Keep yourselves in the love of God

Jude 1:21 “Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”

Beloved of God how often shall we all that are loved of God, bow to praise the very God that loves us with an everlasting love, that before the foundation of the world He elected a remnant from this sinful and evil world to be His very own. The writer here (Jude) reminds us all of the love and the great mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, not just for salvation but also for the glorious meeting we will all have with Him either at death of at His second coming. The writer is not saying we can change the love of God by any means but rather that we can loose favor with God by falling out of His blessed will. I spoke last week of Israel and how they fell out of favor with God and God has now removed His Prophets and the Ministers of His word and they as a Nation are still “wondering in the wilderness” so to speak, but He still loves them as a Nation and one day (in the Tribulation period) He will bless a remnant of them with salvation.

Beloved, we (Gentile believers) are not Israelites nor are we thought of in the same way. God loves the Nation of Israel as a Nation only and not every single person, but with the Gentile’s He loves ever single believer and will save all of the elect Gentiles. However every elected member that has been or will ever be saved in the nation of Israel has been personally elected by God the same as we Gentiles are. God has an eternal love which means Israel did nothing to cause God to love them as a “son” just as we Gentiles never did anything to cause God to love us as His chosen people; His love came as a show of His Mercy and Grace totally on His part. 1 Peter 1:2 “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.”

The writer here is not telling us by any means to earn God’s love but rather to keep ourselves in His love by doing His blessed will, which Israel refused and still refuses to do. If we “Keep yourselves in the love of God” by following His blessed will and march as Christian warriors into battle with a world controlled by Satan, then we will be hated and not loved by it and will have an urgent need to draw closer and closer to the great God and Saviour that loves us. We (as believers) can either draw closer to God and each other as believers or some give in to Satan’s baited traps and fall away and become enemies of each other therefore some not keeping themselves in God’s love. Beloved walking in holiness is an effort on the part of every single believer and in doing so means we are walking in the love of God and that we are being blessed daily by Him. It is when we allow ourselves to be subjected by Satan’s baited traps that we fall out of God’s love, not His love of election, nor His love of the cross, nothing can ever change that, but of His love of blessings. The one single thing we as believers can learn from Israel is when we pull away from God’s permissive will He will pull away from us. Just and God stopped sending Prophets and Ministers to Israel He will remove a candle stick from a church or exclude a church from His Bride, so to speak.

Beloved unlike what Israel done lets keep ourselves close to God’s love by walking in His blessed will and not allow Satan to bait us into ignorance. We did nothing to earn God’s love just as we can do nothing to separate ourselves from it because His love is eternal, however we can cause God to get angry at us and cause Him to bring disappointment in our lives by not walking in His will. Beloved let’s all keep ourselves in the love of God and keep “looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”