Jude 1:24-25

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

Jude 1:24. Able to keep you.—Whatever may be said about your self-efforts, the supreme truth is that God can keep, and your supreme hope should rest on the assurance that He is keeping. Falling.—Better stumbling, or the mistakes that may lead to a fall. Of His glory.—That associated with His second coming.

Jude 1:25. Only wise God.—Better “to the wise God alone.” R.V. “to the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Both now and ever.—R.V. “before all time, and now, and for evermore” “Before all time” is exactly “before the whole æon,” “for ever” is literally “unto all the ages or æons.”

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Jude 1:24

God’s Work in Souls.—This beautiful doxology breathes of the apostolic spirit seen in others. See Romans 16:27; Ephesians 5:27; Colossians 1:22; and 1 Timothy 3:3. The additional words, διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν, are not contained in many MSS., although most recent editors have included them in their text. We are inclined to omit them, but not on strong grounds, principally on the ground that their presence in the text does not well agree with the incisive style of this apostle. We have placed σοφῷ in brackets, because internal evidence is against it. We think that σωτῆρ here, as at 1 Timothy 2:3 and Titus 1:3; Titus 3:4, refers to God the Father, and not to Jesus Christ, whose name probably was not in the original, but inserted in the margin, and later incorporated with the text.

I. Supplication.—“Now unto Him who is able to guard you from stumbling, and to place you before His glorious presence with exceeding joy.” The fervent desire contained in this word starts as if with the consciousness of the presence of the seductive teaching of the false teachers.

1. God is able to guide His people. “He will give His angels charge over thee, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.” It is the Spirit that guides into all truth, and prevents stumbling against error. “Lead us not into temptation,” is one of the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer, because the faithful are liable to commit sin under pressure. “I will guide thee with Mine eye,” is a promise to those who walk in the narrow path.
2. God is able to consummate the work of grace. The end will be glorious, because the saints will be perfect. The presentation at court will be made with greeting. The congratulations of heaven will be with “exceeding joy.” There are many sources of joy, but redemption will exceed all others in degree and duration. The words of the parable are identical—“Well done, thou good and faithful servant; … enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

II. The ascription.—“To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and through all the ages.” That is, let the God of glory and majesty be revered and praised in time and in eternity.

1. Praise the being of God. He dwells in light, and in Him is no darkness. The effulgence of the Divine presence is “light inaccessible.” In creation and redemption there is a reflexion of that glory—“The heavens declare the glory of God,” etc. His greatness—majesty—is unsearchable. He is incomprehensible. A sense of His greatness mingles reverence with praise—“My soul doth magnify the Lord.”

2. Praise His government. His dominion is from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. The idea is that His kingdom is co-extensive with all creation. His power or authority is paramount. Rebellion is temporary; He must rule until all enemies are under His feet. Even the last enemy—death—will be vanquished. The Christian is never without joyous strains when he meditates upon the works of Jehovah. See the concluding paragraph of Psalms 103—W. P.

SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES

Jude 1:24. The Steadying Power of Christ.—The work that Christ does in souls that are exposed to malign influences, and even to active temptations, is sometimes misconceived, and even misrepresented. It is thought that Christ is with us in the temptation, to guard us from it, to defend us from its evil influence. It is altogether truer, and it is certainly deeper and more searching to say, that Christ is in us, the inspiration and the help in our battling with and overcoming the temptation. A doctor may actually deal with a disease which afflicts us; but it is altogether a higher type of doctor who deals with us, and so nourishes our vitality that we can successfully throw off the disease. It is something on a slippery day to cling to a friend’s arm, and be kept from stumbling. But it is a much greater thing to be made so steady in limb, and so self-controlled in movement, that we can walk the slippery highways without fear. Christ keeps from falling by His grace in us steadying us.

The Aim and Hope of Christ.—“To present you faultless.” R.V. “To set you before the presence of His glory without blemish.” St. Jude’s precise point is usually missed. It is when the continuous sanctifying work of Christ is thought of. It is true that when “sanctified wholly” we may be presented faultless. But St. Jude means that Christ wants to present His people as those who have not fallen, under the enticements of the world, the flesh, the devil. Christ makes us clean when we come to Him, and He is willing to give such grace that we may step into heaven clad in unstained garments. His grace is sufficient for that; and that is what He wants. Should not that be what we want—that Christ should present us as virgin souls, kept pure, always pure, through His abounding grace?

Moral Purity: what it is, and what it gains.—Notice how we have here the great end to which this upholding leads—“Able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.” To Jude, then, that future had three salient points. The great range of mountains, as it were, towered up into three peaks, each of them smitten by the sunlight, and so made visible across the waste. And these three are, after all speculation and revelation, the sum of what we really know about that blessed heaven to which we aspire—“faultless before His presence—with exceeding joy.” As to the first, it indicates moral purity. The word is the same as is used to describe the physical perfection of the sacrificial lamb, which was to be “without blemish,” and is thence transferred to describe the immaculate holiness of Christ’s manhood and of His servants, who are one day to be “holy and without blame before Him in love.” The unspotted and unblemished lamb was the type—Christ Himself. So not only may we be kept without stumbling here; but the foulest and the darkest of us, in whose nature sin may seem to be most deeply engrained, may humbly expect to stand in His presence “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.” Here the nature may be one field of black, broken only by narrow and short streaks of contradictory light; but yonder all the foulness may be discharged from it, and sin lie behind us, an alien power that has nothing in us. That is the first of the mountain summits, up to which the good hand of the Lord our God may lead us, devious and tottering though our steps be there. And the second of them lies by the side of the first, equal in altitude, equal in radiance—“before His presence.” If we are to connect that clause directly with the one which precedes it, it is intended to heighten the conception of the purity. If it is without blemish when it is submitted to the searching of that fierce light, it must be unblemished indeed. But if we take the words not to be thus connected, but to present a separate though cognate thought, they present the hope of a complete immersion in, and illumination by, the glorious presence in which we shall walk. Purity is the condition of that. We must be blameless in order to stand in the presence of God. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.”—A. Maclaren, D.D.