We find this verse near the end of the small letter of Jude. The structure of this letter is quite interesting. In the very beginning, Jude (calling himself a bondservant of Jesus Christ and a brother of James, which means he was also a half-brother of Jesus) mentions that while he was very diligent or eager to write about their common salvation, he found it necessary to exhort them to contend for the faith. He then launches into a lengthy description, which is the bulk of the letter, of how evil people will try to destroy the church from the inside out by causing divisions. Then, near the very end, in the light of the situation that the church is in danger from ungodly people in its midst, we find our verse, which is the second half of this complete sentence.
Jude 1:20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
Before we make any conclusions about what this sentence means, lets have a look at the some of the details. Of all the verbs in this sentence, only one is in the imperative tense. All the others are participles. This means that there is one command (keep yourselves), and the others describe the state of the person who should keep that command.
The Greek of verse 21 is very straightforward but it has a neat little surprise near the end. The imperative is ‘keep yourselves in the love of God’. The word for keep is ‘tereo’, which means to maintain or to guard. The love of God is ‘agape Theo’. Ancient Greek has four different words for love, and the word that is used here, agape, is the highest form of love. It is love that is centered in moral preference. It is the kind of love that drives one to do whatever is in the best interest of someone else, regardless of the costs to yourself. It is how God loves us (John 3:16). Theo here is in the genitive and it could very well be a plenary genitive, which means that Jude could have referred both to God’s love for us, as our love to God. We’ll come back to that.
The next phrase, looking for the mercy of our Lord, Jesus Christ, is well translated. Looking for is ‘prosdechomai’, which means to wait actively, expectantly. Mercy is ‘eleos’, and it is used in the LXX to translate the Hebrew ‘checed’, which is best translated as covenant loyalty, being loyal to the terms of a covenant or deal you made with someone else. Here it talks about the loyalty of our Lord, so the promises that our Lord (Jesus) has made to us.
The last phrase, ‘unto eternal life’, is ‘eis zoe aionios’. Eis means toward, a motion toward a particular purpose or result. Zoe is life. It is the opposite of death. Its not always easy to understand what the bible means with life and death. God promised that Adam and Eve would die in the day that they ate of the forbidden fruit. They ate, and yet they did not die on the spot. They kept on breathing, but were expelled from the garden. This verse from Deuteronomy 30 is one of the best verses to explain life:
Deuteronomy 30:19 I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live;
Life is equated with blessing, death with cursing. Synonyms of life are glory, power, dominion, blessing, and light.
Finally, the word for eternal is ‘aionios’, which is the adjective of ‘aion’, which means an age. So, ‘of the age’ would be a better translation than eternal. This is clearly seen for example in Luke 18, where Jesus talks about the age to come.
Luke: 29 So He said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, 30 who shall not receive many times more in this present time, and in the age to come eternal life.”
This is actually also a great example of one of the promises Jesus made to us.
We covered a lot of ground. So what does this all mean? In the light of the situation that ungodly people will try to bring division into God’s church, what should believers do? As they are
- building themselves up on their most holy faith,
- praying in the Holy Spirit,
- and eagerly awaiting Jesus’ promises which will result in blessings in the next age,
they should keep themselves in the love of God.
So is Jude talking about Gods love for us, or our love for God? If this is a plenary genitive, it could be both. God’s love for us is unconditional, but His acceptance of us is not. God only accepts us on His terms. So in order for us to be recipients of God’s love, we have to make sure that we are rightly related to Him. And what about our love for God? It is the first and greatest command according to Jesus. So it’s not automatic but something we have to decide to do.
Thus, in order to keep ourselves in God’s love, we have to (a) believe Him on His words (John 3:16) and (b) do the things He commands us to do (John 14:15). If we do this, we can look eagerly forward to blessings in the next age. Godspeed!
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