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, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.
Jude continues his instruction on how to recover from the ministries of false teachers by reminding his readers that they were to deliberately live their lives according to the love that God has for them. The primary command of the verse is keep yourselves in the love of God” The various clauses surrounding this command serve to tell us how to obey the command itself.
To someone who is unfamiliar with the heartbreak of belonging to an abusive church, these commands may strike them as pretty basic, elementary stuff. However, these areas are some of the primarily ones that are compromised in the lives of those who live under the abusive of a true false teacher, and they often become part of a syndrome of painful memories for those who have left such ministries. People who leave such ministries question the love of God for them, given the pain of what they’ve been through. They may have trouble believing that their prayers will be answered, or even that they have a right to pray, having belonged to such a defective form of Christianity. Finally, they often have lost all hope for the immediate future, let alone the blessed hope of Jesus Christ actually returning one day to dispense mercy and kindness to the faithful in His church.
“building yourselves up on your most holy faith” We are to seek continued spiritual growth, both in our grasp of the theological truths of the Christian faith, and also in its practical outworking of the faith in the day to day decisions of life.
“praying in the Holy Spirit” We are to be committed to a life of prayer, making frequent, regular contact with our Father in heaven. We are to seek and depend on the power of the Holy Spirit of God to assist us in our praying, enabling us to communicate with God, and to remain diligent in our prayer lives.
“waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.” We are to live in a constant, eager state of expectancy and desire for the day when our Lord Jesus returns for us, His church. As Christians we have received already the wondrous mercy of the Lord Jesus, in the deliverance from sin. But there will come a day when we receive that mercy in the most incredible, intense way possible—in the presence of Jesus Christ at His return for His church.
Conclusion: Recovery from an abusive church, or the ministry of an abusive leader, involves the commitment to remain in the love of God (20-21). How do we do this? We remain in the love of God by building up our faith, praying with reliance on the Holy Spirit, and developing an eager anticipation for the return of the Lord Jesus to the earth.
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