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A sermon on Jude 1:20–25
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Jude concludes his letter with a final word of hope for a church facing the constant threat of spiritual stumbling. Throughout his epistle, Jude has shown us example after example from Israel's history—false teachers infiltrating God's people, entire generations falling away. It's tempting to despair: if they couldn't avoid stumbling, what hope do we have?
But Jude's answer is both simple and profound: keep yourselves in the love of God.
Notice the specific wording carefully. Jude doesn't say "strive after the love of God" or "work to earn the love of God." The love of God is not something you obtain through effort. Rather, you are already in it—the question is whether you will stay there.
This is the essence of the gospel: you cannot earn God's love. God's love is given entirely as a gift of grace. When we're in heaven, absolutely perfect and sin-free, God will not love us any more than He does right now in this moment. His love is complete and freely bestowed.
Think of it like standing in the rain with someone holding an umbrella. The umbrella is theirs to hold. It's free for you—but you have to stay underneath it to benefit from it. If you wander away, the umbrella does you no good. God's love is always there, always offered. But you have to choose to remain under it.
Consider the Last Supper. Jesus sat between two disciples: John, whom He loved dearly, and Judas, who would betray Him. The Scriptures make clear that Jesus loved them both. Yet John leaned into Jesus's love, literally resting his head on His chest, while Judas stepped outside of it and went out to betray Him.
The love of God is for you this weekend. The cross has not moved. God has not changed his heart towards you. His offer still stands. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. That's got no expiration date on it.
If you are far from God today, you don't need to travel a thousand miles to reach Him. There is no great work of amends required. It takes only one step of faith and surrender to come home. The umbrella is here.
Jude gives us three specific ways to keep ourselves tethered to God's love. These are not ways to earn His love—they are ways to remain beneath His protection.
The first way is to fortify your mind in the truth of the gospel. The "most holy faith" refers to the deposit of truth given to us once for all through the apostles and recorded in Scripture.
It doesn't matter that you own a Bible. What matters is how much of that Bible is inside of you. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a British physician-turned-pastor, observed that most of our spiritual struggles come from listening to ourselves instead of talking to ourselves. We spend our days asking our hearts how they feel, when we should be telling our hearts what God's word says.
The most important sermons you will ever hear are not the ones preached from a pulpit. They are the ones you preach to yourself, day by day. You live in a world bombarded with corrupting messages—false teachings everywhere you look. You cannot hide from these voices. Your only defense is to have fortified your heart with God's truth.
It's like a scene from the movie The Rock: a soldier is exposed to a deadly green nuclear gas that eats through everything. He runs through corridors, but the gas follows him everywhere. His only hope is an antidote—a needle he must inject directly into his heart. That is what God's word is. The world—and your own flesh—conspires to corrupt you. There is nowhere to run. Your only hope is to get the gospel deep into your heart.
Some of you are trying to outrun discouragement, fear, or shame this weekend with little strategies to keep negative thoughts away. You can't. The gas never stops coming. Some of you are trying to outrun temptation—but there's nowhere to run. The answer isn't running faster. The answer is getting the gospel deeper.
Consider how well you are built up in the faith. Many of us know Taylor Swift's thoughts on love better than we know God's thoughts on love. We can finish the lyrics to popular songs but stumble over the great promises of Scripture.
Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
These are not obscure verses. They are key promises. Yet if I asked you to finish them, how many would hesitate? Meanwhile, we've all memorized the chorus of a dozen pop songs.
Here are practical steps to build yourself up in the faith:
Fill your heart and mind with God's promises rather than meaningless noise—secular music, random conversation about sports statistics. Make your first priority each morning to get with God.
The Christian life is not merely a knowledge thing. It's a spiritual power thing. Filling your head with theological facts is not enough. The promises of Scripture must become cries for help by which you release the very resurrection power of God.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said it well: "I spend half my time telling Christians to study doctrine and the other half telling them doctrine is not enough."
This Bible is not just a book of facts. It's a book of promises—over 3,000 of them. Many are activated by prayer alone. A promise is just words on a page until you pick it up and claim it through prayer. Don't merely read through your Bible each morning—pray through it. Any passage that doesn't lead you to cry out to God for help, you've read it wrongly.
Notice that Jude says we pray "in the Holy Spirit." Prayer is not a one-way conversation in which you tell God things He already knows. Rather, prayer is two-way communion with God. There is a fellowship aspect to it. This is what makes Christianity dynamic and fresh.
You're not praying to a distant God or learning historical facts about a man who walked the earth 2,000 years ago. You are communing with a present Spirit who is active within you right now.
The Holy Spirit appears 59 times in the book of Acts. In 36 of those instances, He is speaking. Some say, "That was then, back in the days of the apostles." But listen: that book of Acts is the only narrative account God gave us describing what it looks like to walk in the Spirit. Are we really saying that every story in that book describes people we have nothing in common with?
John Newton, author of Amazing Grace, asked: "How could it be possible that that which was so essential to the spiritual life of the early church has become irrelevant in ours?"
Here's how I practice this in my own prayer time. I divide my prayer time into categories—groups of people and concerns I pray through on various days of the week. As I pray for each person, I ask God: "If you have something specific you want me to pray for this person, some promise you want me to claim for them, some word of encouragement or warning, put it on my heart."
Often, I will simply stop and listen. The first thing that pops into my heart, I don't automatically assume it's from the Holy Spirit—but it might be. So I start there. Sometimes this prompts me to say to a friend, "When I was praying for you, this promise really came into my heart. I don't know for sure, but I wonder if God wants to say this to you right now." And more than once, that friend has said, "That is exactly what I needed to hear."
I want to be clear: much of the Christian life means walking by faith when you're not feeling anything. Many mornings, I don't get up and feel warm fuzzies. But still, Jude says that an important part of keeping yourself in God's love is praying in the Holy Spirit—not just praying, but praying in communion with Him.
The third way to keep yourself in God's love is to live in earnest expectation of Jesus's return. An important component of staying tethered to God's love is living with constant awareness that Jesus could come at any moment.
I grew up in a church culture heavy on rapture teaching. We had yearly prophecy conferences, end-times films with live-action guillotines, detailed charts about which political figures represented the seven-headed beast of Revelation. I was so convinced Jesus could come at any moment that as a child, if my parents didn't answer when I called upstairs, I would panic and run up in terror, certain I'd find their empty clothes—that I'd been left behind.
But I'd suggest that churches like ours now have the opposite problem. We rarely think or talk about Christ returning anymore. Ask yourself: when was the last time you had the thought, "Today might be the day of Jesus's return"?
Yet Jude says that keeping yourself in God's love means living in a posture of expectation. The second coming of Christ is mentioned roughly 1,845 times in Scripture. It's the most talked-about doctrine in the Bible—because the apostles understood that we won't live rightly until we learn to live expectantly.
Without expectation of Christ's return, suffering feels devastatingly permanent. This is as good as life gets. Criticism from others cuts you to the core and defines you. Materialism becomes irresistibly compelling: "YOLO—this is life. Get what you can and hold on to it."
But if you don't see life as brief and Christ as close, the pull of comfort and luxury becomes too strong to resist. You stay involved in church, perhaps, but your real passion is in accumulating things. You take vacations constantly, buy new possessions, multiply your wealth.
Similarly, without expectation of Christ's return, sinful temptations become nearly impossible to resist. You encounter a temptation and think, "I know that's wrong, but what is life if I can't have this pleasure?" You're in an unfulfilling marriage and see the opportunity for adultery, and you think, "Is life even worth living if this miserable marriage is all I get? I need this simple pleasure to feel alive."
That's how sin works. You forget the brevity of life and the nearness of Christ, and you start living as if this world is all there is.
But if you know He's returning soon and you live in a posture of waiting, you'll endure all of these things.
I have a hard time turning down a snack when I'm hungry—unless I know a big meal is coming soon. If I don't know when my next meal is, I can't say no to a candy bar. But if I know you're taking me to a deluxe steak dinner with appetizers, sides, and dessert, I will easily say no to the candy bar out of anticipation.
Thomas à Kempis said it more eloquently: "To him whom eternity is sweet can easily part with earthly things." If you know heaven is indescribably sweet, you can forego earthly pleasures.
Now, some of you might ask: "Didn't Jude tell his readers to live in earnest expectation of Jesus's return? It's been 2,000 years and He still hasn't come. Were the apostles wrong?"
No. The attitude of readiness is more about your posture toward this world than about knowing the specific timeline. God wants us to live with the constant awareness that this world is not our home. Yes, Jesus really could come today. He could come before you pull out of the parking lot. He could come before I finish this sentence.
If you really believed that, you would take sin more seriously and suffering less seriously. You wouldn't put repentance on tomorrow's to-do list. You would live differently.
But Jude doesn't stop there. After showing us how to keep ourselves in God's love, he shows us how to help others stay in it too. Christianity is never a solo project. It's something we do together.
Have mercy on those who doubt. Save others by snatching them out of the fire. To others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
Jude tells us we must approach different struggling people differently, depending on who they are and what their heart condition is.
Some people need compassion. "Have mercy on those who doubt." The word mercy here describes how a parent treats a child who has fallen down—speaking gently and tenderly.
Others need confrontation. "Snatch them out of the fire." This phrase likely references Lot, who became seduced by life in Sodom and Gomorrah, corrupting his family. God sent angels who literally took Lot and his family by the hand and pulled them out of the city before it was destroyed by fire.
I'm reminded of a UNC baseball player who years ago would go into his teammates' rooms on Sunday mornings and literally pull the covers off them, telling them they were going to church. They'd protest, hungover, but he'd drag them out of bed. They'd arrive at our service still hungover and reeking, but they were there. We baptized several of them. One later became one of our church planters.
Jesus did both. He loudly denounced the Pharisees—and He also sat down intimately with Pharisees like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, having gentle, tender conversations with them.
How do you know which approach to use? It depends on their heart. I've counseled teenagers struggling with same-sex attraction who were deeply confused and in pain—who couldn't understand why God hadn't immediately removed the attraction when they prayed. Some had been villainized by family and friends, made to feel barely human. What they needed in that moment was compassion and kindness, even as I spoke truth plainly.
I've also encountered people brazen and defiant in their sexual rebellion, convinced they are wiser than God. With them, I take a more prophetic tone.
But in both cases, you must tell the full truth. Jude says we "warn them, hating even the garment stained by the flesh"—a euphemism for sexual sin.
I know what our culture is like right now. Many of us, in the name of gentleness and toleration, will not speak truth to a friend caught in sexual sin. That is not love. That is cowardice. Sexual sin and gender confusion have devastating effects on those who embrace them. If you love somebody, you will warn them. Love tells the truth. Love warns. Love confronts. Love runs into burning houses to snatch people from the fire.
But ultimately, Jude ends his letter with the most important truth:
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.
Jude says, "You keep yourselves in the love of God" (verse 21), and then concludes, "Now to Him who is able to keep you" (verse 24). It's a beautiful parallelism. Only Jesus can ultimately keep you.
It's like my children when they were little, standing with me in the ocean. I told them: it's not the strength of their hold on me that keeps them safe in the crashing waves. It's the strength of my hold on them. If it were up to any of us, we'd lose hold of Jesus and wander out from under the protection of His love.
Recently, one of my children brought up the passage in Luke where Jesus tells Peter, "Satan has desired you, Peter, to sift you like wheat." My child asked, "Dad, if Jesus knew Satan was going to sift Peter like wheat and Jesus was going to pray for him, why didn't He pray that Satan would leave Peter alone?"
Jesus answered differently: "No, I'm going to pray something better for you, Peter. I'm going to pray that God will give you faith to endure Satan's attack."
Had Jesus not prayed that for Peter, Peter would have permanently fallen away. What kept Peter grounded was Jesus's prayer for him—that promise. What Jesus prayed is what kept Peter in the faith.
Christian, that's your hope too. Jesus this morning is praying for you.
Maybe you feel weak. He never grows weary. God's word tells us: "Those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength. They will mount up on wings like eagles. They will fly spiritually."
Maybe you feel like you've messed up too many times and there's no hope. Jesus says: "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning."
When you're tired and ready to give up, He's just getting started.
The gospel is that God did not choose you because you were righteous. He didn't choose you because you were strong. He chose us when we were guilty and dead in our sins, when we weren't even looking for Him. He stepped into our lives and gave us His righteousness and His life.
If God didn't look to your righteousness or strength to save you, He's not looking to those things to keep you either.
Maybe you've fallen again and again and you're not sure why you should even try to stand up anymore. I'll tell you why: 2,000 years ago in a cold, dark grave, a dead man came back to life. He stood up. And when you don't have the power to stand up, He stands up in you. Your future is no longer defined by the failures of your past. Your future is defined by an empty tomb.
Jude doesn't conclude by saying, "Now to those of you strong in faith." He ends: "Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling." If you make it, it will be because of Jesus's strength, not yours. Lean on Him.
This umbrella is here for you. It's offered to all who will come underneath it. It is for the weak. You may not feel strong enough to make it as a Christian. I've got good news for you—you don't need to be. He's got strength enough for the both of you.
You may not feel worthy enough to earn God's love. You're not. Good news—you don't have to be. His love is offered to you freely as a gift. Jesus's love and forgiveness are given to all who will receive them by faith. His resurrection power is available to anybody who will just come to Him and receive it.
