircled by three clauses, like each other in structure, and unlike it — 'building,' 'praying,' 'looking.' The great diamond is surrounded by a ring of lesser jewels. Why did Jude put two of these similar clauses in front of his direct precept, and one of them behind it ? I think because the two that precede indicate the ways by which the precept can be kept, and the one that follows indicates the accompaniment or issue of obedience to the precept. If that be the reason for the structure of my next, it suggests also to us the course which we had best to pursue in the exposition of it.

1. So we have, to begin with, the great direct precept for the Christian life.

   'Keep yourselves in the love of God.' Now I need not spend a moment in showing that 'the love of God' here means, not ours to Him, but His to us. It is that in which, as in some charmed circle, we are to keep ourselves.

   Now that injunction at once raises the question of the possibility of Christian men being out of the love of God, straying away from their home, and getting out into the open. Of course there is a sense in which His 'tender mercies are over all His works.' Just as the sky embraces all the stars and the earth within its blue round, so that love of God encompasses every creature; and no man can stray so far away as that, in one profound sense, he gets beyond its pale. For no man can ever make God cease to love him. But whilst that is quite true, on the other side it is equally true that contrariety of will and continuance in evil deeds do so alter a man's relation to the love of God as that he is absolutely incapable of receiving its sweetest and most select manifestations, and can only be hurt by the incidence of its beams. The sun gives life to many creatures, but it slays soma There are crawling things that live beneath a stone, and when you turn it up and let the arrows of the sunbeams smite down upon them, they squirm and die. It is possible for a man so to set himself in antagonism to that great Light as that the Light shall hurt and not bless and soothe.

   It is also possible for a Christianman to step out of the charmed circle, in the sense that he becomes all unconscious of that Light. Then to him it comes to the same thing that the love shall be non- existent, as that it shall be unperceived. If I choose to make abode on the northern side of the mountain, my thermometer may be standing at 'freezing,' and I may be shivering in all my limbs on Midsummer Day at noontide. And so it is possible for us Christian people to stray away out from that gracious abode, to pass from the illuminated disc into the black shadow; and though nothing is 'hid from the heat thereof,' yet we may derive no warmth and no enlightening from the all-pervading beams. We have to 'keep ourselves in the love of God.'

   Then that suggests the other more blessed possibility, that amidst all the distractions of daily duties, and the solicitations of carking cares, and the oppression of heavy sorrows, it is possible for us to keep ourselves perpetually in the conscious enjoyment of the love of God. I need not say how this ideal of the Christian life may be indefinitely approximated to in our daily experiences; nor need I dwell upon the sad contrast between this ideal unbrokenness of conscious sunning ourselves in the love of God, and the reality of the lives that most of us live. But, brethren, if we more fully believed that we can keep up, amidst all the dust and struggle of the arena, the calm sweet sense of God's love, our lives would be different.

   Nightingales will sing in a dusty copse by the roadside, however loud the noise of traffic may he upon the highway. And we may have, all through our lives, that song, unbroken and melodious. That sub-consciousness underlying our daily work, 'like some sweet beguiling melody, so sweet, we know not we are listening to it,' may be ever present with each of us in our daily work, like some 'hidden brook in the leafy month of June,' that murmurs beneath the foliage, and yet is audible through all the wood.

   And what a peaceful, restful life ours would be, if we could thus be like John, leaning on the Master's bosom. We might have a secret fortress into the central chamber of which we could go, whither no sound of the war in the plains could ever penetrate. We might, like some dwellers in a mountainous island, take refuge in a central glen, buried deep amongst the hills, where there would be no sound of tempest, though the winds were fighting on the surface of the sea, and the spindrift was flying before them. It is possible to 'keep ourselves in the love of God.' And if we keep in that fortress we are safe. If we go beyond its walls we are sure to be picked off by the well-aimed shots of the enemy. So, then, that is the central commandment for the Christian life.

2. Now let me turn to consider the methods by which we can thus keep ourselves in the love of God.

   These are two: one mainly bearing on the outward, the other on the inward, life. By 'building up yourselves on your most holy faith': that is the one. By 'praying in the Holy Ghost': that is the other. Let us look at these two.

   'Building up yourselves on your most holy faith.' I suppose that 'faith' here is used in its ordinary sense, Some would rather prefer to take it in the latter, ecclesiastical sense, by which it means, not the act of belief, but the aggregate of the things believed. — 'Our most holy faith,' as it is called by quotation — I think mis-quotation — of this passage. But I do not see that there is any necessity for that meaning. The words are perfectly intelligible in their ordinary meaning. What Jude says is just this: 'Your trust in Jesus Christ has in it a tendency to produce holiness, and that is the foundation on which you are to build a great character. Build up yourselves on your most holy faith.' For although it is not what the world's ethics recognise, the Christian theory of morality is this, that it all rests upon trust in God manifested to us in Jesus Christ. Faith is the foundation of all supreme excellence and nobility and beauty of character; because, for one thing, it dethrones self, and enthrones God in our hearts; making Him our aim and our law and our supreme good; and because, for another thing, our trust brings us into direct union with Him, so that we receive from Him the power thus to build up a character.

   Faith is the foundation. Ay! but faith is only the foundation. It is 'the potentiality of wealth,' but it is not the reality. 'All things are possible tohim that believeth'; but all things are not actual except on conditions. A man may have faith, as a great many professing Christians have it, only as a 'fire-escape,' a means of getting away from hell, or have it only as a hand that is stretched out to grasp certain initial blessings of the spiritual life.

   But that is not its full glory nor its real aspect It is meant to be the beginning in us of 'all things that are lovely and of good report,' What would you think of a man that carefully put in the foundations for a house, and had all his building materials on the ground, and let them lie there?

   And that is what a great many of you Christian people do, who 'have fled for refuge,' as you say, 'to the hope set before you in the Gospel'; and who have never wrought out your faith into noble deeds. Remember what the Apostle says, 'Faith which worketh'; and worketh 'by love,' It is the foundation, but only the foundation.

   The work of building a noble character on that firm foundation is never- ending. 'Tis a life-long task 'till the lump be leavened.' The metaphor of growth by building suggests effort, and it suggests continuity; and it suggests slow, gradual rearing up, course upon course, stone by stone. Some of us have done nothing at it for a great many years. You will pass, sometimes, in our suburbs, a row of houses begun by Some builder that has become bankrupt; and there are mouldering bricks and gaping empty places for the Windows, and the rafters decaying, and stagnant water down in the holes that were meant for the cellars. That is like the kind of thing that hosts of people who call themselves Christians have built. 'But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith,... Keep yourselves in the love.'

   Then the other way of building is suggested in thin next clause, 'praying in the Holy Ghost' — that is to say, prayer which is not mere utterance of my own petulant desires which a great deal of our 'prayer' is, but which is breathed into us by that Divine Spirit that will brood over our chaos, and bring order out of confusion, and light and beauty out of darkness, and weltering sea: —

   'The prayers I make will then be sweet indeed,
   If Thou the Spirit give by which I pray.'

   As Michael Angelo says, such prayer inspired and warmed by the influences of that Divine Spirit playing upon the dull flame of our desires, like air injected into a grate where the fire is half out, such prayers are our best help in building. For who is there that has honestly tried to build himself up 'for a habitation of God' but has felt that it must be 'through a Spirit' mightier than himself, who will overcome his weaknesses and arm him against temptation? No man who honestly endeavours to reform his character but is brought very soon to feel that he needs a higher help than his own. And perhaps some of us know how, when sore pressed By temptation, one petition for help brings a sudden gush of strength into us, and we feel that the enemy's assault is weakened.

   Brethren, the best attitude for building is on our knees; and if, like Cromwell's men in the fight, we go into the battle singing,

   'Let God arise, and scattered Let all His enemies be,' we shall come out victorious, 'Ye, beloved, building and praying, keep yourselves.'

3. Now, lastly, we have here in the final clause the fair prospect visible from our home, in the love of God.

   'Looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.'

   After all building and praying, we need 'the mercy.' Jude has been speaking in his letter about the destruction of evil-doers, when Christ the Judge shall come. And I suppose that that thought of final judgment is still in his mind, colouring the language of my text, and that it explains why he speaks here of 'the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ' instead of, as is usual in Scripture, 'the mercy of God.' He is thinking of that last Day of Judgment and retribution, wherein Jesus Christ is to be the Judge of all men, saints as well as sinners, and therefore he speaks of mercy as bestowed by Him then on those who have 'kept themselves in the love of God.' Ah! we shall need it. The better we are the more we know how much wood, hay, stubble, we have built into our buildings; and the more we are conscious of that love of God as round us, the more we shall feel the unworthiness and imperfection of cur response to it. The best of us, when we lie down to die, and the wisest of us, as we struggle on in life, realise most how all our good is stained and imperfect, and that after all efforts we have to cry 'God be merciful to me a sinner.'

   Not only so, but our outlook and confident expectation of that mercy day by day, and in its perfect form at least, depends upon our keeping ourselves 'in the love of God.' We have to go high up the hill before we can see far over the plain. Our home in that love commands a fair prospect. When we stray from it, we lose sight of the blue distance. Our hope of 'the mercy of God unto eternal life' varies with our preset consciousness and experience of His love.

   That mercy leads on to eternal life. We get many of its manifestations and gifts here, but these are but the pale blossoms of a plant not in its native habitat, nor sunned by the sunshine which can draw forth all its fragrance and colour.

   We have to look forward for the adequate expression of the mercy of God to all that fulness of perfect blessedness for all our faculties, which is summed up in the one great word — 'life everlasting.'

   So our hope ought to be as continuous as the manifestation of the mercy, and, like it, should last until the eternal life has come. All our gifts here are fragmentary and imperfect. Here we drink of brooks by the way. There we shall slake our thirst at the fountainhead. Here we are given ready money for the day's expenses. There we shall be free of the treasure-house, where He the uncoined and uncounted masses of bullion, which God has laid up in store for them that fear Him. So, brethren, let us hope perfectly for the perfect manifestation of the mercy. Let us sot ourselves to build up, however slowly, the fair fabric of a life and character which shall stand when the tempest levels all houses built upon the sand. Let us open our spirits to the entrance of that Spirit who helps the infirmities of our desires as well as of our efforts. Thus let us keep ourselves in the charmed circle of the love of God, that we may be safe as a garrison in its fortress, blessed as a babe on its mother's breast.

   Jude's words are but the echo of the tenderer words of his Master and ours, when He said, 'As My Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide ye in My love. If ye keep My commandments ye shall abide in My love.'