THE VERSE
To those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ. ~Jude 1Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. ~Jude 21
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, ~Jude 24
THE THOUGHT
Today's Daily Verse is actually three verses, all from the short, one-chapter letter of Jude. This letter's central premise is found in three places- the very beginning, the middle, and the very end of the letter. You can see the command in Jude 21: "Keep yourselves in the love of God." This may sound like a frightening task- you mean it's up to my wavering commitment to keep myself in God's love?- but we should never read the imperative commands of Scripture outside their context of indicative gospel statements.Yes, the command is there- "Keep yourselves in the love of God"- and tomorrow's Daily Verse will deal with that verse and how Jude gives us practical wisdom as to how to do that. But what we need to see today is that the command to keep ourselves in the love of God is bracketed and embraced by two precious gospel statements. The command to keep yourselves in the love of God is written "to those who are... kept for Jesus Christ.. And Jude's command is followed closely by one of the sweetest doxologies in the Bible, praise "to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling." Yes, we are to keep ourselves in the love of God. But we keep ourselves knowing that we are first and foremost kept by God.
This is how the gospel-centered Christian life is lived out. We keep ourselves in God's love, knowing that it is His love that is keeping us in Him. We love because He first loved us. We work hard to be holy, knowing that holiness is both possible and promised because we have been redeemed from all sin. We strive to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God who works in us both to will and to act according to His pleasure. In all of our "doing," we must never forget the "being" of the Gospel. All of our labor and effort in the Christian life, everything we do for God, is bracketed and embraced by what God has first done for us.
THE PRAYER
Father, Thank you for calling me out of my sin and darkness, loving me enough to send Your own Son to die in my place, and then keeping me for Him forever. Help me, in the confidence of the gospel, to keep myself in Your love. Help me to keep loving, keep serving, keep praying, and keep believing, knowing that it is all possible through Your Spirit who dwells in me, keeping me for You. Now to Him who is able to keep me from stumbling and to present me blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy, to the only God, my Savior, through Jesus Christ my Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.EXTENDED READING
Jude 1-25Philippians 2:12-13
1 Peter 1:15-19
1 John 4:9-19
THE QUOTE
“Incomprehensible and immutable is the love of God! For it was not after we were reconciled to Him by the blood of His Son that He began to love us, but He loved us before the foundation of the world, that with His only begotten Son we too might be sons of God before we were anything at all.” ~St. AugustineTHROUGH THE BIBLE IN A YEAR
Ezekiel 27-28Job 9:21-35
John 9:26-41
1 John 2:12-17
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