To Him Who Is Able…

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling…

We stumble a lot.  Inevitably, in the Christian walk, we sin, we fall down.  Some would place sole responsibility on us…we are backsliders, we are unrepentant.  These are true terms, but don’t reveal the heart of the matter.  One must be careful not to bear the responsibility for his own salvation, lest in doing so works-righteousness becomes dominant and Christ subservient to our wrongheartedness.  We are charged to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, but that does not mean we are the originators of our own salvation.  All of this is a doctrinal issue, which does not reflect the point of my thoughts today.  What I’m getting at is that a faith in Christ not only allows but actually believes this to be true.  To take a page from the self-actualizers and use the notion of affirmations (now, repeat after me)

I believe that Christ, who is Lord, is able to keep me from stumbling as I walk with Him.

He is Simon the Cyrene to us, in some ways.  He is the prophet Nathan, who reprimanded King David for adultery and murder (see II Samuel 12:1-15)  He is not only Lord of the heart, but Lord of the mind, too.  But we need to believe it.

Blessings;

Christ -bearer.

Doxa/Logos

I said that I’d be spending some time talking about Jude.  Specifically, what I wanted to mention was the doxology in Jude 24-25.  It reads:

“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, to the only God, our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever.  Amen.”  (ESV)

Recently reading over this in preparation for a Bible study, it occurred to me that there’s got to be a reason for it to be one of the well-known doxologies.  There’s definitely a lot in two verses, when you look at it, and when I look at it, it’s to see no less than five key descriptions of the nature of God in Christ.  I’ll spend some time on each of them, and I’m going to look at the four words of attribution in vs 25 in an entry as well.  To briefly summarize here are the five characteristics of God in Christ:

Him who is able to keep you from stumbling

Present you  before the presence of his glory blameless and with great joy

Only God, Our Saviour

Possessed of glory, majesty, dominion and authority

Before all time [or ages] and now and forevermore

and here are the four attributions:

Glory, Majesty, Dominion and Authority.

Let’s see what comes up.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer