“Keep Yourselves”

Now, if you would, please turn with me to the second-last book of the Bible, to Jude, and follow along as I read from Jude verse 17 to verse 25.

Verse 17:

“But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, ‘In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.’ It is these who cause divisions, worldly people, devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.

“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 Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”

Jude has spent the greater part of this letter urging his readers to “contend for the faith.” That is what they need to be doing, he says, because of “certain people” who “have crept in” to their fellowships[1]—crept in unannounced, unheralded, and yet doing despite to the truth of the gospel. He then goes on, from about verse 5 all the way through to verse 19, to explain just why this is such a pressing problem. And we’ve seen how he quotes from the Old Testament times, and he quotes from extrabiblical sources, and doing so, he applies them directly to those to whom he writes. And although we are reading this so many, many years beyond the lives of the initial readers, what we’ve been discovering as we have read it is just how apropos it is through the experiences of our day. And indeed, we ought not to be surprised, because a reading of church history makes it clear that almost with every great advance for the sake of truth and the gospel, there have been those who have sought to undermine it, and often in a way that is duplicitous, in a way that is secretive, in a way that might be unnoticed were it not for the fact that God has sent his prophets and his teachers of the Bible to alert God’s people to what it is they’re facing.

Now, having explained to them what it is and why it is so important, it is only now that he goes on to say, “What is the way in which we are going to be able to handle this predicament?” And it is as he draws his letter to a close that he makes his point.

Now, let me just pause and say: it is almost inevitable that there would have been some people who were reading his letter who, when the exhortation comes to “contend for the faith,” found themselves immediately fearful and hesitant—the kind of people who might by dint of personality say, “It’s just not my way to be like that. I don’t like to be like that. I don’t want to be like that.” And therefore, such individuals then need the prompting and the urging of the letter brought home by the Holy Spirit. They may be tempted to actually tolerate the error. And some in the contemporary church actually operate on that basis: “There’s no reason for us to be so vociferous about these things. Why can’t we just be nice people?” So, some say, “Well, let’s just deal with it by toleration,” and some say, “Well, let’s just deal with it by evacuation”—that the battle is too great, we’re fearful, we don’t like contention, and so we exit. Doubtless there were some like that then, and surely there are some like that now.

However, on the other side, if such fearful individuals needed to be propped up, some who by nature find themselves contentious need to be, if you like, settled down a little bit. Because there is something about being introduced to the desire to deal with error, to “contend for the faith,” that (depending, again, on personality and background) it draws, if you like, both the best and the worst out of people—people who by nature relish fights, people who are pugilistic, people who are pugnacious, people who just like arguing. And so, if you have that as your sort of MO, then you need to temper that. And if you can’t temper it yourself, say to the person next to you, “Could you please help me with this?” And the reason that you’re sitting next to somebody is in order that the people next to you might be able to help you. So, whether it is on the one hand fearfulness that says, “I’m prepared to tolerate,” or whether it is a kind of quarrelsomeness that says, “I love confrontation,” we have to guard.

The great danger—probably the greater danger for us here—is the danger of the latter, not the former. And it is this danger: the danger of being swallowed up by an interest in or a potential delight in controversy; of finding ourselves saying, “I love to find out on the internet who’s going wrong, what’s going wrong, who’s saying whatever it is.” We need to be reminded that the invitation, the exhortation, to contend is not, you will notice in the text, to contend against but to contend for—“to contend for the faith … once … delivered to the saints.”[2] Surely that means that if we say, “This is true,” we have to say, “and this is false,” but the tenor and the tone in which we do that is vitally important.

The best reply to the scoffers is not a clever argument. The best reply to the scoffers is a transformed life.

And again, the history of the church from the very beginning bears testimony to the danger. If you turn one page in your Bible, you will then be in the book of Revelation, and you will see chapter 2, where, in the word of Christ to the church at Ephesus, it runs along this warning, doesn’t it? “I know your works,” he says, “your toil … your patient endurance … how you cannot bear with those who are evil.” You get that phrase? “You ca[n’t] bear with those who are evil, but [you’ve] tested those who call themselves apostles and [who] are not, and [you’ve] found them to be false.” So far, so good. “I know [that] you[’re] enduring patiently and bearing up for my name’s sake, and you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at [the] first.”

Now, notice carefully: he commends them for their ability to distinguish between truth and error, but he says, “The tragedy is that it would seem that this has so swallowed you that you now have begun to abandon the love you had at the first.”

So, what I hope we can see this morning in these two verses is at least this: that the best reply to the scoffers—the best reply to the scoffers—is not a clever argument. The best reply to the scoffers is a transformed life. The best reply to the scoffers is, on the one hand, to contend for the faith—verbally upholding it, assuring it, dealing with error as it comes—but not only to contend for the faith but actually to live the faith. To live it. And what you really have in these two verses are four marks of those who are called to live out the faith.

There is only one imperative, incidentally, amongst these verbs. The verbs are building, praying, keeping, and waiting. The imperative is the verb to keep—“keep yourselves.” The others are expressed differently, as you will notice. And those of you who do English will get that. I think that the thrust of this is in this imperative: “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” And I want to suggest—although you may see differently—I want to suggest that the other verbs help us to understand how it is that we keep ourselves in the love of God. Now, we could also simply start at the first verb, building, and go from there, but I hope perhaps this will help us.

Keeping

The reason I say this is because this—if you remember from the beginning the “Central Bank of Kenya,” you know that we are the “called,” we are the “beloved,” and we are the “kept.” So he starts with that reality: “kept for … Christ.”[3] We will eventually, in another couple of weeks, get to verses 24 and 25, where he says, “He is the one who is able to keep you from falling.” “You’re kept for Christ; you will be kept from falling. Now,” he says, “if you’re going to handle this correctly, keep yourselves in the love of God.”

Let’s just think about that for a moment. In other words, he says, “Stay where you are. Stay where you are. In Jesus, you have been brought into the circle of God’s amazing love. He has called you. You are his beloved in Jesus. You have been kept for the Lord Jesus Christ.” As John puts it, “Herein is love…”[4] “This is love,” he says: “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and [that he gave] his Son as an atoning sacrifice,” or as the “propitiation,” “for our sins”[5]—so that the love of God to which he refers, in which we are kept, is an initiative-taking love. God’s love is an initiative-taking love.

Most of the time, when we think about love or loving someone, we are almost inevitably responding to something that we find attractive in the other person, so that our love for them is in response to who and what they are, when in actual fact, God’s love for us doesn’t operate on that basis—that God has not loved us in Jesus on the basis of how attractive we are or how good we are or how punctilious we are about trying to set aside what is wrong. He has loved us because he loved us.

Now, how are we to keep ourselves in the love of God? Where can we be helped by that? I want to just give one cross-reference, I think, for each of these points this morning. And I’m not going to do it all, but I will reference it, and you can follow it up on your own.

John chapter 15. John chapter 15, where we have the record of Jesus using the picture of the vine and the branches. You will remember that. And as he explains to his followers these things, he then says—this is John 15:9—“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” It’s an amazing thought. The love between the Father and the Son? “That’s the measure of my love for you.” Then what does he say? Four words in English: “Abide in my love.” What’s Jude saying? Same thing. “Keep yoursel[f] in the love of God.” Well, how will we do that? Verse 10: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” Remember Jesus came to do the Father’s will? Do you remember in the garden of Gethsemane, in the prospect of all that was before him, he sweat “as it were great drops of blood”?[6] “If there is any other way that this could happen, this would be fine with me; nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.”[7]

Now, if you think about this, which I hope you do, you realize that the big problem with these folks who were ungodly people is that they were perverting the grace of God into a license for immorality. In short order, it went like this: “The grace of God is such that he sets you free from your sins so you can do whatever you want, so that you can be whatever you want. This is the immensity of his grace.” Nothing could be, actually, further from the truth. Remember, when we studied this, we said, quoting Sinclair Ferguson, the idea that God loves you just the way you are is wrong; that after Adam, God has only loved one person just the way he was—namely, the Lord Jesus. So “God loves us despite the way we are.”[8]

And when people come up against the notion, for example, of the commandments of God, you find that they get a quiver in their liver—that somehow or another, they think, “There must be something wrong with this. This is a call to legalism, mentioning that we’re supposed to obey things.” Yes! Keeping the commandments of God on account of the love of God by the enabling of the Spirit of God is not easy. We need the enabling work of the Holy Spirit to keep ourselves in the love of God. Because we live, as believers, in a battleground. Temptation is everywhere every day. The inclinations of our hearts are still sinful inclinations. We’re not the finished product. We have been redeemed. We have been set in a new department, if you like. But we’re living in this context. And in the responsibility of keeping ourselves in the love of God, we need to do just that.

How do you keep yourself married? By keeping yourself married. How do you keep yourself married? By being true to your covenants. I said, “I will. Yeah, I will. I will.” Will you? That’s what the Evil One says. It’s not a legalism that keeps us true. It’s a love. It’s a covenant-keeping love. So there’s no collision between love and obedience. In fact, he says, “If you love me, you will reveal it in obedience.”[9]

One of the hymns that is often sung at a baptismal service, although I’m not sure we’ve ever sung it here, begins like this: “O Jesus, I have promised to serve thee to the end.” So that is the promise of the individual coming to be baptized. And you say to yourself, “That is quite a promise!” “I promise to serve you to the end.” The hymn writer helps the professor of such a statement by going on:

O let me feel thee near me;
The world is ever near;
I see the sights that dazzle;
The tempting sounds I hear.[10]

Fact, right? Am I living in a different universe? Every day, tempted; every day, dazzle; every day, tempting sounds; the Evil One putting thoughts in our minds that concur with our own sinful expectations. You get a few of these people that are in the church here in Jude who are saying, “Yeah, you don’t want to—don’t respond to stuff like that. That doesn’t matter. You haven’t understood the grace of God.”

Keeping the commandments of God on account of the love of God by the enabling of the Spirit of God is not easy.

The hymn writer continues,

O let me hear thee speaking
In accents clear and still
Above the storms of passion,
[And] the murmurs of self-will.

“I need to hear your voice, God. I read the Bible because I hear your voice. I come to church. I want to hear your voice. Because there are passions that are in my heart. There are storms that rage around me. There are murmurs in my soul.”

And this, you will notice, is not a solo exercise. “Keep yourselves,” plural, “in the love of God.” “Keep yourselves.” Isolation is a dreadful situation to find ourselves in. In Ecclesiastes, in the NIV, there’s a striking—just a statement—where all of a sudden, as you’re reading in, I think, about chapter 4, and it says, “I saw a man. He was all alone—had neither friend nor brother.”[11] What a picture! The “nowhere man,”[12] the uninvolved man, the solo flier. And then he goes on to say, “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, [the other] can [pick] him up.”[13]

Building

Now, with that said as the imperative, let’s go to these other verbs: “But you, [my] dear friends”—back at the beginning of verse 20—“building yourselves up in your most holy faith…”[14]

Interesting for some: the adjective here, “holy,” as to “faith,” is used only here in the entire New Testament. I’m glad of that, because I think it helps us understand that what Jude is referencing here is not a subjective faith. He’s not saying “your faith,” “your own personal response to Jesus.” No, he’s already set the scene for that by saying, “I want to earnestly urge you to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints”—in other words, to the doctrine which has underpinned the development of God’s people throughout the ages.

Now, I said I’d only give one cross-reference, and so I will: Ephesians chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2. If you turn to it, it will help you. If you think you know it, you’re probably wrong. Ephesians chapter 2. There’s nothing better than the sound of rustling pages to a preacher. Ephesians 2:19: “So then you[’re] no longer strangers and aliens, but you[’re] fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God”—you’re not on your own—“built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him”—in Jesus—“you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

What’s the point? Building ourselves up is a corporate reality. And it is also a lifelong reality. It’s not that you can attend a course that’s called “Building Yourselves Up in Your Holy Faith”; it’s a four-week course; you finish that, and you move on. No. It goes on for all of our lives. Jesus told his followers, “I’m going away. The Holy Spirit will come. He will lead you into all truth. When he leads you into all truth, then what I want you to do is teach that truth.”[15] They taught it, it was written down, it was left for us, and now we have it.

And so, when we go back through the pages of the New Testament, what do we discover? We discover that Peter and John and the rest were doing exactly what Jesus said. What? Grounding those who profess faith in Jesus in the truth. So, for example, in Acts chapter 2, when Peter preaches on the day of Pentecost, and thousands of people are converted, and they ask the question, “What shall we do?” he says, “Repent and be baptized … for the [remission] of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”[16] And so that takes place—a big baptismal service. And then Luke immediately tells us at the end of Acts 2, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching.”[17] “To the apostles’ teaching,” or to “the apostles’ doctrine.”[18] In other words, they devoted themselves to the truth that had now been delivered to the saints.

And that is why, incidentally, the regular exposition of the Bible and the application of the Word of God is central if you want to be building yourself up in your faith. You can’t build yourself up in your faith apart from the means that God has provided for doing that. This is how it’s done, he says. This is the reason why as you read all the way through the Bible, God is saying to his servants—whether it’s Moses or Joshua or any of the prophets—“Assemble my people,” he says. “Assemble my people that they might hear my word.”[19] “Might hear my word.” It’s mutual edification. It’s mutual correction. It’s mutual consolation. It’s mutual encouragement.

You see, how are you going to be working this stuff out? How am I going to work this stuff out on my own? I can’t on my own. I need you. You need me. Really? Absolutely. I mean, who looks after me? You look after me. Oh yes you do! The writer to the Hebrews says, “Take care, brothers [and sisters], lest there be in any of you [a sinful], unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.”[20] He says, “Look out! Take care! Be alert!” The natural temptation will be declension. So we are on the lookout—in a wonderful way, not in a negative way.

I’ve been reading this book this week, a book called Pride, which is about the identity of self-worship. It’s a very helpful book by a fellow in York. And in the course of the book, actually towards the end, he gets on this very subject. And he said some things which I’ve found amazingly helpful and challenging: he says, “We assemble … to meet with God,” and we are called “to worship God together.” He says, “There is no display of true humanity greater than a church at worship on the Lord’s Day.”[21] That’s a statement, isn’t it? “There is no greater display of true humanity than a church at worship on the Lord’s Day.”

Why? Well, “What is the chief end of man? … To glorify God, and … enjoy him forever.”[22] So when you put together individuals who have committed themselves to that objective, who have lived their life through the week and have now come together united in their shared conviction that we worship Almighty God, we listen for God’s Word, and we declare his glory, here is humanity at its best. The world goes by; it’s got no notion of this. They don’t know this, because they don’t know Jesus. That’s why we’re called to go and tell them about Jesus.

He says, actually, “A human life is only what it should be if it is a life centred on serving and adoring God [while we are] assembled [as the] Body of Christ.” And here is his most striking statement of all: “If you want not only to know, but to be, your true self”—if you want not only to know your true self but to be your true self—“then you need to go to church.”[23]

You ever thought about it that way? Where is the true expression of humanity? It’s not at the Super Bowl. It’s not in athletics. It’s not in a university campus. It’s in the assembling of God’s people. Why else would the whole thing be moving to one great assembly—to a company that no one can number from every tribe, language, people, and tongue?[24] You’re not going to live on your own island. Neither am I. We’re going to live in communion with one another. And in order that we might look forward to that day when it comes with a great sense of anticipation, God has given us the privilege of keeping ourselves in the love of God as we build ourselves up in our most holy faith.

I spent too long on that.

Praying

Then praying: “praying in the Holy Spirit.”

Now, let me just say straight off: you will find people—and you may be one of the people—who immediately says, “Oh, this is a special kind of prayer. This is a special prayer where you don’t know what you’re saying, but you say it anyway, and it’s peculiar, and you’ll be all the better for it.” I don’t subscribe to that view. This is, if you like, the very praying that a Christian needs always to pray. And it is the prayer in the Holy Spirit, contrasting with those who are devoid of the Spirit—verse 19. These are the people who are perhaps telling you, “This is the way to really make progress in the Christian life.” But he says, “They are actually devoid of the Spirit, and anyone who doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ doesn’t belong to him.”

Cross-reference for praying in the Spirit would be Romans chapter 8. And you can read this again for your benefit. Romans 8:14: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons [and daughters] of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’”

You see this juxtaposition between “building” and “praying”—“praying in the Holy Spirit,” enabled by the Holy Spirit, praying in line with the Holy Spirit? Paul goes on later in Romans 8, doesn’t he, to make clear that we don’t know how to pray, very often. “We don’t know how to pray as we ought”[25]—verse 26. But our prayers are an expression of dependence upon God. And so we pray with one another, and we pray for one another. And there is a reason why we would pray for six weeks about this issue, praying in the Holy Spirit, praying an expression of our dependence upon God, and praying for one another—“praying,” as Paul says in Ephesians 6, “at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication,”[26] and in the awareness that the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that we can’t even utter.[27]

I think we need to pay careful attention to this notion of building and praying, given that they’re put together. You see, again, all of this we’re able to do on our own, but we’re not best on our own. None of us are best on our own. You see, it is when we’re prepared to be honest with one another about the fact that we are seeking to keep ourselves in the love of God and building ourselves up in the most holy faith that we find out from one another that we’re not the only person that ever—that ever what? Well, people say, “Well, I thought I was the only one who ever felt that way.” And then you talk to somebody, they say, “Oh no. I have often felt like that.” Or, you know, “I thought I was the only one that ever did such a horrible thing as that.” And people say, “No, I’ve done that,” or “I’ve done worse than that.” Or “I thought I was the only person that failed to grasp what he was saying.” And people say, “Oh no. None of us can grasp what he’s saying. We’re together on that.”

Waiting

Building, praying, and finally, waiting: “Waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

“But surely we began with the mercy of the Lord Jesus?” Yes, in fact, we did. Peter begins his letter in that exact way: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”[28]

What we have here is just an indication of what runs through the Bible, and that is that our Christian lives have a “now” and a “not yet” dimension to them. A “now” and a “not yet” dimension. Best cross-reference, I think, is probably 1 John and chapter 3, and so I’ll read it: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called [the] children of God; and so we are”—present tense, presently. “The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” I just referenced that. “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”[29]

So the reality of being in Christ on account of his mercy sends us out into the journey of life, where “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but … against spiritual wickedness in [the heavenly] places.”[30] And in this whole process, as we recognize the challenges that are within us and the challenges that are around us, we’re heeding the exhortation of the Word of God: “Keep yourselves in the love of God, building yourselves up in the holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, and waiting for the mercy of the Lord Jesus when, on that day, you are welcomed into his eternal glory.”

One of the things that the Evil One has done an amazing job on is trying to cause people who are seeking to follow Jesus to lose confidence in the beginning and the end of the whole story—a complete loss of confidence in the idea that there is a creator God, that we were personally made for his glory, in his love; and getting us to give up on the notion that there is a Savior in heaven who is awaiting our arrival. And so both these things have to be affirmed if we’re going to “contend for the faith … once … delivered to the saints”: that God created the world; that God has provided in Jesus a Savior for sin; that that Savior has ascended into heaven; and from there, we await the one who will come.

In Jesus, we’re all still under construction. None of us are the finished article.

I’m grateful, as you know, for all the songs that have been taught to me throughout my years. People think I should have my own hymnbook, you know, just with all the silly songs. And they’re not all silly, but I don’t think there’s any validity to that. But as I finished up my talk this week in preparation, I was way back in my Bible class on Sunday afternoons in suburban Glasgow. As I’ve told you before, my parents thought it’d be a good idea if I went to church in the morning, went to church in the evening, sang in the junior choir in the late afternoon, and since there was a space in the day, why not go to a Bible class? And so that’s where I went. Two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, there I was in amidst all these boys.

My teacher, my leader, was a business guy, Norman Walker—big man, tall, handsome, and sincerely committed to seeing our lives moved in the direction of godliness. And he couldn’t sing worth a lick, but he liked to lead the songs, and we had a songbook. And one of his favorites goes like this.

Incidentally, he used to do this [swings hand back and forth]. It did something for him, but it didn’t do anything for anybody else, you know? It wasn’t like you went “Whoa!” when he went… He just did it.

So it goes like this:

I am waiting for the dawning
Of that bright and blessed day
When the darksome night of sorrow
Shall have vanished far away,
When forever with the Savior,
Far beyond [the] vale of tears,
I shall swell the song of worship
Through the everlasting years.[31]

Well, I was nine when I started that class. He is now swelling the song of worship. One day, I plan to join him. I’ll be very interested to know, when he sings up there, whether he continues to do this [swings hand back and forth]. But I’m thankful for him, ’cause he said to us as boys, “It is imperative that you keep yourselves in the love of God, building yourselves up, praying in the Holy Spirit, waiting for his return.”

These are marks of the genuine Christian experience. If they’re not yours, the chances are you’re not a Christian at all. If you’re listening to me now, you’re going to go out and say, “Well, that was fascinating, but it didn’t really register a bit to me, ’cause it never once occurred to me that I was supposed to do any of those things, or even that I could.” Well, then today you may. You may respond to the beautiful invitation of Jesus to come to him and to find in him a Savior and a Lord and a King, and then to go on out into the July 4 week finding freedom that is really freedom—the freedom that is kept in the love of God.

In Jesus, we’re all still under construction. None of us are the finished article. Sometimes we make that too obvious to those who love us best, and we need to repent and keep going. But one day he will finish his new creation. One day we will be pure, and we will be spotless. I’m not pure. I’m not spotless yet. And I hope you know you’re not as well. That way, we’re waiting.

Father, help us to wait. And while we wait, help us to pray. And while we pray, help us to help each other, to build one another up in this most holy faith. For we know that we could only keep ourselves because you keep us. And so we pray, keep us kept, Lord. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

[1] Jude 3–4 (ESV).

[2] Jude 3 (ESV).

[3] Jude 1 (ESV).

[4] 1 John 4:10 (KJV).

[5] 1 John 4:10 (NIV).

[6] Luke 22:44 (KJV).

[7] Matthew 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42 (paraphrased).

[8] Sinclair B. Ferguson, Devoted to God: Blueprints for Sanctification (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2016), 173.

[9] John 14:15 (paraphrased).

[10] John Ernest Bode, “O Jesus, I Have Promised” (1869).

[11] Ecclesiastes 4:8 (paraphrased from the NIV).

[12] John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “Nowhere Man” (1965).

[13] Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 (NIV 1984).

[14] Jude 20 (NIV).

[15] John 16:7, 13 (paraphrased).

[16] Acts 2:37–38 (ESV).

[17] Acts 2:42 (ESV). Emphasis added.

[18] Acts 2:42 (KJV).

[19] Deuteronomy 4:10 (paraphrased).

[20] Hebrews 3:12 (ESV).

[21] Matthew P. W. Roberts, Pride: Identity and the Worship of Self (Fearn, Great Britain: Christian Focus, 2023), 169.

[22] The Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 1.

[23] Roberts, Pride, 169.

[24] See Revelation 7:9.

[25] Romans 8:26 (paraphrased).

[26] Ephesians 6:18 (ESV).

[27] See Romans 8:26.

[28] 1 Peter 1:3 (ESV).

[29] 1 John 3:1–3 (ESV).

[30] Ephesians 6:12 (KJV).

[31] Samuel Trevor Francis, “I Am Waiting for the Dawning.”