Jude 20-23 – But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And of some have compassion, making a difference: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.
The book of Jude was written as a warning to the church against those who were attempting to come in to distort the truth. The peddlers of error were secretly invading the church and causing the people’s faith to be weakened. Whenever a church is being taught error, it always affects the work of the church. Satan wants to stop the church from fulfilling its true purpose.
Let us take a look at three important principles that will lead us to fully understand how we can become everything God wants us to be in order to accomplish His purpose in our church.
…BUILDING UP YOURSELVES…
It is important to notice that this is a plural command. It does not say, “build up yourself.” It says, …building up yourselves…, plural. What we see here is the work of the local church. We can go back to our series in Ephesians 4:11-13 and see exactly what this means. God expects the church to be building and growing. Numeric growth is not always a sign of increased faith, but increased faith will bring numeric growth. Wherever we see persecution in the church, we usually see church growth because the faith of the believers is being strengthened. Whenever our faith is being strengthened, there will be growth both spiritually and numerically. Notice also that this is not a suggestion. This is a command. God expects His people in His church to work together to edify or to build up the body of Christ, which is the local church. We as a church must be building up ourselves on purpose.
…ON YOUR MOST HOLY FAITH,…
The Bible tells us in Hebrews 11:6 that without faith it is impossible to please God. Our faith must be strengthened and built up. The local church should be increasing in its faith and believing what God can do through it. However, this description adds an important word, holy. It is not enough that we build up ourselves in faith. We are commanded to build ourselves up on the most holy faith. To understand the meaning of this, we must understand what the word holy means. Many Christians mistakenly believe that holy is some type of Christian piety, but that is not what it means. The word holy means “set apart for a purpose.” Holiness is not purity, but purity comes from holiness. Here is a good example.
A husband and a wife are to be holy to one another which means they are set apart for each other. To be holy means that they have been set apart exclusively for each other. The byproduct of that is fidelity or purity. A Christian lives holy because he has been set apart for the purpose of God. The same is true of the church. We are set apart for a purpose which is to reach the lost and dying world for Christ.
Jude adds an additional word to the phrase. He uses the word most. We are to set ourselves apart to the extreme. Passive churches are not obedient to this command. We should be building up ourselves to be extreme on our holy faith. We are to build up ourselves and be extreme in setting ourselves aside for our purposed faith. For a church to do anything less is to miss its purpose as given by the Lord. Romans 12:1 tells us that we are to present our bodies to God, holy and acceptable. This is both a personal command and a corporate command. The presentation of our bodies is for God’s purpose in our lives. However, in this passage, we see that we are to actively build ourselves in this corporate purpose that the church has been given.
…PRAYING IN THE HOLY GHOST,…
What does this mean? This is one of the most frequently distorted scriptures by those in the charismatic world. We see it here as a quality that is necessary for the church to build up itself. This is not some kind of spooky, gibberish praying as some would teach. The following illustration is a good way to explain this particular passage.
A person is going to trial. He is going to be giving responses in a deposition. He does not know exactly what to say. There comes one alongside of him called an attorney. The attorney’s purpose is to tell him how to answer the questions. This is similar to what praying in the Holy Ghost truly is. When we do not know what to pray, we seek the Holy Spirit to guide us.
Many Christians and churches do not have prayers answered because they pray to satisfy their own desires. We should be asking the Holy Spirit to help us when we pray so that we pray for the things that would best accomplish the purpose of building up ourselves on our most holy faith. If we realize that we have been set apart for a purpose, then we must know what we should pray. Praying in the Holy Ghost merely means that the Holy Spirit becomes our prayer partner, guiding us to pray for the things that would be honoring and pleasing to our Lord and which would accomplish the purpose He has for us.
Final Thoughts
Perhaps one of the concepts missing most in our lives, and in most churches, is the word purpose. The Bible tells us that we have been called according to His purpose, which means we have been set apart. In these chapters, there is a specific purpose for everything we do. It all begins with building up ourselves, not for our own edification, but for the purpose for which we have been called and set apart.
Pastor Neal, through his preaching and his counseling, displays the compassionate heart of a pastor, follows the true leading of the Holy Spirit, and expresses a fervent desire to see lost souls come to know Christ. It is his ultimate desire to see the greater Jacksonville area reached for the cause of Christ and for revival to come to Northeast Florida.
