Don’t choose to live outside of the place where God’s love can bless your life

Part 3 of a special 4 part consideration of the book of Jude~

Next in Jude’s exhortations of “How to Live for Christ in the Last Days,” he writes in verse 21, “maintain yourselves in the love of God.” At first glance, this phrase may seem a little strange. Most Christians assume, and rightly so, that God unconditionally loves them no matter what. But this phrase isn’t directed towards God. It’s directed towards us. We have the responsibility of maintaining ourselves in that love.


Jude is reminding us that we can take ourselves outside the sphere where God’s love can bless us and prosper us. It’s not that God ever stops loving us, but that we through our disobedience and selfish agendas are no longer experiencing this aspect of God’s love. This phrase is illustrated in the story of the prodigal in Luke 15. The Father in the story never stopped loving his son but because his son left to live a life of sin apart from his father the son was not in the place or in a position where he could truly experience the Father’s love.

There is nothing more empowering or energizing than when we come to know the love God has for us. Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians in part was, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, so that, because you have been rooted and grounded in love, you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and thus to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.”

Don’t choose to live outside of the place where God’s love can bless your life. When we reject God’s love we are turning our backs on the greatest love a human being could ever experience and we won’t even come close to matching that quality of love in anyone or anything else. Keep yourselves in a place where God can bless you, my friends.