Perhaps the newest thing in the New Testament, in Christianity, is the awareness that the fullness and meaning of human life are attained in its union with the life of God. In such a union, where the human person is not destroyed, the human will is not diminished, human freedom is not rejected, yet divine righteousness, truth, and otherworldliness are not lost...
Perhaps the newest thing in the New Testament, in Christianity, is the awareness that the fullness and meaning of human life are attained in its union with the life of God. In such a union, where the human person is not destroyed, the human will is not diminished, human freedom is not rejected, yet divine righteousness, truth, and otherworldliness are not lost. Here the meeting of God and man takes place, the voluntary union of their creative actions, synergy, in the expression of the Fathers of the Church, as a result of which all Creation is raised up to its Creator.
This is exactly how the apostle Jude instructs his flock. He says that we should do something: build ourselves up, keep ourselves, pray, wait. The matter appears to concern our own efforts. But... Let us notice: he calls us to build our life on faith, "most holy," that is, belonging to God in the highest degree; to pray, but not by our own weak little strength, rather in the Holy Spirit; compare Rom. 8:26; to keep ourselves, but in the love of God; to wait not simply for the future, but for what the Lord Jesus Christ will bring us into, eternal life. As always in Christianity, here too there is a paradox. We can labor, but without God's participation it is vain. Everything is accomplished by God, but without our participation it does not touch us.
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1:20 But ye, beloved, not separating, but building yourselves up in your most holy faith - Than which none can be more holy in itself, or more conducive to the most refined and exalted holiness. Praying through the Holy Spirit - Who alone is able to build you up, as he alone laid the foundation. In this and the following verse St. Jude mentions the Father, Son, and Spirit, together with faith, love, and hope.
1:21 By these means, through his grace, keep yourselves in the love of God, and in the confident expectation of that eternal life which is purchased for you, and conferred upon you, through the mere mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.