But to him that is able to keep you without stumbling, and to set [you] with exultation blameless before his glory,
Jude ends a letter full of warning — false teachers, fallen angels, apostasy, coming judgment — with a burst of praise. The last word is not about what the believer must do, but about what God is able to do: hold the wavering upright now, and set them one day before His own glory without a flaw.
The turn at verse 24 is deliberate. After pages of human corruption, the letter lifts the reader's eyes to Someone else.
When we come to verses 24 and 25, how delightful is the contrast with all that has gone before! We come out from the darkness of human wickedness and apostasy, and even from the struggles and efforts of true saints in the presence of the evil, into the clear light of the power and glory of God. Our eyes are lifted to "Him who is able to keep you from stumbling." Here, and here only, is real rest for the heart.
Earlier the letter told believers to build themselves up, to pray, to keep themselves in the love of God. Those commands do not carry a person home.
We are to contend for the faith, building ourselves up on it, and we are to work to rescue others from defilement and doom, but we can find no rest in ourselves or our efforts. We may have grace to keep ourselves in the love of God, at least in some measure, yet we can only find rest in the fact that He is able to keep us from falling, and to present us faultless before the presence of His glory.
The promise is not a single rescue but a continuous holding. Where the ability lies, and where failure lies, are two different places.
How fitting, when the dangers, the evils, the horrible wickedness of turning away from all Christian grace and truth might have the effect of greatly discouraging a weak soul! No one ought to be discouraged; not one. "Now to Him who is able to keep" clearly refers to every step of the way, and there is power in Him to keep. It is we who fail in dependence. Never does He fail in power to preserve.
Because the power is His and never short, stumbling can never be blamed upward.
It is still true that God is able to keep us from falling, however hot the fiery trial or fierce the temptation. There is no excuse, then, to be offered if we fall; the fault is wholly our own, and it demands unsparing self-judgment.
This is not a mild word. It is the word Scripture uses of Christ's own offering.
The word "faultless" is the same one used of the Lord Himself when it says He "offered himself without blemish to God" (Hebrews 9:14). Such will be the perfected condition of the saints; and it must be so, since otherwise they could not stand before the presence of the glory of God.
That condition is not reached by improvement here. It arrives when the body is redeemed too.
That will only be because we are glorified; that will only be because we are like Him. He was the only One intrinsically faultless, and He is the One who, by redemption — and then by its completion for the body, since redemption now concerns only the soul, but when He comes it will be for the body as well — will present us faultless in both soul and body.
Commentators differ on whose joy the verse names. One reads it as God's joy overflowing beyond even ours.
He is their only Resource, sufficient in this way for the present; and as to the future, He will present every believer without blemish before the presence of His glory. What wonderful power and grace, so far above the vanities of religious pretence! And it will be "with exceeding joy" — that is, His joy will exceed. Ours will certainly be unspeakable and full of glory, but His will exceed ours.
Another names that joy as the Father's, and traces it to the same source as the welcome of a son who was lost.
Whose joy is that? Not simply our own — that "exceeding joy," though we share in it and it is reflected in us. The "exceeding joy" is the joy of the Father who has got back the lost, now found, the one dead, now alive again, and He makes the whole house ring with the music that is in His own heart first.
The letter closes by setting the end of the corrupters beside the end of the faithful.
"I see the corruption that has come in, I see the rising tide of evil, I see that the saints may fail in 'building,' and 'praying,' and 'keeping themselves'; but I see there is One in the glory who is able to keep them from stumbling, bring them safely home, and present them faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. I see the judgment day is coming for the ungodly professors — a day of gloom and sorrow; but I see the presentation day is coming for all His saints — a day of glory and exceeding joy."
The certainty of that day is meant to shape today, not only to be awaited.
Can He not do it — a God of limitless power? You might not think it, but the heart believes it, because He has said it. Is it enough to wait for it, until the church is presented faultless? Surely not. We want to walk according to it now.
- Able — The verse moves the eye off our own contending and onto God's power; that is the only place a heart finds rest.
- Kept — His power covers every step of the road, so failure is never a shortage in Him but a lapse in our dependence.
- Faultless — The word is the one used of Christ's own spotless offering; nothing less could stand before the glory of God.
- Presented — The flawless condition comes with glorification, soul and body, when He comes — not by gradual self-improvement now.
- Joy — Commentators read the exceeding joy as God's own, overflowing beyond ours; and a coming day that certain should govern how we walk today.
to the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, [be] glory, majesty, might, and authority, from before the whole age, and now, and to all the ages. Amen.
Jude spends his whole letter exposing corruption among the people of God, and then he stops describing and starts praising. This last verse names the One who receives the praise, the way it reaches Him, and how long it lasts.
This closing burst of praise is not a change of subject. Jude has looked at the evil until he has seen all of it, and now God alone fills his view.
Jude has exposed the evil in all its horror. He has warned, encouraged, and urged on the believers. But his final resource is God Himself, and all that God is for His people. The size of the evil and the weakness of the believers fade from his view, and God alone remains. So he can close the most solemn letter ever written with the most glorious burst of praise.
Jude calls God our Saviour, not Christ our Saviour. The reason lies in who kept these believers through everything the letter has described.
Now Jude adds, "To the only God." Who could have met all this confusion? Who could have planned and provided all this grace and truth? Who could have kept people like us through it all? Remember our total weakness and how exposed we are. Remember the hatred of the enemy, and the contempt of those against us and of all who are drawn away. Remember every pull to go wrong, and worst of all, the hostility that any measure of faithfulness stirs up. Yet He does keep us through it all. It is "the only God our Saviour", not only Christ our Saviour. Christ is the One who accomplishes it all, but here Jude looks at God as the source, and that takes nothing away from Christ. It was the delight of Christ on earth to present God as a Saviour God, and not merely that He Himself was that personal Saviour, the Son of man.
The letter has described people who throw off God's authority. The closing words hand back to Him exactly what they refuse Him. Older translations read "power" where the ESV reads "authority".
Who is able to keep us?… Here it is the only God, our Saviour. Why does he give these great things to God? Because there are those who deny the only Lord God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ. The apostle gives glory and majesty, dominion and power to the One whom man throws off.
Older English Bibles read "the only wise God" here. One commentator explains where that extra word came from.
"To the only [wise] God." The word "wise" has crept in here. In all the correct texts the word "wise" drops out in this place. It is right in Romans 16:27… I suppose it was that verse that led the ignorant monk, or whoever was copying Jude, to "correct" it, as he thought. But we cannot correct it. All these human corrections are innovations, and our aim is to get back to what God wrote and what God gave.
Jude does not stop at "now and ever". His praise reaches back before time began and on into every age to come.
It is very interesting to notice how fitting Jude's closing words are… He looks at the full extent of eternity. This is much more precise than the wording of the Authorised Version, and it follows the reading of the best authorities.
All events, from the beginning on into the future, are clearly in His hands. Through them all He stays the same… This is His true glory. He does not get it from anything else. It shines out of Himself, the shining out of what He is, for the full blessing of eternity, whatever the ages still to come may discover of Him in their turn.
Believers will sing this praise in glory. They get the words now, while the fight is still on.
Their joy will surely find its voice in this song of praise, which was given to them while they were still down here in the stress of the conflict… So the songs of heaven can be learned on earth. God is above all time and He never changes, so His praise is eternal.
- Only — Jude finishes his survey of the evil, and God alone is left in view. That is why the most solemn letter in the Bible ends in the brightest praise.
- Saviour — Jude names God as the source of salvation and Christ as the One who accomplishes it. Calling God our Saviour takes nothing away from Christ.
- Through — the praise reaches God through Jesus Christ our Lord, and it hands back the honour that the men in this letter throw off.
- Wise — the best manuscripts leave "wise" out of Jude. The word belongs in Romans 16:27, and a copyist carried it over from there.
- Forever — the glory covers all time: before it began, now, and every age to come. God does not gain it; it shines out of what He is. And the song can be learned down here, in the middle of the fight.