Jude 24 (ESV) … “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy…”
The letter of Jude concludes with perhaps the loftiest doxology found in Scripture. It begins with the comforting affirmation that God is able to keep you from falling away from the faith. Joy permeates us when we grasp the power and glory of our Lord. False teachers, false doctrine, and false fears of failure cannot make us fall, for God keeps us. We affirm his glory, majesty, power and authority, which he works through Jesus, who will present you before his glorious presence without fault. Final judgment has no fear. God will be our representative there. His saving work in Jesus will speak for us. We do not have to defend ourselves. Joy, indeed! Too good to be true! This greatness of God has always been true, is true now, and always will be true. With that triumphant note, this valuable letter ends.
In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, psychiatrist Victor Frankl observed that “the loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect on man.” As a result of his own experiences in a Nazi concentration camp, Frankl contended that when a person no longer possesses a reason for living … no future to look forward to, he shrivels up and dies. “Any attempt to restore a man’s inner strength in camp,” he wrote, “had first to succeed in showing him some future goal.” (“Man’s Search for Meaning” by Victor Frankl, quoted in Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, ed. Michael Green, [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1989], p. 194.)
So it is with life. Life is a concentration camp, in the sense that none of us gets out alive. Yet, we can all have something to look forward to. We do not have to shrivel up and die.
After warning his readers about the dangers of false teachers and the need to resist them, Jude concluded his letter by presenting a resounding doxology of hope. “God is able to keep you from stumbling now,” he declared, “and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy!” What a hope. What a day to look forward to. What a reason to keep going. Scripture calls it the “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13), and so it is.[1]
[1] Walls, D., & Anders, M. (1999). I & II Peter, I, II & III John, Jude (Vol. 11, p. 268). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.