WITHOUT STUMBLING - Alexander Maclaren

‘Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding Joy, 25. To the only wise God our Saviour. be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and over. Amen.’ — Jude 1:24, 25.

I pointed out in a recent sermon on a former verse of this Epistle that the earlier part of it is occupied with vehement denunciations of the moral corruptions that had crept into the Church, and that the writer turns away from that spectacle earnestly to exhort the Christian community to ‘keep themselves in the love of God,’ by ‘building themselves upon their most holy faith, and praying in the Holy Ghost.’ But that is not all that Jude has to say. It is wise to look round on the dangers and evils that tempt; it is wise to look inward to the weaknesses that may yield to the temptations. But every look on surrounding dangers, and every look at personal weakness, ought to end in a look upwards ‘to Him that is able to keep’ the weakest ‘from falling’ before the assaults of the strongest foes.

The previous exhortation, which I have discussed, might seem to lay almost too much stress on our own strivings — ‘Keep yourselvesin the love of God.’ Here is the complement to it: ‘Unto Him that is able to keep you from falling.’ So denunciations, exhortations, warnings, all end in the peaceful gaze upon God, and the triumphant recognition of what He is able to do for us. We have to work, but we have to remember that ‘it is He that worketh in us both to will and to do of His own good pleasure.’

1 So I think that, looking at these great words, the first thing to be noted is the solitary, all-sufficient stay for our weakness.

‘To the only wise God our Saviour.’ Now it is to be noticed, as those of you who use the Revised Version will observe, that the word ‘wise’ seems to have crept in here by the reminiscence of another similar doxology in the Epistle to the Romans, and was probably inserted by some scribe who had not grasped the great thought of which the text is the expression- It ought to read, ‘to the only God, our Saviour.’ The writer’s idea seems to be just this — he has been massing in a dark crowd the whole multitudinous mob of corruptions and evils that were threatening the faith and righteousness of professing Christians. And he turns away from all that rabble, multitudinous as they are, to look to the One who is all- sufficient, solitary, and enough. ‘The only God’ is the refuge from the crowds of evils that dog our steps, and from the temptations stud foes that assail us at every point.

This is the blessed peculiarity of the Christian faith, that it simplifies our outlook for good, that it brings everything to the one point of possessing the one Person,beyond whom there is never any need that the heart should wander seeking after love, that the mind should depart in its search for truth, or that the will should stray in its quest after authoritative commands. There is no need to seek a multitude of goodly pearls; the gift of Christianity to men’s torn and distracted hearts and lives is that all which makes them rich, and all which makes them blessed, is sphered and included in the one transcendent pearl of price, the ‘only God.’

I have been in Turkish mosques, the roofs of which are held up by a bewildering forest of slender pillars. I have been in cathedral chapter- houses, where one strong stone shaft in the centre carries all the beauty of the branching roof; and I know which is the highest work and the fairest. Why should we seek in the manifold for what we can never find, when we can find it all in the ONE ? The mind seeks for unity in truth; the heart seeks for oneness in love; no man is at rest until he has all his heart’s treasures in one person; and no man who foolishly puts all his treasures in one creature-person but is bringing down upon his own head sorrow.

Do you remember that pathetic inscription in one of our country churches, over a little child, whose fair image is left us by the pencil of Reynolds: ‘Her parents put all their wealth in one vessel, and the shipwreck was total’? It is madness to trust to but one refuge, unless that refuge is the only God. If we, like the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, are wise, we shall lift up our eyes and ‘see no man any more, save Jesus only.’ He can be our solitary Stay, Refuge, Wealth, and Companion, because He is sufficient, and He abides for ever.

But there is another peculiarity that I would point cut in these words, and that is the unusual attribution to God, the Father, of the name ‘Saviour’ — ‘the only God our Saviour.’ The same various reading which strikes out ‘wise’ inserts here, as you will see in the Revised Version, ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ But although the phraseology is almost unique, the meaning is in full harmony with the scope of New Testament teaching. It is a fault of evangelical and orthodox people that they have too often spoken and thought as if Jesus Christ’s work modified and changed the Father’s will, and as if God loved men because Christ died for them. The fact is precisely the converse. Christ died because God loved men; and the fontal source of the salvation, of which the work of Jesus Christ is the channel, bringing it to men, is the eternal, unmotived, infinite love of God the Father. Christ is ‘the well-beloved Son,’ because He is the executor of the Divine purpose, and all which He has done is done in obedience to the Father’s will. If I might use a metaphor, the love of God is, as it were, a deep secluded lake amongst the mountains, and the work of Christ is the stream that comes from it, and brings its waters to be life to the world. Let us never forget that, however we love to turn our gratitude and our praise to Christ the Saviour, my text goes yet deeper into the councils of Eternity when it ascribes the praise ‘to the only God our Saviour through Jesus Christ our Lord.’

2 And now notice the possibility of firm standing in the slippery present. ‘To Him that is able to keep us from falling.’ Now the word that is rendered ‘from falling’ is even more emphatic, and carries a larger promise. For it literally means ‘without stumbling,’ and stumbling is that which precedes falling. We are not only kept from falling, we are kept even from stumbling over the stumbling-stones that are in the way. The metaphor, perhaps, was suggested by the words of Isaiah, who, in one of his lovely images, describes God as ‘leading Israel through the depths as a horse in the desert, that they stumble not.’ Do you not see the picture? The nervous, susceptible animal, Slipping and sliding over the smooth rock, in a sweat of terror, and the owner laying a kindly hand and a firm one on the bridle-rein, and speaking soothing words of encouragement, and leading it safely, that it stumble not. So God is able to lay hold of us when we are in perilous places, and when we cry, ‘My foot slippeth,’ His mercy will hold us up.

Is that rhetoric? Is that merely pulpit talk? Brethren, unless we lay firm hold of this faith, that God can and does touch and influence hearts that wait upon Him, so as by His Spirit and by His Word, which is the sword of the Spirit, to strengthen their feeble good, and to weaken their strong evil, to raise what is low, to illumine what is dark, and to support what is weak, we have not come to understand the whole wealth of possible good and blessedness which lies in the Gospel This generation has forgotten far too much the place which the work of God’s Holy Spirit on men’s spirit. fills in the whole proportioned scheme of New Testament revelation. It is because we believe that so little, in comparison with the clearness and strength of our faith in the work of Jesus Christ, the atoning sacrifice, that so many of us find it so foreign to our experience that any effluences from God come into our hearts, and that our spirits are conscious of being quickened and lifted by His Spirit! Ah! we might feel, far more than any of us do, His hand on the bridle-rein. We might feel, far more than any of us do, His strong upholding, keeping our feet from slipping aswell as ‘falling.’ And if we believed and expected a Divine Spirit to enter into our spirits and to touch our hearts, the expectation would not be in vain.

I beseech you, believe that a solid experience and meaning lies in that word ‘able to keep us from stumbling.’ If we have that Divine Spirit moving in our spirits, moulding our desires, lifting our thoughts, confirming our wills, then the things that were stumbling- stones — that is to say, that appealed to our worst selves, and tempted us to evil — will cease to be so. The higher desires will kill the lower ones, as the sunshine is popularly supposed to put out household fires If we have God’s upholding help, the stumbling- stone will no more he a stumbling-stone, but a stepping-stone to something higher and better; or like one of those erections that we see outside old-fashioned houses of entertainment, where three or four steps are piled together, in order to enable a man the more easily to mount his horse and go on his way. For every temptation overcome brings strength to the overcomer.

Only let us remember ‘Him that is able to keep.’ Able! What is wanted that the ability may be brought into exercise; that the possibility of which I have spoken, of firm standing amongst those slippery places, shall become a reality? What is wanted? It is of no use to have a stay unless you lean on it. You may have an engine of ever so many horse-power in the engine-house, but unless the power is transmitted by shafts and belting, and brought to the machinery, not spindle will revolve. He is able to keep us from stumbling, and if you trust Him, the ability will become actuality, and you will be kept from falling. If you do not trust Him, all the ability will lie in the engine-house, and the looms and the spindles will stand idle. So the reason why — and the only reason why — with such an abundant, and over-abundant, provision for never falling, Christian men do stumble and fall, is their own lack of faith.

Now remember that this text of mine follows on the heels of that former text which bade us ‘build ourselves,’ and ‘keep ourselves in the love of God.’ So you get the peculiarity of Christian ethics, and the blessedness of Christian effort, that it is not effort only, but effort rising from, and accompanied with, confidence in God’s keeping hand. There is all the difference between toiling without trust and toiling because we do trust. And whilst, on the one hand, we have to exhort to earnest faith in the upholding hand of God, we have to say on the other, ‘Let that faith lead you to obey the apostolic command, “Stand fast in the evil day… taking unto you the whole armour of God.”‘

3 Further, we have here the possible final perfecting in the future.

‘To Him that is able… to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.’ Now that word rendered ‘faultless’ has a very beautiful meaning. It is originally applied to the requirement that the sacrificial offerings shall be without blemish. It is then applied more than once to our Lord Himself, as expressive of His perfect, immaculate sinlessness. And it is here applied to the future condition of those who have been kept without stumbling; suggesting at once that they are, as it were, presented before God at last, stainless as the sacrificial lamb; and that they are conformed to the image of the Lamb of God ‘without blemish and without spot.’ Moral perfectness, absolute and complete; a standing ‘before the presence of His glory,’ the realisation and the vision of that illustrious light, too dazzling for eyes veiled by flesh to look upon, but of which hereafter the purified souls will be capable, in accordance with that great promise, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’; ‘with exceeding joy,’ which refers not to the joy of Him that presents, though that is great, but to the joy of them who are presented. So these three things are the possibilities held out before such poor creatures as we. And miraculous as it is, that all stains should melt away from our characters — though I suppose not the remembrance of them from our consciousness — and be shaken off as completely as the foul water of some stagnant pond drops from the white swan-plumage, and leaves no stain; that perfecting is the natural issue of the present being kept from stumbling.

You have seen sometimes in a picture-dealer’s shop window a canvas on which a face is painted, one half of which has been cleaned, and the other half is still covered with some varnish or filth. That is like the Christian character hero. But the restoration and the cleansing are going to be finished up yonder; and the great Artist’s ideal will be realised, and each redeemed soul will be perfected in holiness.

But as I said about the former point, so I say about this, He is able to do it. What is wanted to make the ability an actuality? Brethren, if we are to stand perfect, at last, and be without fault before the Throne of God, we must begin by letting Him keep us from stumbling here. Then, and only then, may we expect that issue.

Now I was going to have said a word, in the last place, about the Divine praise which comes from all these dealings, but your time will not allow me to dwell upon it. Only let me remind you that all these things, which in my text are ascribed to God, ‘glory and majesty, dominion and power,’ are ascribed to Him because He is our Saviour, and able to keep us from stumbling, and to ‘present us faultless before His glory.’ That is to say, the Divine manifestation of Himself in the work of redemption is the highest of His self- revealing works. Men are not presumptuous when they feel that they are greater than sun and stars; and that there is more in the narrow room of a human heart than in all the immeasurable spaces of the universe, if these are empty of beings who can love and inquire and adore. And we are not wrong when we say that the only evil in the universe is sin.

Therefore, we are right when we say that high above all other works of which we have experience is that miracle of love and Divine power which can not only keep such feeble creatures as we are from stumbling, but can present us stainless and faultless before the Throne of God.

So our highest praise, and our deepest thankfulness, ought to arise, and will arise — if the possibility has become, in any measure, an actuality, in ourselves — to Him, because our experience will be that of the Psalmist who sang, ‘When I said, my foot slippeth, Thy mercy, O Lord, held me up.’ Let us take the comfort of believing, ‘He shall not fall, for the Lord is able to make him stand’; and let us remember the expansion which another Apostle gives us when, with precision, he discriminates and says, ‘Kept bythe power of God through faith, unto salvation.’