GOD THOU ART LOVE
“If I forget, yet God remembers!
If these hands of mine cease from their clinging,
Yet the hands divine hold me so firmly that I cannot fall;
And if sometimes I am too tired to call for Him to help me,
Then He reads the prayer unspoken in my heart, and lifts my care.
*
“God, Thou art love! I build my faith on that.
I know Thee Who has kept my path,
and made Light for me in the darkness,
Tempering sorrow so that it reached me like a solemn joy;
It were too strange that I should doubt Thy love.”
Robert Browning
* * *
Jude 24-25
Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling,
and to present you
FAULTLESS
before the presence of His glory
with exceeding joy!
To the only wise God our Saviour,
be glory and majesty,
dominion and power,
both now and ever!
Amen.
* * *
Matthew Henry Commentary
Jude 1:24,25
God is able, and as willing as able,
to keep us from falling,
and to present us faultless
before the presence of his glory.
Not as those who never have been faulty,
but as those who, but for God’s mercy,
and a Saviour’s sufferings and merits,
might most justly have been condemned long ago.
All sincere believers were given him of the Father;
and of all so given him he has lost none, nor will lose any one.
Now, our faults fill us with fears, doubts, and sorrows;
but the Redeemer has undertaken for his people,
that they shall be presented faultless.
Where there is no sin, there will be no sorrow;
where there is the perfection of holiness,
there will be the perfection of joy.
Let us more often look up to Him who is able to keep us from falling,
to improve as well as maintain the work he has wrought in us,
till we shall be presented blameless before the presence of his glory.
Then shall our hearts know a joy beyond what earth can afford;
then shall God also rejoice over us,
and the joy of our compassionate Saviour be completed.
To Him who has so wisely formed the scheme,
and will faithfully and perfectly accomplish it,
be glory and majesty, dominion and power,
both now and for ever.
Amen.
* * *
From MacLaren’s Expositions of Holy Scripture
Jude 24-25
‘To Him that is able … to present you faultless
before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.’
Now that word rendered ‘faultless’ has a very beautiful meaning.
It is originally applied to the requirement
that the sacrificial offerings shall be without blemish.
It is then applied more than once to our Lord Himself,
as expressive of His perfect,
immaculate sinlessness.
And it is here applied to the future condition
of those who have been kept without stumbling;
suggesting at once that they are,
as it were, presented before God at last,
stainless as the sacrificial lamb;
and that they are conformed
to the image of the Lamb of God
‘without blemish and without spot.’
* * *
Believe the promises of God for yourself; they belong to you.
* * *