He is Able

 

DEVOTION

THE LETTER OF JUDE

HE IS ABLE

Jude 24-25

24 To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy— 25 to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.

NIV

Now, Jude’s final remarks, his doxology which may be one of the best among the letters of all the apostles. It is very interesting how Jude makes the point that it is Him, who he means Christ, is the one, and that would mean the only one, who can keep us from falling. The Greek word aptaistos does not appear anywhere else in the scriptures. It has the meaning of not stumbling or even standing firm. Although Paul uses a similar phrase when he is defining the armor of God when he says that after we have done everything then to stand firm, although in the Greek it simply means to stand. Here Jude gives us the picture of not just standing firm, but that we will not stumble or fall into sin. But there is one condition which has to be understood in that we have put our trust in him. When we are faced with some temptation, it is our “self” that is being tempted and we have two choices. One choice is to appeal to our “self” to say no, or two, appeal to our Lord. We know from experience the “self” is weak and it is a foregone conclusion our “self” will most likely not be able to keep us from falling. However, when we are tempted, if we appeal to our Lord, he is the power to keep us from falling or yielding to that temptation. It is not that we are tempted to go out and do some horrible act, but even the temptations such as to gossip, or be envious, or jealousy, or prideful, or boastful, would be areas where, if we appealed to our “self” we would most likely fall. We are told elsewhere in scripture to not think more of ourselves then we should, not to be proud, or boastful, but to humble ourselves before the Lord. He is the only one able to keep us from stumbling into sin. The problem is that we might not consider certain things sin in the way God does. Because Jude wrote this letter to believers that were subject to false teachers, who brought erroneous ideas about what constitutes sin, he is warning them and us that we cannot listen to what others think sin is, but we must listen to the voice of the Spirit and we will know for sure when we are faced with the temptation that leads to sin. The idea is that we should always be aware of the Spirit within, and when faced with a temptation, we need to appeal to Him, and then our thinking is no longer focused on what we could do with the temptation which would make the “self” feel good in some way, but that our focus would be on not wanting to offend our Lord. Christ is the only one who can present us before God’s glorious presence without fault and with great joy. If for one minute we think we could present ourselves before God without fault we are deceiving ourselves. All our trust must be in Jesus, for every aspect of our lives, not just for our salvation. We need him to keep us from falling prey, both to sin, and to false doctrines. True, we may never be completely free of all sin as long as we are in this corruptible flesh, however, we know one thing for sure.  He’s able, He’s able, He’s able, I know He is able, I know my Lord is able to carry me through, He healed the brokenhearted and set the captive free, He made the lame to walk again and caused the blind to see. He is able, he is able, I know my Lord is able to carry me through.