Jude 1:24-25
Able to Keep You From Stumbling
24Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you unblemished in His glorious presence, with great joy—
25to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord before all time, and now, and for all eternity. Amen.
Berean Standard Bible
The verse just before this one was about clothing stained by the flesh, and then the letter stops warning and starts praising. There is no transition sentence at all. Jude goes straight from that into the closing lines, and the last two verses are a single sentence of praise addressed to God rather than to the people reading, with an Amen at the end.
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you unblemished in His glorious presence, with great joy— to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord before all time, and now, and for all eternity. Amen.
Able is the word the whole thing rests on. Not willing, not intending: able. Jude has spent much of this letter describing people who did not stay where they were, and he finishes by naming somebody who is able to stop that from happening to the ones he loves.
Keep is here again, and God is the one doing it. In verse 1 they were kept in Jesus Christ. In verse 21 they were told to keep themselves in the love of God. Here the keeping belongs to him once more, and what they are kept from is stumbling, which is the ordinary hazard of somebody who is walking rather than sitting still.
Then comes present you unblemished in his glorious presence. Present is a word about bringing somebody forward to be seen, and unblemished says the condition they arrive in, which is nothing like the condition this letter has been describing since verse 4. With great joy is attached to the end of it. Jude does not say whose joy it is, and the sentence is content to leave that open.
Verse 25 piles up four words for what belongs to God: glory, majesty, dominion, authority. Then three markers of time, and between them they cover everything there is. Before all time, and now, and for all eternity. A letter that began by naming men who crept in unnoticed closes on a God who was already there before there was anywhere to creep into.
The whole of it is routed through Jesus Christ our Lord, which is where verse 25 puts him. Jude has told this family to contend, to remember, to keep themselves and to be merciful, and then he hands the entire matter back. The one who is able is the one who gets the glory.
Questions
1 The closing sentence turns on the word able. Why does that word carry so much here?
AnswerBecause everything before it has been about people who did not stand. Able says God can prevent that, which is a stronger claim than saying he would like to. Jude puts the ability first and the glory second.
2 Keep has been used more than one way in this letter. Who is doing the keeping in verse 24?
AnswerGod is. In verse 1 the readers were kept in Jesus Christ, in verse 21 they were told to keep themselves in the love of God, and here it is his work again. What they are kept from is stumbling, which is what threatens somebody who is walking.
3 God is able to present you unblemished in his glorious presence. What does present suggest?
AnswerBringing somebody forward to be seen. It assumes an arrival and somebody doing the escorting, and the condition named is unblemished, which is not the condition anybody in this letter was in. The change is credited to him rather than to them.
4 The letter ends on three stretches of time: before all time, now, and for all eternity. Why end there?
AnswerBecause between them they leave nothing out. The men in this letter were a recent trouble and they felt urgent, and the closing sentence sets them inside something that was running long before they turned up and keeps running after they are gone.
What This Means for Us
A letter this severe could have ended on a warning, and it does not. It ends with a God who is able, and with a family handed back to him at the end of twenty-three verses. Everything Jude asked for is still asked, and none of it was ever the thing holding anybody upright. The keeping was his at the start and it is his at the finish, and the middle is where the rest of us are living.
So each person names one thing they are afraid of stumbling over this week, and we read verse 24 together before anybody leaves the table.
Prayer
God our Savior, you are able, and we are asking you to do what only you can do. Keep this family from stumbling this week. Bring us at the last into your presence without a mark on us, because we could never arrange that ourselves. Glory and majesty and dominion and authority are yours, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.