Mark Keown

The second glorious nugget here is 'pray in the Holy Spirit'. 'Pray' here is present middle, the present indicating 'continually pray'. 'In the Holy Spirit' can mean 'by', 'with', 'in the sphere of', 'as led by', 'in the power of' and more. It should be taken in a global way. Pray as led by, in accordance with, by the urging of, in the love of etc etc, the Spirit. It is prayer drenched in the Spirit's grace, love, guidance and urging. It recalls Paul's injunction in Eph 6:18: 'pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.' Prayer is the basic humanward side of response to God. Worship is essentially prayer. Prayer involves lots of listening, and sharing with God one's deepest thoughts, concerns, desires and yearnings. It should characterise us as Christians. It is one of the means of 'building ourselves up in the most holy faith'. There are two equal and opp...

Jude is an underated book. It is written (so I think) by Jesus' brother Jude. He describes himself as a slave (doulos) of Jesus Christ and James' brother. It is written to some unspecified Christians described as the called, the loved by God, and kept by Jesus Christ. His recipients are afflicted by false teachers against whom Jude encourages them to contend for the faith. These false teachers are infiltrating the flock and are now condemned. They are godless and distort an authentic Christian doctrine of grace into a freedom to be sexually immoral and deny Jesus Christ as King and Lord. Jude appeals to OT and apocalyptic examples of God's judgement. These include the Exodus, angels, Sodom and Gomorrah. These are examples of those who will suffer eternal punishment. These false teachers too are unholy, reject authority and slander celestial beings. Jude warns them with the example of Michael who when disputing with Satan over Moses' body, did not dare to slander Satan. ...