Study in the Epistle of Jude # 85: Verse 21

by Chris McCann

EBible Fellowship (http://www.ebiblefellowship.com)

Welcome to the Electronic Bible Fellowship’s Bible study. We are currently in the book of Jude. We have come to verse 21 of this wonderful little book that appears close to the end of the Bible, right before Revelation, and verse 21 says:

Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

As we have been doing (and this is really the best way to approach the Bible), we come to the Word of God looking at every phrase and every word as much as possible and looking at the verse as God writes it, not just picking and choosing and bouncing all around. As we are studying the Bible, this is the very thorough way of approaching it. As we go verse by verse, as we have been through this little Epistle of Jude, we take whatever God gives us. We are not picking and choosing our own subject matter; we are not focusing in on any one thing, but whatever God writes about, that is what we want to talk about. In keeping with that same methodology, we approach verse 21, which says:

Keep yourselves in the love of God…

How can we keep ourselves, as God is instructing us, in the love of God? We certainly want to do that. First of all, we have to ask the question, “Does this mean that we could find ourselves experiencing the love of God yet fall out of that type of relationship with God? Is it possible that God for some stretch of time could love us, but then if we do not keep ourselves in the love of God, God could grow angry and wrathful and vengeful towards us once again and we could fall out of the love of God?” The answer to that is no. That is not possible; that is not a possibility.

We know that once God saves someone, once God does the work of salvation in the life of a sinner, it means that the person then has their sins forgiven—past, present, and future. Every sin, every offense, every transgression they will ever commit against God has been paid for. This is why God can say that they now receive the gift of eternal life and that they will live forever (1 John 5:11). That would mean that God loves them and will eternally love them. Let us keep in mind what the Lord Jesus Christ said in Hebrews 13:5, where we read:

Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

These are the words of the bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is speaking to His bride, the body of believers. It is a marriage vow—”I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” Husbands and wives make these types of vows in their earthly marriage ceremonies and it is a very appropriate thing because that earthly marriage ceremony is picturing the spiritual marriage between Christ and His eternal church. “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee”—no matter what sin, no matter what befalls, God, the Lord Jesus Christ, will never forsake His spiritual bride, the body of believers. Once Christ saves us, that is it; all sin is forgiven. There could be nothing that we could possibly do that could separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38-39).

If that is true (and it is true; that is what the Bible says) then what is meant here by “Keep yourselves in the love of God”? We have to keep in mind what Jesus said three times in John 14, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” God is telling us that the demonstration of a believer’s love for God is in the keeping of the commandments, and the commandments are the whole Bible, the Word of God (Psalm 119:2). What God has commanded His people can be found in the Bible. Christ says, “If ye love Me, keep My commandments;” that is, do the will of God. Obey the Father; obey what the Bible tells us. Be obedient—do not be rebellious or usurp the authority of the Word of God. God is admonishing us and encouraging us, “Keep yourselves in the love of God.”

Why does it say here, “The love of God,” when Jesus was saying that we keep the commandments to demonstrate our love towards God? When we are showing evidence that God has saved us, part of the evidence of this would be the keeping of God’s commandments. God says in 1 John 2:3-4:

And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.

Of course, the “truth” is the Lord Jesus Christ. If the truth is not in an individual, then Christ is not in that individual and he is not truly born again. An evidence of salvation, rather, is when we keep the commandments of God. That is a demonstration of our love towards God, but God has said that we love Him only because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). That is, a child of God is able to keep the commandments of God to some degree more and more in their life only because God first has done a work of salvation. God has bestowed His grace and mercy upon the sinner and saved that sinner. God has showered him with the love of God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ dying for his sins. As a result of this, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, …faith (Galatians 5:22-23). Love will show itself and come forth as fruit. We will desire to do the will of God more and more. We will desire to keep the commandments of God. There will be a performance of this desire eventually in our life so that we will be able to do things God’s way.

What do we say? Is it, “Oh, we love God and we are keeping His commandments”? No, the fact that we are keeping the commandments of God is really a result of God’s love to us. Therefore as God is encouraging us, “Keep yourselves in the love of God,” He is telling us to walk in the truth of the light of the Word of God, and this would be because God has showed and displayed His love towards us.

Then it goes on to say in Jude 21:

…looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

We are walking along in the Christian life and we are looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Why are we looking for it? If we are a child of God, has God not already bestowed His mercy upon us? Yes He has, but God’s mercy will also be found in the completion of His salvation towards us when we receive our new resurrected body. That will be the fulfillment of the mercy of God. Actually, can we ever say that God’s mercy will be fulfilled? Not really, because in one sense, as the Bible indicates, the mercy of the Lord endureth forever (Psalm 136:1); it goes on and extends into eternity future. Wherever a believer is found in eternity future, the fact that we are found there is only a byproduct of the mercy of God. We will be a living demonstration of the fact that God is a merciful God as we continue to live into eternity forevermore.

In Ephesians 2:4-7, we read about God’s mercy. It says there:

But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

God begins by letting us know that He is rich in mercy. God is a merciful God; He is generous and compassionate and merciful. The fact that we can even talk about any kind of salvation plan at all shows that God is merciful. God would be perfectly just and right and no one could speak against Him in any way if He simply took every single human being of mankind who have sinned and rebelled against Him and transgressed His law and threw them all down to Hell. God would be right and just in doing so because we have broken the law of God and are therefore subject to spend eternity in Hell. It is as though we are all criminals; we are all transgressors of the law.

For example, let us think about the fallen angels led by Satan. He led a host of angels, a great number of the angels, who were created spirit beings, ministering spirits. Yet, there was a rebellion; Satan rebelled and took this host of angels with him in rebellion against God, because Satan desired to be like God and to make himself a supreme being as God is. We also know that Satan was in the garden and deceived Adam and Eve into rebelling against God.

Satan, because of his rebellion, is subject to spend eternity in Hell; and likewise all the fallen angels, known also as demons in the Bible, will be judged by God on the Last Day and thrown into the pit of Hell (Jude 1:6). God has made no salvation possible for them; there is no plan that God has worked out to save even one of these fallen angels. The Lord Jesus did not come to die for the sins of these angels. Christ did not come taking on Him a spirit being as an angel—He came taking on Him the seed of Abraham (Hebrews 2:16). He came as a human being to die for the sins of men. He did not make any provision for the sins of angelic beings on the Cross. In other words, these fallen angels sinned against God, God has judged them, they are guilty, and they are awaiting the final Day of Judgment when, most definitely, each and every single one of them who fell at that time with Satan will be cast into Hell. There is no provision for them; there is no salvation plan for any of the angels.

Do you hear anyone say that God is unfair because of that? Does anyone dare to say that God is not a just God because He has not provided salvation for any of the angels? No. What do we say? What do we think when we hear that God is going to throw Satan and those demons, those fallen angels, into Hell? We think, “Good riddance;” we are not saddened by that at all. Satan deserves to go to Hell, we think, as well as all those fallen angels; it is a just judgment of God.

Yet would God be any less just if He made no provision for man who has sinned against Him, just as much as Satan and the company of angels who fell sinned against Him? Would God be unjust or unrighteous in any way if He did not come to die for the sins of men but left mankind in the same predicament as Satan and those fallen angels are in? No, God would be just and right. It would be just as proper and judicial a decision to throw mankind into Hell, along with all the fallen angels, and to cast all these creatures who dared to rebel against the King of glory—these subjects who dared to rebel against the King of Heaven—into eternal damnation while providing no salvation for them at all.

Yet God is a merciful God. God is merciful; He delighteth in mercy (Micah 7:18). Ephesians 2:4 says that He is rich in mercy. Therefore, God develops a plan to save certain ones. Not all, it is true—He did not come to save every single human being. God developed a plan to save a great multitude, as many as the stars of the heavens for multitude as the Bible says, countless millions out of the human race; but certainly, countless billions will die the second death.

Because of this, there are those who in their arrogance and pride and ignorance make a charge against God. They say, “See, God does not save everyone. He is not just; it is not right that God only saves some.” They do not understand the great mercy and love of God and the great compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ in coming to take the sins of any one of these despicable, deceitful sinners who are nothing but wretches and criminals who have sinned against a holy God. Yet, God has come to take away all the sins of some.

To die for even one of these sinners would be an unmentionable act of greatness on the part of God in a wonderful demonstration of His mercy, yet God has saved many more than one; He has saved multitudes. He has taken those sins upon Himself and died for those sins. He died not just the physical death; it was not just the fact that Jesus had nails put into his hands and wore a crown of thorns and was whipped and bloodied and mocked and spit upon—those things are not the things that tremendously demonstrate the great glory of God in working out this salvation. Rather, the mind-boggling fact is that the Lord Jesus Christ endured and suffered in an agony the equivalent of an eternity in Hell for His people. Jesus went down into the depths of Hell; in other words, He paid the full penalty, as much as He had gone to Hell itself as He drank of the cup of God’s wrath and drank it dry.

This is the suffering that He had to endure to save sinners—not a good bunch of people, not people who were pure and holy, but dirty, rotten sinners. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). While we were yet sinners, yet shaking our puny little fist at God in total rebellion against Him, Christ died for us. Now if this does not show the mercy of God, I do not know what does.

Jude says, “Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.” How wonderful God is! How wonderful He is to grant us such mercy! If God had said, “Your sins are forgiven and I will not throw you into Hell, but after you live this life, upon your death, that will be it. It will be as though you were annihilated and you will cease to exist;” then we would have to cry out, “Oh God, Thou art merciful; Thou art a merciful God because Thou has forgiven us and pardoned our sins. You are not requiring of us that which is proper and just and right—that we should go to Hell. Thou art merciful.”

If God took it a step further and said, “I have saved you and I have forgiven your sins, you elect of God; I have washed them away. On top of that, not only will you not go to Hell because your sins are paid for and Jesus went to Hell and endured the equivalent of that in your place, but I will allow you to live one thousand years beyond the grave. One thousand years you will live;” we would have to say, “Oh, how merciful a God Thou art! How merciful and mighty and glorious You are to allow us to live an extension of time of one thousand years!”

If God said something like that, we would have to rejoice in the great compassion and love of God. Yet God does not say that. God, first of all, forgives us of that which we deserve, which is Hell, and He wipes the debt away. Our sins are no longer brought to remembrance. He has forgotten them and they are cast into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19); they are as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). Yet on top of that, He says, “You will not have to go to Hell, and I will give you life.” We ask, “How long, Lord, how long? Shall we live one thousand years?” “No.” “Shall we live ten thousand years?” “No, you will have eternal life; you will live forever. You will live in My presence forever. You will live without pain or tears or death at all; you will live without any type of trouble. You will receive a new resurrected body, a glorious spiritual body that I will equip you with. You will be perfect in body and soul. You will be holy as I am holy and righteous as I am righteous. You will be like Me, the Lord Jesus Christ. You will have a body that will be able to go on forevermore to exist and live with me in Heaven.”

How incredible this is! We can barely believe it. Is this true? Is this going to happen? Is this certainly going to come to pass? We know that the Bible is God’s book, that it is the Word of God, and we know that God cannot lie. He tells us so in His Word (Titus 1:2). We know that God says that He is truth Himself (John 14:6), yet this is too wonderful; it is beyond anything. It is just too good to be true, yet God tells us and assures us that this is exactly what He means. In Revelation 21:1-5, we read:

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

Can you believe it? The one whom God saves goes from the most awful condition imaginable—the condition of being under the wrath of God and subject to spend eternity in Hell, which is so terrible that you do not even want to think about it—to having all their sins forgiven and wiped away, washed away and cleansed. We are no longer subject to Hell. The debt has been paid, the price, the penalty, has been paid in full, and we are free. We are free to stand in God’s presence, we are free to enter into Heaven, and we are free to live forever with God. We will be living not with our aches and pains or with the sadness that overcomes us in this life, not with the sorrow that is a natural part of this world or with the tears and the crying that we shed constantly in this life. We will not be living with pain or with the awful realization that at some point we will die. We will not be living with death any longer, but we will be living in the very presence of this tremendous God in a body that is super wonderful and in a place that is super glorious—we will be living forever in Heaven.

God guarantees this and assures us that it will come to pass. He says these words. He knows what He said and what statements He has made. He knows whom He is talking to—He is talking to people who live in a sin-cursed world that is full of tears and sorrow and crying and death and pain. He knows that, so He must assure us. He assures us with the certification of His own Word, with the verification of His very being.