“But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,” verse 20.
We switch from considering the wicked enemy who threatens the gospel witness to the ‘beloved’ of the Lord to whom Jude is writing. He defined them in the first verse: “Them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called.” They are those who are ‘sanctified’ and ‘preserved’. That is what a Christian is. A person, no matter what age they are, who is made holy by God and kept, that is, ‘watched over’ by Jesus Christ! Just think of this girls and boys! This is the wonderful privilege of everyone who is trusting the Saviour.
To such Jude now says: “But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost.”
I. THE CHRISTIAN MUST EVER BE ‘BUILDING THEMSELVES UP’!
This is especially needed in a day of departure from God’s truth! Here is the meaning of the Greek word translated ‘building up’. ‘To finish the structure of which the foundation has already been laid, to give constant increase in Christian knowledge and in a life conformed thereto.’
1. If you are saved, God has begun a building in your life. Peter says: “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ,” 1 Peter 2:5. As stones are dug out of a quarry, shaped and built into a structure by a stone mason, so the Saviour has taken us out of the quarry of sin and built us into His great house.
2. This work having begun in our lives, we are required to be ‘labourers together with God’ and build up ourselves. Let us read read 2 Peter 1:4-8. Here are the ‘building plans’ we must follow! Also, “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby,” 1 Peter 2:2. Thus little by little, like babies, we “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” 2 Peter 3:18.
3. We are assured that we will see the building finished. “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ,” Phil 1:6. That is the ‘day’ when the great work God has begun in the lives of every converted one will be completed! On that day we “shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is,” 1 John 3:2.
II. WE ARE PARTICULARLY TO BUILD UP OUR ‘HOLY FAITH’.
“Building up yourselves on your most holy faith.” The Christian ‘lives by faith’. (Romans 1:17). As we live physically by breathing, eating and sleeping, so we live SPIRITUALLY by partaking of Christ, our life, by daily trusting in Him and thus obtaining from Him all our souls need to grow!
I love this verse. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord,” 2 Cors 3:18. With eyes that have been opened to see Christ, we look at the ‘mirror’ of God’s Word and seeing the glory of the Lord there, we are changed into likeness. We experience something of what Moses did on the mountain. “And it came to pass, when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him,” Exodus 34:29. Having seen something of the Lord’s glory it reflected on his face. What happens when you let the sun shine on you? You get sunburnt! You bear a likeness to the sun! God has thus given us a picture of what it means to take on a likeness to Christ. We come before Him as He is to be seen in the Bible and that will change us!
III. ANOTHER AID TO ‘BUILDING UP’ OUR FAITH IS PRAYER.
Again, there is the same principle at work.
1. As we are enabled by faith to see Christ in the Holy Scriptures and thus be changed, so in prayer we come into the presence of the Lord and that changes us to be more like the Saviour. We cannot talk with the Saviour but we we begin to speak like Him. When I was a lad of 7, in May 1950, I returned with my family from London. I had started school in London and I had been there for three years and when I arrived back in in our home outside Lisnaskea, I had a cockney accent! I was speaking like those I was at school with. But very soon I was speaking ‘broad Fermanagh’. I had once more begun to speak like those with whom I was keeping company! So, as we talk with the Lord and enter His company in prayer we begin to speak and act like Him. Remember: “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus,” Acts 4:13.
2. If this fellowship with the Saviour continues, then we become ever more like Him. It should be a continual process in the life of every Christian. I look down on you and you are not the same ‘size’ as you were the first day at school. You have grown by the process of breathing, eating, exercising and sleeping! I am sure you can easily learn from that what we are expected to do ‘spiritually’!
3. There is One Who is appointed to help us in growing. The Holy Ghost. The third person of the Holy Trinity - God the Holy Spirit.
Some athletes have ‘personal trainers’ to help them grow stronger. We have One Who is ‘alongside us’, to help us grow and be built up. He is called the ‘COMFORTER’. He is the One alongside us every day to help us pray and commune with the Lord. Sadly, boys and girls, Christians make little use of the help He offers. Let us not fail to seek His help and so be able to build up ourselves on our “most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost.