Is your love, mercy and peace growing? Jude

Jude 1:1-2
​ Jude, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James,
To those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ: May mercy and peace and love be multiplied to you.

Jude is just a little book.   This is just a guest, but in the opening line he not only calls himself a "bond-servant" of the Lord, but he also tells his readers he is the brother of the Apostle James.   Without reading too much into that aspect of his indentification, you might think he is so small in the church world of the knowns, he must associate himself with someone who is.   Perhaps, it gives the book a larger sense of importance than if he had said, "Hey, you all, this is Jude."   Leaving the world of conjecture, Jude's opening line to these believers is all about their standing in Christ and how he wants them to be full of those things Salvation affords us.   He is about to warn them to be watchful and vigilant about the false teachers who are tying to hijack the faith.    Before he gets into the major warnings of this one-chapter-book, he prays that they might be filled (multiplied) with the essentials of Christ's salvation:  Mercy, Peace, and Love.     The word "multiplied" comes from a Greek word that eventually will become the English word, "plethora" for us.   If we say we have a plethora of choices we are saying we have a full assortment of choices.   What Jude is saying to these readers is that he prays for them that they might have the mercy, peace and love all believers begin with when they believe in Christ, to be multiplied into a full plethora of mercy, peace and love.   The three, have no boundaries.   When we become believers we are filled with the Holy Spirit and the Spirit begins to produce fruit in our lives.   That fruit becomes the outworking of mercy, peace and love.   We should have some fruit in the beginning of our walk with Christ and produce more fruit when we reach greater maturity in Christ.   But, the Spirit does not stop in His work in our lives.  He continues to produce more and more fruit that is expressed via mercy for others, peace in the midst of war and love for all.   We don't reach a maximum level of these three.   We can have too much mercy, peace and love.   We can only have (or should have) a multiplying, plethora, of each.