Jude 17-21 -Building yourself up

1:17-19

Now Jude turns to the teaching of the apostles. The way that Jude refers to the apostles seems to imply that he was not counted as an apostle himself. The apostles clearly warned that false teachers would come, in fact, Jesus warned as much. Paul, Peter and John all talk about false teachers. False teachers are not a surprise! A distinguishing feature of false teachers is that they follow their own ungodly desires. So if you want to become a false teacher the way to start down that road is to follow our own ungodly desires! Conversely, the way to avoid it is to follow the Spirit, to let the Word of God be our guide and rule.

These people who are false teachers divide the body of Christ, and they are led by natural instincts, not the Holy Spirit. If something is based only on human wisdom then it is worthless and will eventually lead to a dark place.

1:20,21

So what are we to do? We are to be aware of the dangers and realities of false teachers, as Jude has spent most of the letter warning them about, but there is something more positive that we can do as well. We are to build ourselves up in the most holy faith, and to pray in the Spirit. We must be wary of becoming too obsessed with weeding out falsehood. If that is all we do we will actually find ourselves falling into error. Instead, we need to build ourselves up in the faith. We need to dwell on the word of God, and not just to convince ourselves of what is wrong with false teachers or false teachings. We need to do so to meet with God, to worship Him, to let Him teach us and change us. We are also to pray in the Spirit. This may include praying in tongues, but it is much more than that. We pray in line with the Holy Spirit, in line with the word of God. We are to keep ourselves in God’s love. Well, I thought God kept us in His love? Indeed He does, but we are to do so as well. This is a constant feature of the Bible. If God does something we are to do it as well. We are not saved to be helpless babes, we are saved to be more and more Christlike, growing in maturity.

What will happen when Christ returns? In His mercy He will give us eternal life!