Romans 13:11

We are here taught a lesson of sobriety and godliness in ourselves. Our main care must be to look to ourselves. Four things we are here taught, as a Christian's directory for his day's work: when to awake, how to dress ourselves, how to walk, and what provision to make.

I. When to awake: Now it is high time to awake (Rom 13:11), to awake out of the sleep of sin (for a sinful condition is a sleeping condition), out of the sleep of carnal security, sloth and negligence, out of the sleep of spiritual death, and out of the sleep of spiritual deadness; both the wise and foolish virgins slumbered and slept, Mat 25:5. We have need to be often excited and stirred up to awake. The word of command to all Christ's disciples is, Watch. "Awake - be concerned about your souls and your eternal interest; take heed of sin, be ready to, and serious in, that which is good, and live in a constant expectation of the coming of our Lord. Considering," 1. "The time we are cast into: Knowing the time. Consider what time of day it is with us, and you will see it is high time to awake. It is gospel time, it is the accepted time, it is working time; it is a time when more is expected than was in the times of that ignorance which God winked at, when people sat in darkness. It is high time to awake; for the sun has been up a great while, and shines in our faces. Have we this light to sleep in? See Th1 5:5, Th1 5:6. It is high time to awake; for others are awake and up about us. Know the time to be a busy time; we have a great deal of work to do, and our Master is calling us to it again and again. Know the time to be a perilous time. We are in the midst of enemies and snares. It is high time to awake, for the Philistines are upon us; our neighbour's house is on fire, and our own in danger. It is time to awake, for we have slept enough (Pe1 4:3), high time indeed, for behold the bridegroom cometh." 2. "The salvation we are upon the brink of: Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed - than when we first believed, and so took upon us the profession of Christianity. The eternal happiness we chose for our portion is now nearer to us than it was when we became Christians. Let us mind our way and mend our pace, for we are now nearer our journey's end than we were when we had our first love. The nearer we are to our centre the quicker should our motion be. Is there but a step between us and heaven, and shall we be so very slow and dull in our Christian course, and move so heavily? The more the days are shortened, and the more grace is increased, the nearer is our salvation, and the more quick and vigorous we should be in our spiritual motions."

II. How to dress ourselves. This is the next care, when we are awake and up: "The night is far spent, the day is at hand; therefore it is time to dress ourselves. Clearer discoveries will be quickly made of gospel grace than have been yet made, as light gets ground. The night of Jewish rage and cruelty is just at an end; their persecuting power is near a period; the day of our deliverance from them is at hand, that day of redemption which Christ promised, Luk 21:28. And the day of our complete salvation, in the heavenly glory, is at hand. Observe then,"

1. "What we must put off; put off our night-clothes, which it is a shame to appear abroad in: Cast off the works of darkness." Sinful works are works of darkness; they come from the darkness of ignorance and mistake, they covet the darkness of privacy and concealment, and they end in the darkness of hell and destruction. "Let us therefore, who are of the day, cast them off; not only cease from the practice of them, but detest and abhor them, and have no more to do with them. Because eternity is just at the door, let us take heed lest we be found doing that which will then make against us," Pe2 3:11, Pe2 3:14.

2. "What we must put on." Our care must be wherewithal we shall be clothed, how shall we dress our souls? (1.) Put on the armour of light. Christians are soldiers in the midst of enemies, and their life a warfare, therefore their array must be armour, that they may stand upon their defence - the armour of God, to which we are directed, Eph 6:13, etc. A Christian may reckon himself undressed if he be unarmed. The graces of the Spirit are this armour, to secure the soul from Satan's temptations and the assaults of this present evil world. This is called the armour of light, some think alluding to the bright glittering armour which the Roman soldiers used to wear; or such armour as it becomes us to wear in the day-light. The graces of the Spirit are suitable splendid ornaments, are in the sight of God of great price. (2.) Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, Rom 13:14. This stands in opposition to a great many base lusts, mentioned Rom 13:13. Rioting and drunkenness must be cast off: one would think it should follows, but, "Put on sobriety, temperance, chastity," the opposite virtues: no, "Put on Christ, this includes all. Put on the righteousness of Christ for justification; be found in him (Phi 3:9) as a man is found in his clothes; put on the priestly garments of the elder brother, that in them you may obtain the blessing. Put on the spirit and grace of Christ for sanctification; put on the new man (Eph 4:24); get the habit of grace confirmed, the acts of it quickened." Jesus Christ is the best clothing for Christians to adorn themselves with, to arm themselves with; it is decent, distinguishing, dignifying, and defending. Without Christ, we are naked, deformed; all other things are filthy rages, fig-leaves, a sorry shelter. God has provided us coats of skins - large, strong, warm, and durable. By baptism we have in profession put on Christ, Gal 3:27. Let us do it in truth and sincerity. The Lord Jesus Christ. "Put him on as Lord to rule you, as Jesus to save you, and in both as Christ, anointed and appointed by the Father to this ruling saving work."

III. How to walk. When we are up and dressed, we are not to sit still in an affected closeness and privacy, as monks and hermits. What have we good clothes for, but to appear abroad in them? - Let us walk. Christianity teaches us how to walk so as to please God, whose eye is upon us: Th1 4:1, Walk honestly as in the day. Compare Eph 5:8, Walk as children of light. Our conversation must be as becomes the gospel. Walk honestly; euschēmonōs - decently and becomingly, so as to credit your profession, and to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour, and recommend religion in its beauty to others. Christians should be in a special manner careful to conduct themselves well in those things wherein men have an eye upon them, and to study that which is lovely and of good report. Particularly, here are three pairs of sins we are cautioned against: - 1. We must not walk in rioting and drunkenness; we must abstain from all excess in eating and drinking. We must not give the least countenance to revelling, nor indulge our sensual appetite in any private excesses. Christians must not overcharge their hearts with surfeiting and drunkenness, Luk 21:34. This is not walking as in the day; for those that are drunk are drunk in the night, Th1 5:7. 2. Not in chambering and wantonness; not in any of those lusts of the flesh, those works of darkness, which are forbidden in the seventh commandment. Downright adultery and fornication are the chambering forbidden. Lascivious thoughts and affections, lascivious looks, words, books, sons, gestures, dances, dalliances, which lead to, and are degrees of, that uncleanness, are the wantonness here forbidden - whatsoever transgresseth the pure and sacred law of chastity and modesty. 3. Not in strife and envying. These are also works of darkness; for, though the acts and instances of strife and envy are very common, yet none are willing to own the principles, or to acknowledge themselves envious and contentious. it may be the lot of the best saints to be envied and striven with; but to strive and to envy ill becomes the disciples and followers of the peaceable and humble Jesus. Where there are riot and drunkenness, there usually are chambering and wantonness, and strife and envy. Solomon puts them all together, Pro 23:29, etc. Those that tarry long at the wine (Pro 23:30) have contentions and wounds without cause (Pro 23:29) and their eyes behold strange women, Pro 23:33.

IV. What provision to make (Pro 23:14): "Make not provision for the flesh. Be not careful about the body." Our great care must be to provide for our souls; but must we take no care about our bodies? Must we not provide for them, when they need it? Yes, but two things are here forbidden: - 1. Perplexing ourselves with an inordinate care, intimated in these words, pronoian mē poieisthe. "Be not solicitous in forecasting for the body; do not stretch your wits, nor set your thoughts upon the tenter-hooks, in making this provision; be not careful and cumbered about it; do not take thought," Mat 6:31. It forbids an anxious encumbering care. 2. Indulging ourselves in an irregular desire. We are not forbidden barely to provide for the body (it is a lamp that must be supplied with oil), but we are forbidden to fulfil the lusts thereof. The necessities of the body must be considered, but the lusts of it must not be gratified. Natural desires must be answered, but wanton appetites must be checked and denied. To ask meat for our necessities is duty: we are taught to pray for daily bread; but to ask meat for our lusts is provoking, Psa 78:18. Those who profess to walk in the spirit must not fulfil the lusts of the flesh, Gal 5:16.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

And that - The word “that,” in this place, is connected in signification with the word ““this” in Rom 13:9. The meaning may be thus expressed: All the requirements of the Law toward our neighbor may be met by two things: one is Rom 13:9-10 by love; the other is Rom 13:11-14 by remembering that we are near to eternity; keeping a deep sense of “this” truth before the mind. “This” will prompt to a life of honesty, truth, and peace, and contentment, Rom 13:13. The doctrine in these verses Rom 13:11-14, therefore, is, “that a deep conviction of the nearness of eternity will prompt to an upright life in the contact of man with man.

Knowing the time - Taking a proper “estimate” of the time. Taking just views of the shortness and the value of time; of the design for which it was given, and of the fact that it is, in regard to us, rapidly coming to a close. And still further considering, that the time in which you live is the time of the gospel, a period of light and truth, when you are particularly called on to lead holy lives, and thus to do justly to all. The “previous” time had been a period of ignorance and darkness, when oppression, and falsehood, and sin abounded. This, the time of the “gospel,” when God had “made known” to people his will that they should be pure.

High time - Greek, “the hour.”

To awake ... - This is a beautiful figure. The dawn of day, the approaching light of the morning, is the time to arouse from slumber. In the darkness of night, people sleep. So says the apostle. The world has been sunk in the “night” of paganism and sin. At that time it was to be expected that they would sleep the sleep of spiritual death. But now the morning light of the gospel dawns. The Sun of righteousness has arisen. It is “time,” therefore, for people to cast off the deeds of darkness, and rise to life, and purity, and action; compare Act 17:30-31. The same idea is beautifully presented in 1Th 5:5-8. The meaning is,” Hitherto we have walked in darkness and in sin. Now we walk in the light of the gospel. We know our duty. We are sure that the God of light is around us, and is a witness of all we do. We are going soon to meet him, and it becomes us to rouse, and to do those deeds, and those only, which will bear the bright shining of the light of truth, and the scrutiny of him who is “light, and in whom is no darkness at all;” 1Jo 1:5.

Sleep - Inactivity; insensibility to the doctrines and duties of religion. People, by nature, are active only in deeds of wickedness. In regard to religion they are insensible, and the slumbers of night are on their eyelids. Sleep is “the kinsman of death,” and it is the emblem of the insensibility and stupidity of sinners. The deeper the ignorance and sin, the greater is this insensibility to spiritual things, and to the duties which we owe to God and man.

For now is our salvation - The word “salvation” has been here variously interpreted. Some suppose that by it the apostle refers to the personal reign of Christ on the earth. (Tholuck, and the Germans generally.) Others suppose it refers to deliverance from “persecutions.” Others, to increased “light” and knowledge of the gospel, so that they could more clearly discern their duty than when they became believers. (Rosenmuller.) It probably, however, has its usual meaning here, denoting that deliverance from sin and danger which awaits Christians in heaven; and is thus equivalent to the expression, “You are advancing nearer to heaven. You are hastening to the world of glory. Daily we are approaching the kingdom of light; and in prospect of that state, we ought to lay aside every sin, and live more and more in preparation for a world of light and glory.”

Than when we believed - Than when we “began” to believe. Every day brings us nearer to a world of perfect light.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Rom_13:11-14

And, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep.

A call

I. To awake. Because--

1. It is high time.

2. The night of unbelief is past.

3. The day of salvation is at hand.

II. To duty.

1. To repentance--Put off the works of darkness.

2. To faith--Put on the armour of light.

3. To action--Walk honestly, etc.

4. To holiness--Put on Christ--the Source of new life. (J. Lyth, D.D.)

Time closing in upon us

The time is short, or, as we might perhaps render it so as to give the full force of the metaphor, the time is pressed together. It is being squeezed into narrower compass, like a sponge in a strong hand. There is an old story of a prisoner in a cell with contractile walls. Day by day his space lessens--he saw the whole of that window yesterday, he sees only half of it to-day. Nearer and nearer the walls are drawn together, till they meet and crush him between them. So the walls of our home (which we have made our prison) are closing in upon us. (A. Maclaren, D.D.)

Knowledge of time

I. That knowledge of time which we should secure. We should know time in its--

1. Nature.

2. Use.

3. Value.

4. Management.

5. Termination.

II. The effects which it is calculated to promote.

1. Unfeigned gratitude to God.

2. Deep contrition of soul.

3. Fervent application to the throne of grace.

4. Sincere desires to live more fully unto the Lord. (Biblical Museum.)

Knowledge of time

We should know time in its--

I. Worth. Estimated at the value of--

1. Life. Time the measure of life of a being capable of thought, endowed with conscience, gifted with immortality.

2. What able to be done during its progress. Speaking of W. Wilberforce, Sir James Mackintosh said, I am full of admiration that the short period of the life of one man, well and wisely directed, can do so much and exert such influence. How precious is time! How valuable and dignified human life, which in general appears so base and miserable! Illustrate with Howard, Raikes, etc.

II. Responsibilities. Our relation to God. Knowledge of salvation. Duties in our sphere of life. Influence we exert. Ignatius when he heard the clock strike said, Now I have one hour more to account for.

III. Uncertainty. Commercial institutions and projects abundantly prove this, but he who counts on time presumes on probability that has even more impressively proved its questionableness (Jam_4:13-14).

IV. Brevity., The years of Jacob wore an hundred and thirty, yet he says, Few and evil, etc. Moses again, Like the grass, etc. When we look over the first chapters of Chronicles, to read which is like entering a great world-cemetery, how we are struck with the shortness of life at the best!

V. Powerlessness. It cannot destroy sin, or take away its guilt. It cannot act for us. It cannot destroy the soul, though it ends the life.

VI. Irrevocableness. The wave that washes at your feet may return. The waters of the river as they roll to the sea, caught up in mist, may again flow down the mountains into its channel, but an hour once gone in the roll of millenniums shall never return. We can recall a messenger, but not the last moment. One life here, only one, is given, how precious should it be! (G. McMichael, B.A.)

Time to awake

I. The exhortation. These words are appropriate to the first Sunday in the year. When the bells ring out the old year and ring in the new, they seem to chime, Now it is high time to awake out of sleep.

1. St. Paul is speaking not to those who were asleep in sin, but to active Christians. And there are few things in Scripture more striking than the remonstrances addressed to such. Ordinarily little or no account seems taken of their progress, but they are dealt with as having yet much to do. The nominal Christian ought to be much struck with this. If he who has been long labouring is thus admonished, what must be the state of those who have not yet taken the first steps in Christianity?

2. But the real Christian may also find cause for alarm, notwithstanding the promises in his favour. And when we call to mind that in the parable all the virgins, the wise as well as the foolish, slumbered, we cannot but conclude that there is no privilege to godly men of dispensing with watchfulness. It is vigilance, not indolence, to which believers are elected. The best proof that a man is not elect, is his making election his pillow, and going to sleep upon his own predestination.

3. Our text, however, may be taken in comparative sense. The righteous may not sleep as do others. Yet you may find so vast a disproportion between the energy exerted and the energy demanded, that the actual wakefulness is practical listlessness. Spiritual slumber is not necessarily the folding up of every power and faculty, but the not developing them in the necessary degree. Some energy is still torpid, some affection is still spellbound, and thus the whole man is not spiritually roused. And over and above the slumber of certain faculties, those which are awake are but half awake. Where is that struggling which would result from the combination of an eye all faith and a heart all love?

II. The motive by which St. Paul strives to stir Christians from comparative indolence--Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

1. This argument which is drawn from the greater nearness of death is not of equal urgency when applied to believer and unbeliever. In applying it to the latter, I just tell him that he has less time in which to escape, and therefore less likelihood of obtaining deliverance. He must do it before daybreak, and the night is far spent. But when I turn to the believer, there is by no means the same appearance of force in the motive. If a man be secure of salvation, to tell him that the end is at hand does not look like urging him to exertion. But here comes in that balancing of statements which is discernible through the whole of the Bible. The only Scriptural certainty that a man will be saved is the certainty that he will struggle. Struggling is incipient salvation. It is an intenser struggle which marks a fuller possession. If, then, a man would show that his salvation is nearer, he must also show that he is more wakeful, more in earnest.

2. There are two reasons why the consciousness of having less time to live should urge Christians to be increasingly earnest.

(1) There is much to strive for even if a man be secure of salvation. The degree of our happiness in the next life will be mainly determined by our attainments in holiness in this. We are here on a stage of probation, so that, having been once recovered from apostasy, we are candidates for a prize and wrestlers for a crown. Christianity does not allow the believer to imagine that everything is done when a title to the kingdom is obtained. And if one man become a ruler over ten cities, and another over five, and another over two, each receiving in exact proportion to his improvement of talents, then it is clear that our strivings will have a vast influence on our recompense. To tell the Christian, therefore, that his salvation is nearer than when he believed, is telling the wrestler that his glass is running out, and there is the garland not won; it is telling the warrior that the shadows are thickening and the victory is not complete. Is it a time to sleep when each moments slumber may take a pearl from the crown, a city from the sceptre?

(2) There remains less time in which to glorify God. If there were no connection between what we do in this life, and what we shall receive in the next, it would still be impossible for true Christians to be indolent. Forasmuch as faith makes us one with Christ, there must be community of interest. And it is a spectacle which should stir all the anxieties and sympathies of the believer--that the world which has been ransomed by Christs blood is nevertheless overspread with impiety. And over and above this dishonour to his Lord, there is the wretchedness which an ungodly race is weaving for its portion; and he cannot fail to long and to strive that he may be, in some degree, instrumental in the salvation of his fellow-men. Where, then, can you find a stronger motive to energy than is furnished by the shortness of the period during which we may resist the progress of iniquity and win souls for Christ? And what, then, is the text but an admonition that nerve and sinew, time and talent--all must be centred more fixedly than ever in the service of Christ, lest we are summoned to depart ere we have done the little which with all our strenuousness we might possibly effect for the Lord and His kingdom? (H. Melvill, B.D.)

Time to awake

I. The condition supposed. One of--

1. Insensibility.

2. Inactivity.

3. Peril.

II. The admonition given. Awake to--

1. Consideration.

2. Action.

3. Diligent effort.

III. The motives suggested.

1. It is high time.

2. The crisis draws on.

3. You know it. (J. Lyth, D.D.)

High time to awake out of sleep

I. The state from which a change is desired. Sleep describes--

1. The state of unconverted men (1Th_5:4-8; 1Co_15:34). Sleep is a season of--

(1) Forgetfulness, and men by nature are forgetful of the ends of their being, of their true character--of the awful attributes of eternity, etc.

(2) Ignorance, and the unconverted man has no discernment as to spiritual things.

(3) Insensibility, and the natural man is unalarmed and secure amidst all the danger by which he is surrounded. A man may be awake as to all the things of time, and asleep as to all the concerns of eternity.

2. Of many who have made a profession of the gospel and felt its power. Once they were roused from the slumbers of spiritual death, but they are gone back. Their strong impressions have subsided, their souls have left their first love; they did run well, but they have been hindered. In the world there is a constant influence to produce this stupor. Worldly business, pleasure, honour and applause, become the means of bringing us into a state of declension. How dreadful when the child of the day thus goes back into darkness, and stretches out his form, asking for a little more sleep and a little more slumber!

II. The nature of the change by which this state is to be reversed.

1. It is a change which produces a complete reverse. It is awaking out of sleep. This change is called a being turned from darkness to light--a being quickened--becoming children of the light and of the day, etc. The expression signifies that the understanding receives a full impression of the reality of the world to come. The man acts as though he believed that the true end of life is to glorify God; and hence he seeks to obtain a change of heart and life--cultivates holy principles, practises holy actions, and has respect in all things to the recompense of the reward.

2. The only way by which this change can be effected is by the powerful operation of the Spirit on the mind. The slumber is so potent that none but He can awake from it. The anodyne is so powerful that none but the great Physician can apply a suitable remedy. Where He is not, there is dark midnight, or the light only of a phantom, or the pale beams of the moon shining upon snow, displaying the very dreariness and barrenness of nature!

3. Yet human instruments are employed. Those who are awakened to the sense of the danger of their fellow-men are sent out by God to awaken others.

III. The motives which should induce you to awake.

1. Enough of your time has passed in an unaroused, unawakened state already.

2. The difficulty of awakening grows with the progress of delay. The sleep of the body, indeed, becomes lighter as we approach the morning season. But this slumber becomes deeper and heavier, till the individual sleeps the sleep of death. Every time you hear in vain, you grow more sleepy, and the preachers voice becomes only as so much music to lull you. You have so long listened to the rolling of the thunder that your ears are now deaf to its sound. The Cross has so frequently been presented to you that its brightness has no longer any attraction.

3. The uncertainty and speedy termination of life. Who is there that knows how long he has to live? Can any of you say, Go thy way for this time; when it is more convenient, I will attend to these things? You know not that you will live till to-morrow. (J. Parsons.)

High time to awake

I. There is sometimes a tendency in Christians to sleep. How many settle down into dreamy stationariness. This state--

1. Follows upon the religious life losing its first freshness and novelty.

2. Is induced by a false conception of the atonement and the nature of salvation. Men have been taught to consider salvation bestowed in its completeness upon believing that Christ is the sacrifice for the worlds sin, and all that thereafter remains is heaven; whereas salvation simply begins then--nothing more.

3. Is encouraged by the worldly maxims and excitements, the spirit of mammonism, amidst which so many live. God and duty, and all spiritual realities seem often to fade away into mere phantoms in the clash and hurry of commerce. That only seems real which is visible and present. And the result is that the soul passes by almost imperceptible degrees into a state of moral slumber.

4. Comes through the growth of some moral weakness or sinful habit--covetousness, love of pleasure, passionateness--that has not been controlled or weeded out of the character at the beginning of the new life; or through the influence of companions of a worldly type; or from the mind becoming unsettled on some of the questions of theology and Biblical criticism. Many a man, tossed on a sea of doubt and uncertainty concerning creeds and theological systems, gradually loses his former spiritual intensity, and languidly suffers the work of salvation to remain stationary.

II. As a corrective of inaction and torpor, and to inspire once more with Holy enterprise any who sleep, there is a twofold incentive.

1. Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. This points to--

(1) The fact of the Christian life having been begun. It is a great point gained to have made a definite beginning in a good work. After the first few stages there begins to be accumulated a fund of experience; the sense of strangeness goes, and the faculties begin to adapt themselves to the new mode of life, and the man soon begins to have a foretaste of some of the fruits of his labour. Past conquests lend a power for future triumphs. Attainment facilitates yet further attainment.

(2) The grand revelations of the other life, which are fast approaching. But the measure of every ones heaven hereafter depends upon the spiritual meetness which has been developed in him here. And the time that remains to any of us for casting off the works of darkness and putting on the armour of light is ceaselessly gliding away, whether we use it or no. The opportunities with which each year comes laden go into the grave of the past with it. The portals of the future are coming fast into sight, and soon they will open for you to pass through. There is no time to waste in dreamy indolence.

2. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. The present life is a time of shadow and obscurity. Purposes, duties, attainments, are often misinterpreted, and mis-valued. Now, in passing into the future we pass into the day. That is a world of light in which we shall both know ourselves and be known as we really are. Therefore, be ready for the time of revelation. Awake! put off the works of darkness; put on the armour of light. Each fresh day should see us awake and diligent. For the most Christ-like is never enough like Christ. (T. Hammond.)

Wake up! Wake Up!

I. Some professing Christians seem to be asleep with regard to others. Paul has been bidding us to pay attention to relative duties, and exhorting us to keep the law of love, which is the essence of law; and now he interjects this sentence. So he means that many Christians are in a sleepy state with reference to their obligations to others. True godliness makes a man look to himself, and feel his personal obligations and responsibilities. But there is a danger lest a man should say, Other people must see to themselves, and I must see to myself. The principle of individuality might be thus pushed to an unwarrantable extreme. No man can compass the ends of life by drawing a little line around himself upon the ground. There are outgoing lines of life that bind us not only with some men, but, in fact, with all humanity. We are placed, therefore, in a most solemn position; and it is with regard to this that it is high time that we should awake out of sleep.

1. Into what a deep slumber some professing Christians have fallen! How utterly insensible they are to the sins and sorrows of those around them. They say, What is to be will be, and the Lords purpose will be fulfilled; there will be some saved and others lost, as coolly as if they were talking of a wasps nest. As for those that are lost! They dare not injure their logic by indulging a little mournful emotion.

2. Others are prone to be overtaken with an oft-recurring sleep. I know a brother who often takes forty winks in the day-time: you may nudge him, and he will wake and listen to you, but he goes to sleep again in a few minutes if you let him alone. Who can blame the sleeper when it is a question of infirmity or sheer exhaustion? Well, without blaming any for the weakness of the flesh, I take this sleepy habit to be a fit illustration of the state of some Christians. They have fits and starts of wakefulness, and then off to sleep again. At that missionary meeting you woke up when you heard the cry of the perishing heathen; but have you cared much about China or India since then? You do at times get on fire with love for souls, but then after the sermon, or the week of special services has ended, you go to sleep again. Many Sunday-school teachers there are of that kind.

3. Others fall into a kind of somnambulistic state. If we judged them by their outward actions we should think they were wide awake, and they do what they do very well. Persons walk along giddy heights safely enough when fast asleep, where they would not venture when wide awake. And we have known professors going on very carefully, exactly where others have fallen, and have attributed it to the grace of God, whereas in part it has been attributable to the fact that they were spiritually asleep. It is possible to appear very devout, to sing hymns, to hear sermons, to teach in the Sunday School, to pay your religious contributions punctually, maintain the habit of prayer, and yet you may be a somnambulist.

4. A very large number of us are half asleep.

II. It is high time that they should awake. And why? Because--

1. What right have believers to be asleep at all? The Lord has saved us from the sleep which is the first cousin to death--from indifference, unbelief, hardheartedness.

2. A great many opportunities have already slipped away. You who have been converted, say these ten years, what have you done for Christ? You have been eating the fat and drinking the sweet, but have you fed the hungry? If you have been saved a week, and you have done nothing for Christ during that week, you have already wasted more than enough.

3. There were so many people that had a claim upon us, who are beyond our power now, even if we do wake! Have you ever felt the sadness of neglecting to visit a person who was ill until you heard that he was dead? Many are passing away from us and from the sphere of our influence. Your children, for instance. Parents, avail yourselves of your opportunities.

4. We have plenty of enemies that are awake if we are not. Protestantism may slumber, but Jesuitism never does. The prince of the power of the air keeps his servants well up to their work.

5. It is daylight. The sun has risen. We are getting far into the gospel dispensation. Can you sleep still?

6. Our Lord was awake. How did His eyes stream with tears over perishing Jerusalem! The zeal of Gods house consumed Him. Ought it not to consume us?

7. Our own day may be over within an hour or two. The preacher may be delivering his last sermon. You may go home to-night to offer the last prayer at the family altar which you will ever utter on earth. You may open shop to-morrow morning for the last time.

III. There is something worth waking for. Paul does not say, If you do not wake you will be lost. He speaks in a gospel tone, Now is your salvation nearer than when you believed.

1. It is nearer in order of time. How long is it since you believed? Ten years? You are ten years nearer heaven, then. Ought we not to be more awake? The farther we are off from heaven, the less we may feel its influence. Some of you are sixty years nearer to heaven than you were. Would you like to live those sixty years over again? Would you like to go back and clamber again the Hill Difficulty, and slide down again into the Valley of Humiliation, etc.? Rejoice that you are so much nearer heaven. Therefore, keep wide awake, and looking out for it.

2. In point of preparation. If we are getting more ready for heaven, we ought to be more awake, for sleepiness is not the state of heavenly spirits. If thou art more fit for heaven thou hast more love, more pity; then reach out both hands to bring another poor soul to Christ.

3. In point of clearness of realisation. If I can realise that in so short a time my eternal salvation shall be consummated, I cannot any longer neglect a single opportunity of serving my Master. Conclusion: Oh, ye unconverted men, must I read the text as it would have to run if it were written to yon? It is high time that you should awake out of sleep, for now is your damnation nearer than when you first heard the gospel and rejected it. God grant you grace to take heed and to believe in Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The wakeful Christian

I. The sleep. Sleep is a state which can only be declared of Christians. The unconverted are dead, and require not an awakening, but a resurrection. What does this injunction betoken? A state of--

1. Spiritual apathy. Sleep implies unconsciousness. There may be sublimities around the sleeper, but he sees them not; harmonies, but he hears them not; dangers, but he feels them not. So when Christians are asleep they are reduced to a state in which the religious senses are untouched.

2. Religious inactivity. There is a spot in the Atlantic called the Saragossa Sea, which is subject to long calms, and is covered with a thick, entangling seaweed; and nothing of all he has to encounter on the wide ocean fills the experienced mariner with more genuine dread than to be caught in the meshes of this region of dead calm and entangling weeds. The religious life has its Saragossa Sea, in which individuals and Churches too often lie becalmed and entangled in the weeds of conventional habits and formalism.

3. Dalliance with sin. The context shows a sad state of things, the reason for which was the recent conversion of the Roman Christians from heathenism, or the prevalence of Antinomianism. And while there is not now the same excess of riot, still there is considerable proneness to conform to the customs of irreligious people in pleasure.

II. The call to awake. This state of wakefulness is a condition the very opposite of the sleep referred to. It means, therefore--

1. Deep, intense religious consciousness.

2. Active, self-denying labour.

3. The mortifying of the flesh, and a clear, unmistakable protest against the evil ways of the world.

III. The reasons for wakefulness.

1. The nature of the Christian profession. Let us put on the armour of light. Here the Christian is presented to us as a soldier. One of the duties of his life, therefore, is to fight. A work demanding real, earnest care and watchfulness, and calculated to draw forth our utmost energies. A drowsy soldier is a contradiction. It follows, then, from this symbol, that the Christian should not be asleep. We are now in the midst of the fray; let us, then, be awake, putting on the armour of light, which alone will secure us the victory in the conflict with darkness.

2. The closeness of the end. For now is our salvation nearer, etc. As the days slip from our grasp, each remaining moment should become more intensely precious to us.

3. The character of the times. Knowing the time. Never did any age since the establishment of Christianity possess such claims upon the earnest, sober attention of the Church as the present. Our age is one eminent for--

(1) Its secular activities in the direction of commerce, science, and education. Shall the Church alone remain quiescent in the midst of this torrent of activity? It is here, as it often is with travellers by train, which, by its very swiftness, lulls to sleep, but as it slackens speed the sleeper wakens up and looks around. So the rate at which the train of secular pursuits hurries Christians along and lulls them into a state of obliviousness of spiritual things. Let us be as intrepid in the things of God as we are in those of our own.

(2) Its activity in the dissemination of error. The two grand errors of the age are priestism and scepticism--twin sisters, though not on very amicable terms with each other.

(3) Its abounding wickedness. Here, then, is a powerful reason for wakefulness. A living Church is the grand antidote to all the evils incidental to our civilisation. It is its duty pre-eminently to seek to leaven this civilisation. (A. J. Parry.)

The sleeper aroused

I. The sinners sleep. A state of--

1. Forgetfulness.

2. Misapprehension.

3. Fancied security.

4. Fleshly delight.

II. The exhortation. It implies--

1. An altered view of things.

2. Voluntary effort.

3. Energy.

4. Compliance with terms.

III. The reason.

1. Life is fleeting.

2. Judgment is near.

3. God is calling. (W. W. Wythe.)

Sleep

And as it was with Jonah, so it is now with many a soul. In the midst of the waves and storms of life, with only a short step between them and the world to come, they are sleeping. They are wide awake as far as their temporal needs and pleasures are concerned, but they are asleep to all spiritual interests. When we are asleep we are--

I. In darkness. The fairest sights may be around us, but, so long as we are asleep, for us they do not exist. And so it is, sometimes, in spiritual sleep. This world in which we live is instinct with the life of God. There is not a hill or valley, a wind or storm, a bird or beast, a leaf or flower, but has something to say to us of God. And yet there are some who say, There is no God: they are sleeping the death of infidelity. Now, though it is not probable that any of you are sleeping this sleep of darkness, yet drowsiness generally comes before sleep. Take care, then, you do not give way to the drowsiness that precedes the slumber of infidelity. Do not encourage infidel thoughts. Beware of the beginnings of doubts. As often as doubt assails you, fly in prayer to God for the strengthening of your faith.

II. Doing nothing. A sleeping man is no better than a dead man, so far as present action is concerned. And if the souls activity is intercourse with God, and work for God, is not that soul asleep that does not care to speak to God, to work for God? Is it not wonderful that God bears with our indifference? He is not indifferent towards us. Shall we, then, dare any longer to sleep away our lives in inactivity?

III. Sometimes dream, and then we live amidst fancy forms. And it is possible to sleep spiritually the sleep of delusion.

1. Formalism is the sleep of delusion. If we fancy that by the punctual performance of the outward duties of religion we can save our souls, one day we shall wake up to find ourselves the victims of a delusion. There is only One who can save us--Christ; and unless we take Him to be our Saviour, Church ordinances avail us nothing.

2. Self righteousness is the sleep of delusion. How many fancy that it must be well with them, because once they were converted. To rely on anything short of present perseverance along the road which God has pointed out to us, is to trust to a delusion.

IV. Sometimes people are put to sleep, by means of some drug. This sleep, however, has not the restfulness of natural sleep. And it is possible to drug the soul to seeming sleep by deliberate perseverance in any known sin. The conscience becomes hardened, and all for a time seems peace. But it is not true peace. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. (J. Beeby.)

The peril of sleep

A short time ago a locomotive engine was speeding along the NorthWest line, whilst the two men who were in it lay fast asleep. A sharp-eyed signalman, from his look-out, was alert enough to see how matters stood, and without a moments delay telegraphed in advance to lay a fog-signal on the line, that the detonation might rouse the sleepers. Happily, it was done in time; and startled from what might have been a fatal slumber, the men shut off steam, reversed the engine, and averted a terrible calamity. It is no breach of charity to suspect that some of you are hasting on to destruction, but know it not, for your conscience is asleep; and I would lay a fog-signal on the line that, ere you pass another mile, the crashing sound may rouse you to your danger, as you hear the voice of eternal truth declaring, If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die! (T. Davidson.)

Beware of sleeping

John Bunyan tells us that when Hopeful came to a certain country, he began to be very dull and heavy of sleep. Wherefore he said, Let us lie down here and take one nap. By no means, said the other, lest sleeping, we wake no more. Why, my brother? Sleep is sweet to the labouring man; we may be refreshed if we take a nap. Do you not remember, said the other, that one of the shepherds bid us beware of the Enchanted Ground? He meant by that, that we should beware of sleeping. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. Slumbering and backsliding are closely allied.

The breaking day admonishes us--

1. To awake from sleep.

2. To contemplate the Sun of salvation.

3. To cleanse ourselves from the works of darkness.

4. To put on the clothing of light.

5. To betake ourselves to diligence and duty. (J. Lyth, D.D.)

The dawn of the great day

St. Paul is here the watchman of the Church. Standing between night and day, he proclaims the time, and announces the end of darkness and the approach of light. His appeal regards the Church as being in a midway state between perfect night and perfect day. The words pilgrims of the dawn borrowed from St. Peter help us to understand Paul. Let us trace the effect of this keynote in the interpretation of the passage. The dawn proclaims the end of night; it is only the mingling of darkness and light; but it is the sure promise of a day that must reach its perfection, and upon which the shadows of evening shall never fall.

I. Knowing the time.

1. The word carries us back to our Lords proclamation of the hour when the night of death that had rested on mankind had ended, and the light cf eternal life began (Joh_5:25). Doubtless the darkness that preceded Christs advent was not perfect night. In the deepest midnight of heathenism some rays of truth and virtue struggled with the darkness, and over one favoured land the moon and the stars shone brightly. The earlier revelation was a light shining in a dark place until the day should dawn. But Christ was Himself the dawn and the morning star of His own coming day. And this day--the new era--is the time Christians know.

2. Knowing the time means experimental acquaintance with its privileges and responsibilities. This knowledge is attained (Eph_5:14) when the Great Awakener pours the light of conviction into the chambers where sinners sleep the sleep of death, and gives them the light of life.

(1) They sleep no more. They have been plunged into the waters of spiritual baptism which has awakened and invigorated them to the utmost, and there is an expectation in the morning air that keeps every thought alert, and inspires activity--viz., of Him who shall come in the broadening day.

(2) The guilty wakefulness of the night is also past. The morning reveals the hidden things of night and makes them hateful. They have cast off the works of darkness, detesting the habiliments of night in which they slept and sinned.

3. So far we have caught the appeal as expressing complete severance between night and day. The light is divided from the darkness absolutely. In the New Testament two states, and only two, are distinguished:there are children of night and children of the day. But the peculiarity of this passage is that it gives prominence to a certain interval of transition, which reality requires and the Scripture never denies. The Christian state is at the best, in many respects, no better than the dawn.

II. The night is only far spent and the day only at hand.

1. It might be supposed from the watchmans cry that the whole band were slumbering, or at least only half awake. But the language is only general to find out the individual. There is from age to age a faithful succession of watchers and holy ones, and when the Bridegroom shall approach all will be wakeful enough; but till then the pilgrim company shall never lack those who move like men that dream. And it is the duty of all who know the time to echo the apostles cry. And here is the everlasting argument, It is high time … walk honestly as in the day.

2. There is danger inseparable from the dawn. And when the apostle says, Put on the armour of light, he suggests the whole mystery of evil that wars against the pilgrims of the dawn. The powers of darkness are awakened into more malignant activity by the morning light. Never did they so furiously rage as they did around Him who ended their reign. But He did not banish them, and so they haunt the travellers. They cannot retard the day, but they make its progress a perpetual contest, so unlike the progress of the natural day in which dawn glows into morning, and morning melts into midday, etc. Here the victory is the result of a desperate and unremitting warfare. That victory will be the perfect light of holiness; the armour that insures the victory is light.

3. It is characteristic of this midway state that the salvation,of the Christian company is regarded as incomplete. The perfect day will bring a full salvation, but that is only nearer than when we believed. The Church is only in the dawn of the day of redemption. That day will be perfect when Christ shall come without sin unto salvation.

III. The dawn is the promise of the coming day.

1. Knowing the time. The Church is appealed to as exercising a firm faith in the gradual consummation of the dawn into day. The words remind these early travellers of the great secret that the Lord is at hand, bringing with Him all that their hope can conceive. But His coming will be to His Church the regular and peaceful consummation of a day already begun. To the ungodly a catastrophe, to slumbering Christians a sore amazement, it will be to those who wait for His appearing what day is to the traveller who waits for the morning.

2. But knowing the time does not signify any precise knowledge of its future limits. We are shut up to faith, which must in all things rule until the vision of Christ shall begin the reign of sight. All things continue as they were is the cry of unbelief. Lo here is the promise of His coming, or lo there is the cry of impatient credulity. But simple faith waits on in hope that makes no calculation. Our Lord may brighten any hour--from cock-crowing to the third hour and the sixth--into perfect day.

3. This being the common prospect it is not wonderful that the Christian state is that of joyful hope. Nothing is more beautiful and more symbolical of eager expectation than the dawn. True the individual Christian has cares, conflicts, fears to moderate his joy. But he is to look over all these lower glooms to the brighter horizon into which these things merge. He must lose his particular sorrow in the general joy. He is one of the company that shall receive the Lord.

4. But the apostle reserves for the last his solemn exhortation to prepare. The day is at hand, and the pilgrims are bidden to anticipate it in the holy decorum of their lives, and to be clothed with the only garment worthy of the day, Christ Himself. (W. B. Pope, D.D.)

Desidia and Alacritas

It is a merciful arrangement that we live by days, and are able to begin afresh every twenty-four hours. The Christian life is an awaking--a dressing; and each mornings waking and dressing may recall to us its nature. Look at these verses carefully and you will see the writers meaning, though, with a true delicacy, he only hints at it. When we rise from our beds we are dishevelled, unpresentable: we cannot get about the duties of the day until we have put off the dress of the night, until we have washed and combed ourselves, and put on a more suitable attire. Thus there is a surprising difference, in any nice and well-regulated person, between the night and the day appearance. The word honestly should rather be decently, for it just expresses this difference. Here are certain specimen words which describe that nocturnal condition of the soul. The question hits us hard when we attempt to interpret them fairly. First, revellings and drunkenness. This is not the boozing of the poor, who drink to forget their poverty and benumb their pain. It is the self-indulgence of the well-to-do, of good food, the hours spent over the pot or the decanter. It is the unhealthy occupation with gaieties which prevent us from putting on Christ Jesus. Then chamberings and wantonness. These are the thoughts of our chambers, the wanton imagination on our beds, the loose fancies, the rein flung on the neck of passion. They are more important to mention than the overt acts of vice, for they are the letting-out of waters. Given these, the rest will follow. These are the provision of the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof; they are the steps down to the gates of death. The last pair, strife and jealousy, are as fatal to the reclothing in the Divine garment, Christ Jesus--as truly the unseemly dress of the night--as those more scandalous faults which are called vices. These are poisons at the springs of life. They prohibit the indwelling of the Spirit. These three couplets of evil are but specimen-words--evil is manifold, ubiquitous--but they help us to answer the question, Have we put off this garment spotted by the flesh? It was this searching passage that proved the turning-point in the life of Augustine. By the grace of God it may fetch any of us off our unhallowed couch and clothe us in the raiment of the day. It was at Milan where the troubled spirit had come to seek help of the saintly Ambrose. He was with the brother Alypius in the garden. They had been reading the Epistles of Paul. Augustine rose in agitation and paced up and down, when he heard a clear childs voice singing from a house in the vicinity, Take and read, take and read. As if commanded from heaven he hastened back to the seat, and took up the book which they had been reading together. There was this verse staring him in the face. The Latin is Not in feasts and tipplings, not in chambers and immodesties, not in contention and emulation; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not make provision for the flesh in concupiscence. The entrance of the Word gave light. Presently, Alypius brought Augustine to Monica to tell her that the mothers prayer was answered. But assuming that we are in the great cardinal sense awakened and reclothed, still there remains the daily renewal of it, the parable of our diurnal round. Christ is a perfect garment, but it is necessary to put Him on afresh, readjust, and with loving care fit Him on, as the mornings come round. But I can tell you better about this if I draw the portraits of two friends of mine. Their names are Desidia and Alacritas. The one dreams she is awake; the other is awake. Desidia is not at all uncomely, but for a certain lethargic look in her eye and a drag in her gait. She begins the day with a very ample attention to her person. The time she spends on her hair-dressing and her toilet would make three of her devotions, Sundays included. And her heart is in it, which I can hardly say about her devotions. Desidia has nothing particular to do, which is fortunate, for she never has time to do anything. I asked her once to undertake some work for her Saviour, which she refused so flatly that I ventured to inquire if He were her Saviour. Alacritas, on the other hand, always fills me with admiration; and I would gladly change my sex to be like her. She is never in a hurry, and yet is always moving. She has so much merriment and gaiety of heart, that grave, religious folk at first take exception to her, and question whether a true Christian could ever have so exchanged the spirit of heaviness for the garment of praise. But I chance to know that this sunshine comes from prayer, and it is like a good medicine in the house. I should have thought it would take twice as long to get oneself up so charmingly as Alacritas does, I mean as compared with the artificial fripperies of Desidia. Yet Alacritas gets a good hour for prayer before breakfast; she does a great deal of household work, she visits the poor, and her needle is busy for them; she never seems to miss a service at the church. And yet she reads more good literature in a month than Desidia does in a year. Desidia and others of her family pity Alacritas because she has little or nothing to do with plays and dances. How dull it must he for her, they say! (R. F. Horton, D.D.)

Dressing in the morning

It is a great mistake for a man not to know the times in which he lives, and how to act in them; and when he does not know the time as to the day of his own life, so as to apply his heart unto wisdom. What is the time of day with the Christian? It is no longer the dead of the night, the day is at hand. A little while ago the dense darkness of ignorance was about us; but the gospel has made us light in the Lord. The day-star is shining upon us, and we look for a perfect day. It is not as yet full day with us. The sun has risen, but it is not yet noon. Note--

I. The morning call.

1. Awake--It is high time to awake out of sleep.

(1) Arise from the sleep of inaction. Do not let your religion consist in receiving all and doing nothing.

(2) Leave also all lethargy behind you. At night a man may yawn and stretch himself; but when the morning comes he should be brisk, for the day will be none too long.

(3) Have done with dreaming. You who are not of the night must not dote on the worlds shadows, but look for eternal realities.

2. Cast off your night clothes. Cast off the works of darkness. The man who is just awakened shakes off his bed clothes and leaves them. The coverlet of night is not our covering by day. Sins and follies are to be cast off when we put on the garments of light. I have known a man profess to be converted, but he has merely put religion over his old character. This will never do: Christ has not come to save you in but from your sins.

3. Put on your morning dress. Let us put on the armour of light. Does not this warn us that a day of battle is coming? Be wise, then, and dress according to what you will meet with during the day. Young converts think that they have got to heaven, or very near it; but the time is not yet. You are in an enemys country: put on the armour of light. Perhaps before you get down to breakfast an arrow wilt be shot at you by the great enemy. Your foes may be found in your own household, and they may wound you at your own table. The Greek word, however, may be understood to signify not only armour, but such garments as are fitted and suitable for the days work. These should be put on at once, and our soul should be dressed for service. Some people are too fine to do real service for the Lord. When the Duke of Wellington asked one of our soldiers how he would like to be dressed if he had to fight the battle of Waterloo again, he answered that he should like to be in his shirt sleeves.

4. Walk forth and behave as in the light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day, let our demeanour be such as becomes daylight. How should a child of light conduct himself? Honestly may mean decently, with decorum and dignity. In the middle of the night, if you have to go about the house, you are not particular as to how you are dressed; but you do not go out to your business slip-shod, but arrayed according to your station. Let it be so with you spiritually: holiness is the highest decency, the most becoming apparel.

5. Renounce the deeds of darkness. If we have put on the garments of light, it behoves us to have done with the things that belong to the night.

(1) Sensuality, rioting and drunkenness. If a drinking bout is held it is usually at night.

(2) Impurity, not in chambering and wantonness. It is an awful thing when a man calls himself by the name of Christian, and yet can be unchaste in conversation, lascivious in spirit, wicked in life.

(3) Passion, strife and envying. Brawls are for the night.

II. The morning gospel. Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ there is--

1. Covering for nakedness. There is in Him a complete and suitable apparel for thy soul, by which every blemish and defilement shall be put out of sight.

2. A garment suitable for everyday work. All the power to be holy, forgiving, heroic, enthusiastic in the service of God, comes through Christ when we are in Him.

3. Apparel for dignity. God Himself asks no purer or more acceptable array. A seraph wears nothing but created brightness, but a child of God clothed in Christ wears uncreated splendour.

4. Armour for defence. The man that lives as Christ would live, is thereby made impervious to the shafts of the enemy.

5. Raiment for all emergencies. This garment will never wax old; it will last you all the desert through, and what is more, it is suitable for Canaan, and you shall keep it on forever. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Present and future

I. Present state. Let us think how matters stand, and mend our ways.

1. We have time, i.e., season; a particular opportunity for preparation. Time is a wonderful idea. Compared with eternity it is but a speck in the heavens, a grain of sand on the shore, and yet it has given birth to creation, and its cycles have brought wondrous revelations. The battlefield of good and evil is here. Time reached its majority when the fulness of time came. Millions of money for an inch of time, cried Queen Elizabeth on her death-bed. The bid was too low. Like Cassandra, there was a warning in the voice. The woman in despair of her soul said, Call back time again, then there may be a hope for me: but time is gone for ever! Take time by the forelock.

2. We are too indifferent to the value of time. We turn the day into night by our inactivity, and we sleep when we ought to work. The night means our indifference to the illumination of the Word and Spirit. We see darkly through a glass. When the final day breaks, we shall wonder at the beauties we might have seen before. The boy who was born blind was cured. Some time after the operation he was led out of the dark room, and the shade lifted. He exclaimed, Why didnt you tell me that the earth was so beautiful? When we see Jesus as He is, we shall put some such question. Sleep indicates inactivity to make our election sure. We are like somnambulists, walking among great realities without knowing it.

3. Nevertheless there are hopeful signs. Two words are used in contrast to the above--believed and nearer. There is faith, we have believed in Jesus. By prayer we have advanced some steps. Columbus and his men smelled the breeze before they saw the land. We have a good hope through grace.

II. Future expectation. That is the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.

1. Freedom from sin.

2. Beyond care and anxiety. Providence to-day has its dark days, but there perpetual light. No tears shall be shed, for no sorrow shall be felt.

3. In possession of immortality. Away with carelessness, and let us be earnest--Work, for the night is coming, etc. (Weekly Pulpit.)

Preparation for Christs coming

I. A solemn responsibility. Knowing the time. Ignorance is a cause of sin, and is sometimes a just excuse for it. A blind man may fall into a pit; a sleeper cannot be blamed for his sleep. But it is different with these spiritual slumberers. The watchmans cry resounds (1Th_5:1-6). Taught from earliest infancy, instructed in schools, with Gods Word open and preached, what can we urge as an excuse for indifference?

II. A condition of danger. It is high time to awake out of sleep. This sleep--

1. Is an infatuation of Satan. He lulls the soul into false security.

2. Comes from the weakness of our nature. Persons in bad health often sleep much.

3. Arises from our own sloth. Like a person sleeping in a house on fire, unless the deadly charm is broken, we must be consumed.

III. An urgent duty. To awake out of sleep. The cry of the gospel trumpet is Awake! As the captain said to Jonah, What meanest thou, O sleeper? so the Holy Spirit says to the sinner. We have here--

1. Life depending on exertion. How many a man has saved his life, home, reputation, by energy! It is so with eternal life.

2. Exertion depending on self-determination. It is for us to wake, and to do so demands an effort.

IV. A solemn motive. Now is our salvation nearer. This may mean--

1. The advance toward final consummation. Every moment brings us closer to the approach of judgment--that day which to the believer is the day of salvation. Each throb of the heart and each beat of the pulse is the requiem of a departed moment.

2. The accumulation of privileges. When the apostle wrote, the good news had advanced. It was easier to awake and believe. And if religion had advanced in those early days, what is it now? Surely, salvation is nearer now; it is about us, in our midst. Will you not awake and enter into the glorious rest of the Son of God? (D. Thomas, D.D.)

The earthly and the heavenly state of the good

I. There is a vast contrast between the two.

1. Here salvation is in process, there in perfection. Now is salvation nearer.

2. Here existence, is night, there day. Life before death is night, suggestive of imperceptibility. The Christian sees through a glass darkly now. His life after death is day. Death opens the eyes on a bright universe.

II. The earthly state is rapidly expiring, the heavenly is about to dawn. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Whilst this is true, even of the youngest Christian, it is pre-eminently true of those who are far advanced in life.

III. The expiring of the earthly, and the approach of the heavenly, are powerful argument for spiritual earnestness. Knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep.

1. The work we have to do is most urgent.

(1) The renunciation of all evil. Cast off the works of darkness. Ignorance, crime, etc.

(2) The adoption of all good. Put on the armour of light (Eph_6:2-17).

2. The time for accomplishing it is rapidly contracting. Let us awake therefore. The lost years of your existence, the interests of truth, the value of souls calls on you to awake. Sleep not on the shore while the mighty billows of eternity are approaching. (D. Thomas, D.D.)

The need of special exertion

Consider--

1. The time.

2. Its claims.

3. Its duties.

4. Its incitements. (J. Lyth, D.D.)

Sleeping Christians

I have lately read in the newspaper--I am sure I do not know whether to believe that it is true--an account of a youth in France, twenty years of age, who has been lying sleeping for a fortnight, nourished only upon a little gruel given with a spoon, and that he was in the same state a year ago for nearly a month. Whether this has actually occurred to anybody or not, I have known many cases of Christians who have laid like that spiritually. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

The nearness of salvation a motive to vigilance

It is a charge which has been sometimes brought against religion that it cherishes an indolent spirit, and that the assurance of salvation which it gives tends to make men careless about further attainments in excellence. Accusations of this nature are easily repelled by exhibiting the spirit of the gospel, which is a spirit of active goodness, by a reference to many of its precepts, and by detailing the strenuous efforts of its genuine disciples to go on to perfection.

I. Let us attend to the view here given of the privilege of good men--Now is their salvation nearer than when they believed.

1. This expression intimates that, in the day of believing, the souls connection with salvation commences. It is at that happy season that a man is brought from a state of condemnation into a state of acceptance, and that a principle of holiness is implanted in the soul. Then the man begins that course which terminates in everlasting life. The distance between faith and complete salvation has been in some instances short. Quickly has the perfection of glory followed the formation of grace, but in other cases there are many years betwixt them. It belongs to Him to regulate this who is the Author and the Finisher of faith.

2. It is intimated that at death the believers salvation is completed.

3. Christians advanced in life are warranted to conclude that their salvation is very near. How happily is this consideration adapted to lighten the infirmities of old age! Lift up your heads with joy, for your redemption draweth nigh.

II. Let us attend to the view which is here given of the duty required of them.

1. It intimates that saints sometimes fall into a state of indolence and carelessness. How cold and stupid are the hearts of saints in such circumstances when they engage in prayer!

2. The text intimates that Christians ought to rouse themselves up to vigilance and activity. Meditation, casual and unsettled, must give place to eager and fixed contemplation; and with the feelings of a heart which regards Jesus Christ as all, we must follow hard after Him.

3. It intimates that the consideration of our present circumstances will show us the necessity of exciting ourselves to this vigilance and activity. It was peculiarly unsuitable in the Romans to slumber, since the gospel of salvation had so lately arisen on them with healing in its wings. Let it be considered, too, that the present is a time marked by the peculiar activity of some in the cause of Christ. Can you slumber while they thus hold forth the Word of life?

III. Let us now consider how you should be excited to this vigilance and activity by the nearness of your salvation.

1. Here the appeal may be made to your gratitude. Think what God hath done and what He still intends to do for you.

2. Consider how unsuitable sloth is to the prospects before you. You are soon to associate with those who serve God day and night in His temple; and shall you now slumber?

3. Consider how injurious to others your carelessness and sloth may be. If you, whose age and attainments show that your salvation is so near, slumber, it must damp the ardour of the young disciple.

4. Consider how detrimental indolence will be to your own interest and happiness. If you slumber with salvation so near, you will provoke God to awaken you by a shock dreadful and trying. There is another view which may be taken of this argument which may add to its influence. As the ship which is within a few hours sail of the haven has sometimes been driven out to sea to struggle for weeks with winds and waves, till the crew are exhausted with hunger, fear, and toil, so has the indolence of saints been punished by a prolonged stay in this scene of trouble, instead of having an entrance ministered to them abundantly into the kingdom of the Saviour.

Conclusion:

1. How happy are they who have obtained precious faith through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ!

2. Let saints be exhorted to use every means of excitement to this holy activity.

3. Let the consideration of the nearness of salvation reconcile you to affliction and to death.

4. Let the young be exhorted to activity in goodness and piety.

5. Finally, how solemn are the lessons suggested by this subject to unconverted men! Salvation is far from the wicked; and what is most horrible, ye have put it from you, and judged everlasting life unworthy of your acceptance. (H. Belfrage, D.D.)

Approaching salvation

It is the characteristic and the privilege of man that he lives not only in the present, but is able to review the past, and anticipate the future. This faculty is connected with his moral responsibility, and is a sign of his immortal existence. That he very imperfectly employs it is a painful but unquestionable truth. Our contemplation is directed to--

I. An interesting period in the past--when we believed. There are few persons who must not cherish some interesting remembrances. Some, of course, derive more excitement from the past than others, but no remembrances can ever possess a charm to be named with this. He who can look back to when he believed, looks back upon a period of unparalleled moment and eternal influence. When you believed. Think of that event.

1. In the agency by which it was accomplished. Faith did not arise from the spontaneous influence of your own mind, or from the influence of others. It was the work of God wrought upon you by the ministry of His gospel, the private admonition of a friend, the perusal of His Word, or by affliction. But, whatever the instrumentality, faith is the gift of God.

2. In the influences by which it was attended. Then began feelings to which you were before strangers: then arose penitence, impelling you to mourn over your vileness: love, binding you in firm attachment to Him who died for you: hope, irradiating the otherwise darkened future: holiness, beginning the grand process by which it world refine every faculty by assimilating them to the Divine likeness. When you believed, old things passing away and all things becoming new.

3. In the privileges to which it introduced you--pardon and reconciliation with God; righteousness and full acceptance in the Beloved; liberty from the tyranny of sin and of Satan, adoption into the Divine family, etc.

II. An infinite blessing which is future. Our salvation of final reward and happiness. The apostle here--

1. Assumes that faith has an established connection with salvation. Revelation unites in one solemn and most conclusive pledge, that having through grace believed, and being by that grace in that faith preserved, we shall enjoy the delights which are treasured up in the everlasting kingdom. Faith is the first step in the pilgrimage which leads to the celestial rest; the first launch in the voyage which wafts to the celestial haven; the first stroke in the conflict which issues in celestial triumphs.

2. Summons Christians to meditate upon their salvation. As they have been directed to an exercise of memory, so they are directed to an exercise of anticipation. The more you commune with the time when you believed, the more also you will commune with the time when you shall be saved. Turn, then, as from the bud to the flower, from the root to the tree, from the babe to the man, from the faint outlines to the finished picture, from the first tremulous notes of the music to the sounding of the full harmony of the spheres, from the streaks of the early dawn to the splendour of the meridian day. Think of your coming victory over the last enemy, of the flight of your spirit to paradise, of the resurrection of the body, of your public recognition and welcome in your perfected nature by the Judge before the assembled universe, of your enjoyment in that perfected nature of heaven. This is your salvation, and will you not gladly retire from the vulgar objects of this perishing world, and ascending to the summit of the Delectable Mountains, look through the clear azure upon the fair and sublime inheritance which is reserved for you?

3. Urges Christians to recognise their own personal advance towards salvation. Some amongst you are very near to salvation indeed. Your conversion is far back in the distance. And as to those to whom the probabilities of prolonged life may seem strong, how can they tell but that at this very moment they may be on the verge? With every morning dawn, and evening shadow, there ought to be the renewed reflection, Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

III. The practical results which a Christian reference to the past and the future must legitimately secure. There ought to be--

1. The cultivation of Christian holiness. To secure and to advance in holiness was the apostles prominent object. Let us, therefore, cast off the works of darkness, etc. If there be any who imagine that the prospects indicated may lead to licentiousness, let them receive their final refutation. Those who are entitled to anticipate salvation must be holy.

(1) To evince the genuineness and reality of their faith. If faith does not purify, it is a fiction.

(2) That they may be morally fitted for the world they have finally to inherit. That world is consecrated to unsullied and universal holiness. Seeing ye look for such things, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?

2. The cultivation of Christian activity. It is high time to awake out of sleep. The wakefulness and diligence here summoned has respect not only to our own salvation, but also to the salvation of others. This must be, that the whole of Christian character may be developed, and that the whole of Christian duty may be performed. Earnest activity in this high vocation is urged by the nearness of our own salvation; and because of the nearness of our own salvation therefore our opportunities for usefulness are rapidly contracting. For this reason it is high time to awake out of sleep.

3. The cultivation of Christian gratitude. Gratitude does indeed become us when we consider the value of the blessings which are imparted, or the principle upon which those blessings are secured and bestowed. (J. Parsons.)

Timely reflections

1. We commonly speak of salvation as the state into which the believer in Jesus is introduced when he passes from death unto life; but here it means eternal glory.

2. Observe the date from which the apostle begins to reckon. He does not say our salvation is nearer than when we were christened or confirmed, but than when we believed. What could ever come of what is before believing? It is all death, and not worth reckoning. But then we started on our voyage to heaven.

3. Between these two points we are now sailing; and at the close of the year it seems meet just to note where we are, and to congratulate my fellow believers that we are nearer the eternal port that when we first slipped our cable. In going to Australia it is the custom to toast Friends behind, till they get half way; and then it changes, Friends ahead. Note--

I. The things behind.

1. Recollect when you believed. Of all days that on which you first left shore was the brightest of all; and you know that those who go to dwell on the other side of the world look back with satisfaction at the day when they left.

2. Since then you have had a good number of storms. You have seen one washed overboard that you thought very dear. You have yourselves suffered loss; happy were you if by that you found peace and safety in Christ. You remember, too, when you had to sail slowly in the thick fog, and keep the whistle sounding. You have been nearly but not quite wrecked. Above all the billows Jehovahs power has kept you.

3. You have had a great deal of fair weather, too, since you left port. We have sailed along with a favouring breeze. Life is not the dreary thing that some men say it is.

4. Behind us, too, how many opportunities of service have we left? Many other ships sailed with us, and some of these, alas! have been wrecked before our eyes; but we had opportunities of bringing some of the shipwrecked ones to safety. Did we always do it?

II. Things ahead.

1. More storms. It is not over yet; but they must be fewer than they were.

2. Fairer winds. Christ will be with us; our communion with Him shall be sweet. There are these Sabbaths ahead, the outpourings of the Spirit, covenant blessings, etc. Let us, then, be comforted, and pass on.

3. More opportunities--and you young people especially should be looking out. Do not let us waste any more.

4. But looking still further ahead, when we remember we are nearer our salvation think of what that salvation will be. First, we shall see Jesus. Oh, what a heaven to be with Him! Then, next to Jesus, we shall be with all the bright spirits who have gone before us. I do not think Rowland Hill was at all foolish when he said to an old woman upon her dying bed, As you are going first, take my love to the four great Johns--John who leaned on Jesuss bosom, and John Bunyan, and John Calvin, and John Knox, and tell them poor old Rowly will be coming by and by. I cannot doubt but that the message was delivered. Conclusion: There are some of you who are not nearer your salvation than when you believed; because, first, you never did believe; and, secondly, that which you are nearer to is not salvation. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Cause for spiritual rejoicing

The one reason here urged for spiritual activity and rejoicing is the near approach of the day of complete redemption to the believer. Under the image of night, the apostle represents the state of partial enlightenment and sanctification, and consequent fear and conflict with evil. But the night is far spent, the day is at hand. Now, Paul exclaims, in a transport of joy, is our salvation nearer than when we believed--nearer as to time and space--nearer as it respects completion and reward. Both time and the Spirits work have brought the great consummation nearer. And surely such a fact may well fill us with rejoicing, and spur us on to redoubled efforts to make our calling and election sure.

I. Salvation is nigh.

1. Actually nigh. The night is far spent. Life here is short at best--death is nigh, heaven but a little way off.

2. Relatively nigh.

(1) Nearer than when we believed.

(2) Nearer at the close of each year, each day. Every moment rolls on the gladsome time!

3. Nearer as to the preparation for it. Salvation is a life, a work, a growth, a consummation, a progress from first principles to complete and glorious development and crowning. The Christian is put to school at conversion, and year by year he grows in grace and love and holiness, till his graduation day. His path is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.

II. What follows?

1. The night is far spent.

(1) The night of spiritual conflict.

(2) The night of mystery--seeing things as through a glass darkly--will soon see as we are seen, and know as we are known.

(3) The night of sin and suffering. The day that is coming will bring absolute deliverance from evil in every form.

2. The day is at hand. Not only will the darkness be gone for ever, but the day of perfect and eternal sunlight will have come. Not only will there be a deliverance, but a crowning. The salvation will be a salvation from death to life; from sin to holiness; from shame to glory, Divine and everlasting.

3. And this salvation is nearer the Christians grasp to-day than when he first believed. Revolving suns bring it continually nearer. Great promises have already been realised; great victories won; many a rough place passed over and many a weary footstep measured off; many a Sabbath days journey made: and already the delectable hills are in sight; angels are bending over the battlements of heaven to welcome the approaching pilgrim; and soon the conflict will cease, and glory immortal--so long contemplated by faith and longed for--will be a blessed realisation. So near to heaven! So soon to be done with earth and sin and evil and conflict! So soon to stand with the ransomed on the heights of glory and shout, Thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! (Homiletic Monthly.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom 13:11-12. And that — That is, do this to which I exhort you; fulfil the law of love in all the instances above mentioned; knowing the time — Greek, τον καιρον, the season, that it is the morning of the day of the gospel, a season of increasing light and grace, but hasting away: that now it is high time to awake out of sleep — Out of that sleep into which you had fallen during the darkness of heathenism, or before your illumination by divine truth and grace; that state of insensibility of, and unconcern about, things spiritual and eternal in general, and your own salvation in particular; to awake to a sense of the infinite importance of the truths and duties revealed to you in the gospel, and of the near approach of death and judgment, which will put a period to your state of trial, and fix you in a state of final and eternal retribution. It is therefore high time that you should labour, to the utmost of your power, to improve every opportunity of receiving and doing good, and of prosecuting the great business of life) which is to secure the favour of God, a conformity to his image, and your own everlasting happiness. For now is our final salvation — Our eternal glory; nearer than when we at first believed — It is continually advancing, flying forward upon the swiftest wings of time, and that which remains between the present hour and eternity is, comparatively speaking, but a moment. The night is far spent — The night of heathenish ignorance and error; the day — Of gospel light and grace; is at hand — Greek, ηγγικεν, hath approached, hath dawned: the day-spring from on high hath visited us, to give light to us who sat in darkness and in the region of the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace. The night, also, of the present life is far spent, during which we often confound truth and error, duty and sin, and the day of eternity is at hand, is drawing near, even that day which will show every thing in its proper colours and forms. Let us therefore cast off the works, only suitable to, or excusable in, a state of darkness — That is, let us abandon all manner of wickedness which is wont to be practised in the night, or in a state of ignorance, error, and folly; and let us put on the armour of light — For, being soldiers, it is our duty to arm and prepare for fight, inasmuch as we are encompassed about with so many enemies. In other words, let us be clothed with all Christian graces, which, like burnished and beautiful armour, will be at once an ornament and a defence to us, and which will reflect the bright beams that are so gloriously rising upon us.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL NOTES

Rom_13:11.—Because we know the time, let us fulfil the law by love. We have been in the dark, but let us awake with the light. ῦπνου, deep sleep; dreams of the present time. Physical death. Spiritual stupor. The image of death. As χρόνος is duration of time, so καιρός is definition of time. It is a portion cut out of time, a season, an opportunity. Salvation.—Full spiritual salvation and day of perfect redemption viewed as connected with the universal spread of Christianity. Spiritual salvation in the world of glory. All is night here, in respect of ignorance and daily ensuing troubles.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Rom_13:11

The Christian’s duty and encouragement.—Different views are taken of time. Some seem to regard it as a useless commodity, to be frittered away in vain trifles. Others consider it too short for the work to be accomplished. Thus some hoard and others squander time. The majority do not look beyond the bounds of time. It is not to them fraught with eternal issues. Time, however, to the Christian is important, for it is the pathway to eternity. Time impresses eternity. How solemn the thought! All time’s thoughts, words, and deeds have a bearing upon the future. How seasonable the petition, “so teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom”!

I. The Christian’s knowledge.—The Christian is or should be a man who knows. Principally he should know the season, the period, in which he lives. It is difficult in these days to know the season. This is a time of great perplexity. The world has both changed and enlarged since the days of primitive Christianity. The man who knows the time in these days is a man of extensive knowledge. Still, the Christian may know the time as far more advanced than it was eighteen centuries since. He may know that great interests are at stake. He should know that increased activity is demanded, that overwhelming zeal is required. In these days, when wealth on the one side and poverty on the other are increased, when licentiousness, lawlessness, selfishness, and indifference still prevail to an alarming extent, it becomes the Christian to keep his intellect alive to the stirring events of his period.

II. The Christian’s duty.—“To awake out of sleep.” If the apostle’s time demanded wakeful spirits, much more do these times. Alas, how many so-called Christians are fast asleep! The enemy is upon them, and they do not heed the approach. Their dreams are of sweet music and of pleasant services. They are not awake to the calls of duty. They become somnambulists, and walk away from the voice of God’s messenger directing them to the post of duty. Such require a thunder-peal from heaven to awake them from sleep. It is consolatory to reflect that some are awake. But none are so wide awake as to be without need of the apostolic injunction which says that it is high time to awake out of sleep. We must shake off the torpor of indifference. Sleepy men are an easy prey to evil. By sleep we put on strength, but by moral sleep we induce weakness. Awake, awake, O Church of the living God, and put on immortal strength!

III. The Christian’s encouragement.—“Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” The period of completed salvation is fast approaching. Every beat of the minute-hand tells its advent. Salvation in prospect was accomplished when Jesus said, “It is finished.” Salvation is secured when faith lays hold on the Saviour. Salvation is perfected when the redeemed spirit enters into the perfect rest of heaven; and every moment of the believer’s life brings that completed salvation nearer. There are two advents to the soul: the first advent when Christ enters into that soul and is in it the hope of glory; the second advent when either Christ will come to the soul at His second coming, or when that soul shall go to be with Christ in paradise. The blest reunion is fast approaching. Here there is a union of faith; yonder there will be a union of sight. We are united with Christ by faith. We shall be reunited, perfectly united, to Christ by blissful vision. That union will be a perfect salvation from all that harasses in the present state. The prospect is stimulating. It quickens the drowsy powers; it delivers from lethargy. As the sailor draws nearer to his native land, after a prolonged absence, every sense is quickened, and he puts on fresh energy. As the runner is nearing the goal he takes quicker steps; his eyes catch a new light; he forgets the strain in his eagerness to win the prize. What buoyancy takes possession of the inventor’s spirit when after years, it may be, of experimenting he finds himself within measurable reach of the desired discovery! Shall the Christian runner lag when the prize of eternal glory is almost within reach? Shall the Christian sailor sleep, after the storms and buffetings of time, when the clear lights of heaven shine across the intervening waters? The sound of the harpers on the eternal shores greets his ears, and he can no longer slumber. From this dim cloud-land of partial knowledge he is hastening to the sphere of the complete unfolding of many mysteries, and his soul is all eagerness to enter upon the all-revealing light of eternity. It is high time to awake out of sleep, for the times are busy, for the world is pressing close, and the other world is letting down dazzling views of its surpassing glory.

Knowledge of time.—We should know time in its:—

I. Worth.—Estimated at the value of:

1. Life. Time the measure of life of a being capable of thought, endowed with conscience, gifted with immortality.

2. What able to be done during its progress.

II. Responsibilities.—Our relation to God. Knowledge of salvation. Duties in our sphere of life. Influence we exert. Ignatius when heard clock strike said, “Now I have one hour more to account for.”

III. Uncertainty.—Commercial institutions and projects abundantly prove this, but he who counts on time presumes on probability that has even more impressively proved its questionableness (Jas_4:13-14).

IV. Brevity.

V. Powerlessness.—It cannot destroy sin or take away its guilt. It cannot act for us. It cannot destroy the soul, though it end the life.

VI. Irrevocableness.—G. McMichael, B.A.

Self-denial the test of religious earnestness.—By “sleep” in this passage St. Paul means a state of insensibility to things as they really are in God’s sight. Thus, whether in private families or in the world, in all the ranks of middle life men lie under a considerable danger at this day, a more than ordinary danger, of self-deception, of being asleep while they think themselves awake. How, then, shall we try ourselves? Can any tests be named which will bring certainty to our minds on the subject? No indisputable tests can be given. We cannot know for certain. We must beware of an impatience about knowing what our real state is. We cannot, indeed, make ourselves as sure of our being in the number of God’s true servants as the early Christians were; yet we may possess our degree of certainty, and by the same kind of evidence—the evidence of self-denial. This was the great evidence which the first disciples gave, and which we can give still. The self-denial which is the test of our faith must be daily. The word “daily” implies that the self-denial which is pleasing to Christ consists in little things. This is plain, for opportunity for great self-denials does not come every day. Thus to take up the cross of Christ is no great action done once for all; it consists in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us. If, then, a person ask how he is to know whether he is dreaming on in the world’s slumber or is really awake and alive unto God, let him first fix his mind upon some one or other of his besetting sins. It is right then almost to find out for yourself daily self-denials, and this because our Lord bids you take up your cross daily, and because it proves your earnestness, and because by so doing you strengthen your general power of self-mastery and come to have such an habitual command of yourself as will be a defence ready prepared when the season of temptation comes. Let not your words run on; force every one of them into cation as it goes; and thus cleansing yourself from all pollution of the flesh and spirit, perfect holiness in the fear of God. In dreams we sometimes move our arms to see if we are awake or not, and so are wakened. This is the way to keep your heart awake also. Try yourself daily in little deeds to prove that your faith is more than a deceit.—Newman.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Rom_13:11

Christian’s view of time.—What is the true measure of time? I know that the outward measures are accurate enough; and when a man says to his friend, “Another year is gone,” they understand a certain space which can be precisely computed; but if acts and activity are the true measures of time for us, and not the hands on the clock, nor the changing path of the sun, then it may be well doubted whether in fact we do know at the end of a year what or how much it is that has gone away from us. A year of earnest work in the way of duty and for the cause of God, a year of amusement, a year marked by tasting first and then drinking deep of the foul cup of some new sin, a year marked by a great change of character for the better, in which he that once served sin has made up his mind, through God’s help, to serve it no more—any of these may be included under the phrase, “Another year has passed.” Out of the looms of time a measured portion of the web of our life has come: the measure the same for all, the texture and the tints how different! Nay, are there not even single minutes in which the scattered lights of our thoughts are gathered into one focus, and burn an indelible imprint into the soul? A man went once to Damascus, and a light from heaven struck him blind, and the Spirit of Christ, more penetrating than that light, sent deep into his conscience the unanswerable question, “Why persecutest thou Me?” The man was St. Paul, and that minute bore in it the germ of the Church of the Gentiles and of our knowledge of the Redeemer. A careless student was walking with his friend, when a flash of lightning struck the friend dead and awoke the student out of his worldliness. Luther was that student, and the Reformation began from that terrible instant. Minutes like these are not to be reckoned only at their value as fractional portions of a year. Time has a quality as it has a quantity. We cannot be sure that a single day or year may not carry in it the decision of our eternity. There may be no great sign or wonder to tell us so; to all around the weight of another year upon us may seem no greater than in time past. But every part of us is growing. Habits are strengthening, feelings growing calmer, the advice of others losing its influence over us, the circle of those who might have the right to advise is fast contracting. And it is surely possible that when we are only conscious that a year is gone, our whole life, so far at least as life is a state of probation admitting of change and improvement, may have passed away with it.—Archbishop Thomson.

“High time to awake out of sleep.”—These words regard Christians themselves. This is undeniable, from the motive subjoined: “For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” Are believers, then, asleep? Not in the sense they once were—this would be impossible. But there are found even in them some remains of their former depravity. Though the good work is begun in them, it is far from being accomplished. While the bridegroom tarried, even the wise virgins slumbered and slept. Yes, Christians are often in a drowsy frame. This is sadly reproachful. Yet if the address be proper for Christians, how much more necessary is it for those who are entirely regardless of the things that belong to their peace!—if we consider how long they have been sleeping! We ought to lament that we have lost any of our precious hours and opportunities. However short it may have been, the time past of our life should more than suffice, wherein we have lived to the will of man. What then should those feel who have sacrificed the whole of their youth—perhaps the vigour of mature age? What should those feel who perhaps have grown grey in the service of sin and the world? The later we begin, the more zealous should we be to redeem the advantages we have lost, and to overtake those who were wise enough to set off early. High time—if we consider that the day is arrived and the sun is risen so high. “The night is far spent,” etc. We can say more than the apostle. The night is spent; the day is fully come. And we are all the children of the light and the children of the day; we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep as do others. “They that sleep, sleep in the night.” Our obligations always increase with our advantages. To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. And the servant that knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, shall be beaten with many stripes; for where much is given much will be required. High time—if we consider the business they have to do. I am doing, said Nehemiah to some who would have interrupted him; I cannot come down to you—I am doing a great work. How much more may a Christian say this! He has an enterprise connected with the soul and God and eternity. Some things are desirable, and some are useful; but this is absolutely indispensable—

“Sufficient in itself alone;

And needful, were the world our own.”

Neglect in many a concern is injurious; but here it is ruinous—ruinous of everything, and ruinous for ever. High time—if we consider the nature of the season in which this difficult and all-important work is to be accomplished. It is short, and there is but a step between us and death. It is uncertain in its continuance, and may be terminated every moment by some of those numberless dangers to which we are exposed: once gone, it can never be renewed. High time—if we consider the danger they are in. If a man were sleeping in a house and the fire were seen, who would not think it high time for him to awake and escape for his life? This is but a weak representation of the danger of sinners. They are condemned already. High time to awake out of sleep—if we consider that all besides are awake. God, glorified saints, the children of this generation, devils, and death, are awake. “It is high time to awake out of sleep.”—W. Jay.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 13

Rom_13:11. Cæsar wept.—When Cæsar, in Spain, met with a statue of Alexander, he wept at the thought that this illustrious conqueror had achieved so much before he had even begun his career. The man who is awake will accomplish much. Every sight will stir his soul to energy. He will emulate others in good works.

Rom_13:11. Sunrise from the Righi.—Doubtless many readers of these pages have been among the number of the thousands of travellers who each year witness the sunrise from the culm of the Righi. So anxious were you to behold the sight that you rose from your bed the moment you heard the sound of the horn which announced that the night was far spent and the day was at hand. Hastily dressing, you were soon silently and earnestly watching for the first gleam of light in the Eastern sky. It may be that some one of you turned to see whether your friend and fellow traveller was sharing your eager anticipations, and found him wanting. You at once hastened back to the hotel and knocked loudly at his door. He, too, had been awoke by the blast of the horn, but, being weary, was half asleep. You exclaimed, “Do you know the time? It is high time to awake out of sleep, for the sight for which you have travelled so far is far nearer than when first you were roused.” He, too, was soon among the silent band of watchers, and with you beheld the King of Day as he crowned each snow-capped peak with roseate hues, and lit up the lakes of Lucerne and Zug and Lowerz below, and many a distant valley, until the whole panorama was bathed in his glorious light. St. Paul, as a watchful sentinel in the Church, as one who was eagerly expecting the glorious appearing of his Lord and Master, earnestly exhorts the Christians at Rome to live in no debt but that of love (see Rom_13:10). He seeks to awaken them from their indifference by reminding them that the “day of the Lord,” the consummation of their “salvation,” was nearer than when “first they were roused from their sleep of sin.” “The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.”—Bardsley’s “Illustrated Texts.”

Rom_13:11-12. The improvement of time.—Boyle remarks “that sand-grains are easily scattered, but skilful artificers gather, melt, and transmute them to glass, of which they make mirrors, lenses, and telescopes. Even so vigilant Christians improve parenthetic fragments of time, employing them in self-examination, acts of faith, and researches of holy truth, by which they become looking-glasses for their souls and telescopes revealing their promised heaven.” Jewellers save the very sweepings of their shops because they contain particles of precious metal. Should Christians, whose every moment of time was purchased for them by the blood of Christ, be less careful of time? Surely its very minutiæ should be more treasured than grains of gold or dust of diamonds.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter 28

CHRISTIAN DUTY IN THE LIGHT OF THE LORDS RETURN AND IN

THE POWER OF HIS PRESENCE

Rom_13:11-14

THE great teacher has led us long upon the path of duty, in its patient details, all summed up in the duty and joy of love. We have heard him explaining to his disciples how to live as members together of the Body of Christ, and as members also of human society at large, and as citizens of the state. We have been busy latterly with thoughts of taxes, and tolls, and private debts, and the obligation of scrupulous rightfulness in all such things. Everything has had relation to the seen and the temporal. The teaching has not strayed into a land of dreams, nor into a desert and a cell: it has had at least as much to do with the market, and the shop, and the secular official, as if the writer had been moralist whose horizon was altogether of this life, and who for the future was "without hope."

Yet all the while the teacher and the taught were penetrated and vivified by a certainty of the future perfectly supernatural, and commanding the wonder and glad response of their whole being. They carried about with them the promise of their Risen Master that He would personally return again in heavenly glory, to their infinite joy, gathering them forever around Him in immortality, bringing heaven with Him, and transfiguring them into His own celestial Image.

Across all possible complications and obstacles of the human world around them they beheld "that blissful hope". {Tit_2:13} The smoke of Rome could not becloud it, nor her noise drown the music of its promise, nor her splendour of possessions make its golden vista less beautiful and less entrancing to their souls. Their Lord, once crucified, but now alive for evermore, was greater than the world; greater in His calm triumphant authority over man and nature, greater in the wonder and joy of Himself, His Person and His Salvation. It was enough that He had said He would come again, and that it would be to their eternal happiness. He had promised; therefore it would surely be.

How the promise would take place, and when, was a secondary question. Some things were revealed and certain, as to the manner; "This same Jesus, in like manner as ye saw Him going into heaven". {Act_1:11} But vastly more was unrevealed and even unconjectured. As to the time, His words had left them, as they still leave us, suspended in a reverent sense of mystery, between intimations which seem almost equally to promise both speed and delay. "Watch therefore, for ye know not when the Master of the house cometh"; {Mar_13:35} "After a long time the Lord of the servants cometh, and reckoneth with them". {Mat_25:19} The Apostle himself follows his Redeemers example in the matter. Here and there he seems to indicate an Advent at the doors, as when he speaks of "us who are alive and remain". {1Th_4:15} But again, in this very Epistle, in his discourse on the future of Israel, he appears to contemplate great developments of time and event yet to come; and very definitely, for his own part, in many places, he records his expectation of death, not of a deathless transfiguration at the Coming. Many at least among his converts looked with an eagerness which was sometimes restless and unwholesome, as at Thessalonica, for the coming King, and it may have been thus with some of the Roman saints. But St. Paul at once warned the Thessalonians of their mistake; and certainly this Epistle suggests no such upheaval of expectation at Rome.

Our work in these pages is not to discuss "the times and the seasons" which now, as much as then, lie in the Fathers "power". {Act_1:7} It is rather to call attention to the fact that in all ages of the Church this mysterious but definite Promise has, with a silent force, made itself as it were present and contemporary to the believing and watching soul. How at last it shall be seen that "I come quickly," and "The day of Christ is not at {Rev_22:12; Rev_22:20, 2Th_2:2} were both divinely and harmoniously truthful, it does not yet fully appear." But it is certain that both are so; and that in every generation of the now "long time the Hope," as if it were at the doors indeed, has been calculated for mighty effects on the Christians will and work.

So we come to this great Advent oracle, to read it for our own age. Now first let us remember its wonderful illustration of that phenomenon which we have remarked already, the concurrence in Christianity of a faith full of eternity, with a life full of common duty. Here is a community of men called to live under an almost opened heaven; almost to see, as they look around them, the descending Lord of glory coming to bring in the eternal day, making Himself present in this visible scene "with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God," waking His buried saints from the dust, calling the living and the risen to meet Him in the air. How can they adjust such an expectation to the demands of "the daily round"? Will they not fly from the City to the solitude, to the hilltops and forests of the Apennines, to wait with awful joy the great lightning flash of glory? Not so. They somehow, while "looking for the Saviour from the heavens," {Php_3:20} attend to their service and their business, pay their debts and their taxes, offer sympathy to their neighbours in their human sadnesses and joys, and yield honest loyalty to the magistrate and the Prince. They are the most stable of all elements in the civic life of the hour, if "the powers that be" would but understand them; while yet, all the while, they are the only people in the City whose home, consciously, is the eternal heavens. What can explain the paradox? Nothing but the Fact, the Person, the Character of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not an enthusiasm, however powerful, which governs them, but a Person. And He is at once the Lord of immortality and the Ruler of every detail of His servants life. He is no author of fanaticism, but the divine-human King of truth and order. To know Him is to find the secret alike of a life eternal and of a patient faithfulness in the life that now is.

What was true of Him is true for evermore. His servant now, in this restless close of the nineteenth age, is to find in Him this wonderful double secret still. He is to be, in Christ, by the very nature of his faith, the most practical and the most willing of the servants of his fellow men, in their mortal as well as immortal interests; while also disengaged internally from a bondage to the seen and temporal by his mysterious union with the Son of God, and by his firm expectation of His Return. And this, this law of love and duty, let us remember, let us follow, knowing the season, the occasion, the growing crisis; that it is already the hour for our awaking out of sleep, the sleep of moral inattention, as if the eternal Master were not near. For nearer now is our salvation, in that last glorious sense of the word "salvation" which means the immortal issue of the whole saving process, nearer now than when we believed, and so by faith entered on our union with the Saviour. (See how he delights to associate himself with his disciples in the blessed unity of remembered conversion; "when we believed.") The night, with its murky silence, its "poring dark," the night of trial, of temptation, of the absence of our Christ, is far spent, but the day has drawn near; it has been a long night, but that means a near dawn; the everlasting sunrise of the longed for Parousia, with its glory, gladness, and unveiling. Let us put off, therefore, as if they were a foul and entangling night robe, the works of the darkness, the habits and acts of the moral night, things which we can throw off in the Name of Christ; but let us put on the weapons of the light, arming ourselves, for defence, and for holy aggression on the realm of evil, with faith, love, and the heavenly hope. So to the Thessalonians five years before, {1 Thes. 1, 5:8} and to the Ephesians four years later, {Eph_6:11-17} he wrote of the holy Panoply, rapidly sketching it in the one place, giving the rich finished picture in the other; suggesting to the saints always the thought of a warfare first and mainly defensive, and then aggressive with the drawn sword, and indicating as their true armour not their reason, their emotions, or their will, taken in themselves, but the eternal facts of their revealed salvation in Christ, grasped and used by faith. As by day, for it is already dawn, in the Lord, let us walk decorously, becomingly, as we are the hallowed soldiers of our Leader; let our life not only be right in fact; let it show to all men the open "decorum" of truth, purity, peace, and love; not in revels and drunken bouts; not in chamberings, the sins of the secret couch, and profligacies, not-to name evils which cling often to the otherwise reputable Christian-in strife and envy, things which are pollutions, in the sight of the Holy One, as real as lust itself. No; put on, clothe and arm yourselves with, the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself the living sum and true meaning of all that can arm the soul; and for the flesh take no forethought lust-ward. As if, in euphemism, he would say, "Take all possible forethought against the life of self (σάρξ), with its lustful, self-willed gravitation away from God. And let that forethought be, to arm yourselves, as if never armed before, with Christ."

How solemnly explicit he is, how plainspoken, about the temptations of the Roman Christians life! The men who were capable of the appeals and revelations of the first eight chapters yet needed to be told not to drink to intoxication, not to go near the house of ill fame, not to quarrel, not to grudge. But every modern missionary in heathendom will tell us that the like stern plainness is needed now among the new-converted faithful. And is it not needed among those who have professed the Pauline faith much longer, in the congregations of our older Christendom?

It remains for our time, as truly as ever, a fact of religious life-this necessity to press it home upon the religious, as the religious, that they are called to a practical and detailed holiness; and that they are never to ignore the possibility of even the worst falls. So mysteriously can the subtle "flesh," in the believing receiver of the Gospel, becloud or distort the holy import of the thing received. So fatally easy it is "to corrupt the best into the worst," using the very depth and richness of spiritual truth as if it could be a substitute for patient practice, instead of its mighty stimulus.

But glorious is the method illustrated here for triumphant resistance to that tendency. What is it? It is not to retreat from spiritual principle upon a cold naturalistic programme of activity and probity. It is to penetrate through the spiritual principle to the Crucified and Living Lord who is its heart and power; it is to bury self in Him, and to arm the will with Him. It is to look for Him as Coming, but also, and yet more urgently, to use Him as Present. In the great Roman Epic, on the verge of the decisive conflict, the goddess-mother laid the invulnerable panoply at the feet of her Aeneas; and the astonished Champion straightway, first pondering every part of the heaven-sent armament, then "put it on," and was prepared. As it were at our feet is laid the Lord Jesus Christ, in all He is, in all He has done, in His indissoluble union with us in it all, as we are one with Him by the Holy Ghost. It is for us to see in Him our power and victory, and to "put Him on," in a personal act which, while all by grace, is yet in itself our own. And how is this done? It is by the "committal of the keeping of our souls unto Him," {1Pe_4:19} not vaguely, but definitely and with purpose, in view of each and every temptation. It is by "living our fife in the flesh by faith in the Son of God"; {Gal_2:20} that is to say, in effect, by perpetually making use of the Crucified and Living Saviour, One with us by the Holy Spirit, by using Him as our living Deliverer, our Peace and Power, amidst all that the dark hosts of evil can do against us.

Oh, wonderful and all-adequate secret; "Christ, which is the Secret of God!" {Col_2:2} Oh, divine simplicity of its depth.

"Heavens easy, artless, unencumberd plan"!

Not that its "ease" means our indolence. No; if we would indeed "arm ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ" we must awake and be astir to "know whom we have trusted". {2Ti_1:12} We must explore His Word about Himself. We must ponder it, above all, in the prayer which converses with Him over His promises, till they live to us in His light. We must watch and pray, that we may be alert to employ our armament. The Christian who steps out into life "light heartedly," thinking superficially of his weakness, and of his foes, is only too likely also to think of his Lord superficially, and to find of even this heavenly armour that "he cannot go with it, for he hath not proved it". {1Sa_17:39} But all this leaves absolutely untouched the divine simplicity of the matter. It leaves it wonderfully true that the decisive, the satisfying, the thorough, moral victory and deliverance comes to the Christian man not by trampling about with his own resolves, but by committing himself to his Saviour and Keeper, who has conquered him, that now He may conquer "his strong Enemy" for him.

"Heavens unencumbered plan" of "victory and triumph, against the devil, the world, and the flesh," is no daydream of romance. It lives, it works in the most open hour of the common world of sin and sorrow. We have seen this "putting on of the Lord Jesus Christ" victoriously successful where the most fierce, or the most subtle, forms of temptation were to be dealt with. We have seen it preserving, with beautiful persistency, a lifelong sufferer from the terrible solicitations of pain, and of still less endurable helplessness - every limb fixed literally immovable by paralysis on the ill-furnished bed; we have seen the man cheerful, restful, always ready for wise word and sympathetic thought, and affirming that his Lord, present to his soul, was infinitely enough to "keep him." We have seen the overwhelmed toiler for God, while every step through the day was clogged by "thronging duties," such duties as most wear and drain the spirit, yet maintained in an equable cheerfulness and as it were inward leisure by this same always adequate secret, "the Lord Jesus Christ put on." We have known the missionary who had, in sober earnest, hazarded his life for the blessed Name, yet ready to bear quiet witness to the repose and readiness to be found in meeting disappointment, solitude, danger, not so much by a stern resistance as by the use, then and there, confidingly, and in surrender, of the Crucified and Living Lord. Shall we dare to add with the humiliating avowal that only a too partial proof has been made of this glorious open Secret, that we know by experiment that the weakest of the servants of our King, "putting on Him," find victory and deliverance, where there was defeat before?

Let us, writer and reader, address ourselves afresh in practice to this wonderful secret. Let us, as if we had never done it before, "put on the Lord Jesus Christ." Vain is our interpretation of the holy Word, which not only "abideth, but liveth forever," {1Pe_1:23} if it does not somehow come home. For that Word was written on purpose to come home; to touch and move the conscience and the will, in the realities of our inmost, and also of our most outward, life. Never for one moment do we stand as merely interested students and spectators, outside the field of temptation. Never for one moment therefore can we dispense with the great Secret of victory and safety.

Full in face of the realities of sin-of Roman sin, in Neros days; but let us just now forget Rome and Nero; they were only dark accidents of a darker essence-St. Paul here writes down, across them all, these words, this spell, this Name; "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ." Take first a steady look, he seems to say, at your sore need, in the light of God; but then, at once, look off, look here. Here is the more than Antithesis to it all. Here is that by which you can be "more than conqueror." Take your iniquities at the worst; this can subdue them. Take your surroundings at the worst; this car, emancipate you from their power. It is "the Lord Jesus Christ," and the "putting on" of Him.

Let us remember, as if it were a new thing, that He, the Christ of Prophets, Evangelists, and Apostles, is a Fact. Sure as the existence now of His universal Church, as the observance of the historic Sacrament of His Death, as the impossibility of Galilean or Pharisaic imagination having composed, instead of photographed, the portrait of the Incarnate Son, the Immaculate Lamb; sure as is the glad verification in ten thousand blessed lives today of all, of all, that the Christ of Scripture undertakes to be to the soul that will take Him at His. own terms-so sure, across all oldest and all newest doubts, across all gnosis and all agnosia, lies the present Fact of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Then let us remember that it is a fact that man, in the mercy of God, can "put Him on." He is not far off. He presents Himself to our touch, our possession. He says to us, "Come to Me." He unveils Himself as literal partaker of our nature; as our Sacrifice; our Righteousness, "through faith in His blood"; as the Head and Lifespring, in an indescribable union, of a deep calm tide of life spiritual and eternal, ready to circulate through our being. He invites Himself to "make His abode with us"; {Joh_14:23} yea, more, "I will come in to him; I will dwell in his heart by faith." {Rev_3:20, Eph_3:17} In that ungovernable heart of ours, that interminably self-deceptive: heart, {Jer_17:9} He engages to reside, to be permanent Occupant, the Master always at home. He is prepared thus to take, with regard to our will, a place of power nearer than all circumstances, and deep in the midst of all possible inward traitors; to keep His eye on their plots, His foot, not ours, upon their necks. Yes, He invites us thus to embrace Him into a full contact; to "put Him on."

May we not say of Him what the great Poet says of Duty, and glorify the verse by a yet nobler application?-

"Thou who art victory and law When empty terrors overawe, From vain temptations dost set free, And calmst the weary strife of frail humanity!"

Yes, we can "put Him on" as our "Panoply of Light." We can put Him on as "the Lord," surrendering ourselves to His absolute while most benignant sovereignty and will, deep secret of repose. We can put Him on as "Jesus," clasping the truth that He, our Human Brother, yet Divine, "saves His people from their sins". {Mat_1:21} We can put Him, on as "Christ," our Head, anointed without measure by the Eternal Spirit, and now sending of that same Spirit into His happy members, so that we are indeed one with Him, and receive into our whole being the resources of His life.

Such are the armour and the arms. St. Jerome, commenting on a kindred passage, {Eph_6:13} says that "it most clearly results that by the weapons of God the Lord our Saviour is to be understood."

We may recollect that this text is memorable in connection with the Conversion of St. Augustine. In his "Confessions" (8:12) he records how, in the garden at Milan, at a time of great moral conflict, he was strangely attracted by a voice, perhaps the cry of children playing: "Take and read, take and read." He fetched and opened again a copy of the Epistles ("codicem Apostoli"), which he had lately laid down. "I read in silence the first place on which my eyes fell; Not in revelling and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts. I neither cared, nor needed, to read further. At the close of the sentence, as if a ray of certainty were poured into my heart, the clouds of hesitation fled at once." His will was in the will of God.

Alas, there falls one shadow over that fair scene. In the belief of Augustines time, to decide fully for Christ meant, or very nearly meant, so to accept the ascetic idea as to renounce the Christian home. But the Lord read His servants heart aright through the error, and filled it with His peace. To us, in a surrounding religious light far clearer, in many things, than that which shone even upon Ambrose and Augustine; to us who quite recognise that in the paths of homeliest duty and commonest temptation lies the line along which the blessed power of the Saviour may best overshadow His disciple; the Spirits voice shall say of this same text "Take and read, take and read." We will "put on," never to put off. Then we shall step out upon the old path in a strength new, and to be renewed forever, armed against evil, armed for the will of God, with Jesus Christ our Lord.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

13:11 The New Testament often speaks of salvation as the final victory over sin and death that believers will experience when Jesus returns in glory (see 5:9-10).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Rom 13:11. Καὶ τοῦτο, and this) supply do, those things, which are laid down from ch. Rom 12:1-2, and especially from Rom 13:8.—καιρὸν) the time [opportunity, season] abounding in grace, ch. Rom 5:6., Rom 3:26; 2Co 6:2.—ὥρα, the hour) viz. it is. This word marks a short period of time. We take account of the hour for [with a view to] rising.—ἤδη, already) without delay; presently after there occurs νῦν, at the present time [now].—ἐξ ὕπνου, out of sleep) The morning dawns, when man receives faith, and then sleep is shaken off. He must therefore rise, walk and do his work, lest sleep should again steal over him. The exhortations of the Gospel always aim at HIGHER AND HIGHER DEGREES of perfection, [something farther beyond], and presuppose the oldness of the condition in which we now are, compared with those newer things, which ought to follow, and which correspond to the nearness of salvation.—ἡμῶν) construed with ἐγγὺς, which is included in ἐγγύτερον, rather than with σωτηρία; for in other passages it is always called either the salvation of God, or salvation absolutely, not our salvation, [which Engl. Vers. wrongly gives]; comp. on this nearness of salvation, Gal 3:3; Gal 5:7. In both places the apostle supposes, that the course of the Christian, once begun, thereupon proceeds onward continually, and comes nearer and nearer to the goal. Paul had long ago written both his epistles to the Thessalonians; therefore when he wrote of the nearness of salvation, he wrote considerately [for he here, after having had such a time meanwhile to consider, repeats his statement], comp. 1Th 4:15, note. Observe also: he says elsewhere, that we are near to salvation, Heb 6:9: but here, that salvation, as if it were a day, is near to us. He who has begun well ought not to flag, when he is near the goal, but to make progress [deficere, proficere: not to recede, but proceed].—ἡ σωτηρία) Salvation to be consummated at the coming of Christ, which is the goal of hope, ch. Rom 8:24, and the end of faith, 1Pe 1:9. The making mention of salvation is repeated from ch. 5 and 8. [Moreover from that whole discussion, this exhortation is deduced, which is the shorter, in proportion as that was the longer.—V. g.]—ἤ ὃτε ἐπιστεύσαμεν) than at the time, when we began to believe at the first, and entered upon the path described, ch. 1–4; so, πιστέυειν, to take up faith, [to accept it, to become believers] Act 4:4; Act 4:32, and in many other places. [He, who has once begun well, from time to time approaches either nearer to salvation, or salvation, as it is said here, comes nearer to him. He has no need to feel great anxiety, excepting the eagerness of expectation.—V. g.]

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom_13:11. For compliance with the preceding exhortation to love, closing with Rom_13:10, Paul now presents a further weighty motive to be pondered, and then draws in turn from this (Rom_13:12 ff.) other exhortations to a Christian walk generally.

καὶ τοῦτο] our and that, i.e. and indeed, especially as you, etc. It adds something peculiarly worthy of remarkhere a further motive particularly to be notedto the preceding. See on this usage, prevalent also in the classics (which, however, more frequently use καὶ ταῦτα), Hartung, I. p. 146; Baeumlein, Partik. p. 147. Comp. 1Co_6:6; 1Co_6:8; Eph_2:8; Php_1:28; Heb_11:12. That to which here τοῦτο points back is the injunction expressed in Rom_13:8, and more precisely elucidated in Rom_13:8-10, μηδενὶ μηδὲν ὀφείλετε, εἰ μὴ κ.τ.λ. The repetition of it is represented by τοῦτο, so that thus εἰδότες attaches itself to the injunction which is again present in the writers conception, and hence all supplements (Bengel and several others, ποιεῖτε; Tholuck, ποιῶμεν) are dispensed with. The connection of τοῦτο with εἰδότες (Luther, Glöckler) complicates the quite simple language, as is also done by Hofmann, who makes τὸν καιρόν the object of τοῦτο εἰδότες, and brings out the following sense: and having this knowledge of the time, that, or, and so knowing the time, that. Even in Soph. O. T. 37 ΚΑῚ ΤΑῦΤʼ is simply and indeed; the use of τοῦτο as absolute object is irrelevant here (see Bernhardy, p. 106; Kühner, II. 1, p. 266), because τοῦτο in the sense of in such a manner would necessarily derive its more precise contents from what precedes. That which Hofmann means, Paul might have expressed by κ. τοῦτο εἰδ. τοῦ καιροῦ; Kühner II. 1, p. 238.

ΕἸΔΌΤΕς] not considerantes (Grotius and others), but: since you know the (present) period, namely, in respect of its awakening character (see what follows).

ὅτι ὥρα κ.τ.λ.] Epexegesis of ΕἸΔΌΤ. ΤῸΝ ΚΑΙΡΌΝ: that, namely, it is high time that we finally (without waiting longer, see Klotz, ad Devar. p. 600) should wake out of sleep. ἤδη does not belong to ὭΡΑ, but to ἩΜᾶς ἘΞ ὝΠΝΟΥ ἘΓ., and by ὝΠΝΟς is denoted figuratively the condition in which the true moral activity of life is bound down and hindered by the power of sin. In this we must observe with what right Paul requires this ἐγερθῆναι ἐξ ὕπνου of the regenerate (he even includes himself). He means, forsooth, the full moral awakening, the ethical elevation of life in that final degree, which is requisite in order to stand worthily before the approaching Son of man (see immediately below, νῦν γὰρ κ.τ.λ.); and in comparison with this the previous moral condition, in which much of a sinful element was always hindering the full expression of life, appears to him still as, ὕπνος, which one must finally lay aside as on awakening out of morning slumber. The Christian life has its new epochs of awakening, like faith (see on Joh_2:11), and love to the Lord (Joh_14:28), and the putting on of Christ (Rom_13:14). This applies also in opposition to Reiche, who, because Christians were already awakened from the ethical sleep, explains ὝΠΝΟς as an image of the state of the Christian on earth, in so far as he only at first forecasts and hopes for blessedness,quite, however, against the Pauline mode of conception elsewhere (Eph_5:14; 1Th_5:6 ff.; comp. also 1Co_15:34).

νῦν γὰρ κ.τ.λ.] Proof of the preceding ὭΡΑ Κ.Τ.Λ. The ΝῦΝ is related to ἬΔΗ not as the line to the point (Hofmann, following Hartung), but as the objective Now to the subjective (present in consciousness); comp. on the latter, Baeumlein, Partik. p. 140 ff. νῦν is related to ἌΡΤΙ (comp. on Gal_1:10) as line to point.

ἩΜῶΝ] Does this belong to the adverb ἘΓΓΎΤΕΡΟΝ (Beza, Castalio, and others, including Philippi, Hofmann), or to Ἡ ΣΩΤΗΡΊΑ (Luther, Calvin, and others, following the Vulgate)? The former is most naturally suggested by the position of the words; the latter would allow an emphasis, for which no motive is assigned, to fall upon ἩΜῶΝ.

Ἡ ΣΩΤΗΡΊΑ] the Messianic salvation, namely, in its completion, as introduced by the Parousia, which Paul, along with the whole apostolical church, regarded as near, always drawing nearer, and setting in even before the decease of the generation. Comp. Php_4:5; 1Pe_4:7; see also Weiss, bibl. Theol. p. 426. Not recognising the latter fact,notwithstanding that Paul brings emphatically into account the short time from his conversion up to the present time of his writing (νῦν),commentators have been forced to very perverted interpretations; e.g. that deliverance by death was meant (Photius and others), or the destruction of Jerusalem, a fortunate event for Christianity (Michaelis, following older interpreters), or the preaching among the Gentiles (Melanchthon), or the inner σωτηρία, the spiritual salvation of Christianity (Flacius, Calovius, Morus, Flatt, Benecke, Schrader, comp. Glöckler). Rightly and clearly Chrysostom says: ἐπὶ θύραις γὰρ, φησὶν, ὁ τῆς κρίσεως ἕστηκε καιρός. Comp. Theodore of Mopsuestia: σωτηρίαν δὲ ἡμῶν καλεῖ τὴν ἀνάστασιν, ἐπειδὴ τότε τῆς ἀληθινῆς ἀπολαύομεν σωτηρίας. But the nearer the blessed goal, the more wakeful and vigilant we should be.

ἢ ὅτε ἐπιστ.] than when we became believers; 1Co_3:5; 1Co_15:2; Gal_2:16; Mar_16:16; Act_19:2, and frequently.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom 13:11-14 . In the closing verses of the chapter Paul enforces this exhortation to mutual love as the fulfilling of the law by reference to the approaching Parousia. We must all appear (and who can tell how soon?) before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in the body: if the awe and the inspiration of that great truth descend upon our hearts, we shall feel how urgent the Apostle’s exhortation is. καὶ τοῦτο : cf. 1Co 6:6 ; 1Co 6:8 . In classical writers καὶ ταῦτα is commoner. It sums up all that precedes, but especially Rom 13:8-10 . εἰδότες τὸν καιρόν : ὁ καιρὸς is not “the time” abstractly, but the time they lived in with its moral import, its critical place in the working out of God’s designs. It is their time regarded as having a character of its own, full of significance for them. This is unfolded in ὅτι ὥρα ἤδη κ . τ . λ . ἤδη (without waiting longer) is to be construed with ἐγερθῆναι : “it is time for you at once to awake” (Gifford). No Christian should be asleep, yet the ordinary life of all is but drowsy compared with what it should be, and with what it would be, if the Christian hope were perpetually present to us. νῦν γὰρ ἐγγύτερον ἡμῶν ἡ σωτηρία : for now is salvation nearer us than when we believed, ἡ σωτηρία has here the transcendent eschatological sense: it is the final and complete deliverance from sin and death, and the reception into the heavenly kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. This salvation was always near, to the faith of the Apostles; and with the lapse of time it became, of course, nearer. Yet it has often been remarked that in his later epistles Paul seems to contemplate not merely the possibility, but the probability, that he himself would not live to see it. See 2Co 5:1-10 , Phi 1:23 . ὅτε ἐπιστεύσαμεν : when we became Christians, 1Co 3:5 ; 1Co 15:2 , Gal 2:16 .

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Twenty-seventh Passage (13:11-14). The Expectation of Christ’s coming again a Motive to Christian Sanctification.

This passage is the counterpart of that with which the apostle had begun his moral teaching, Rom 12:1-2. There he had laid down the principle: a living consecration of the body to God under the guidance of a mind renewed by faith in the mercies of God. This was, as it were, the impelling force which should sustain the believer in his twofold spiritual and civil walk. But that this course may be firm and persevering, there must be joined to the impelling force a power of attraction exercised on the believer’s heart by an aim, a hope constantly presented to him by faith. This glorious expectation is what the apostle reminds us of in the following passage. The passage, Rom 12:1-2, was the foundation; this, Rom 13:11-14, is the corner-stone of the edifice of Christian sanctification.

Vv. 11, 12. “And this, knowing the season, that now it is high time for you to awake out of sleep; for now is salvation nearer to us than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the instruments of light.”

The somewhat abrupt transition from Rom 13:10 to Rom 13:11 has been differently understood. What is the principal verb on which the participle εἰδότες, knowing, rests? Meyer thinks that we must go back on ὀφείλετε (Rom 13:8), “Owe no man anything.” But there is no special relation to be observed between the duty of justice, Rom 13:8, and the following passage. Lange has recourse to a strong ellipsis; he derives from the participle knowing the understood verb we know (comp. Rom 12:6), which leads to this meaning: “and knowing this (that love is the fulfilling of the law), we know also the importance of the present moment (the nearness of final salvation).” The logical connection between these two ideas would thus be this: When once love is present, perfect salvation cannot be far off. This meaning is ingenious, but very far-fetched, and this construction is not sufficiently justified by Rom 12:6. Hofmann, feeling the impossibility of these explanations, has recourse to the following expedient: he gives τοῦτο, that, an abverbial meaning: in that way, or in that respect. The clause would therefore signify: “Knowing the time thus far, that the hour is come for you to awake”—that is to say, the true meaning of the present moment is the obligation to awake. This strange construction is its own condemnation.

After the exposition which we have given of the plan of this whole moral part, we are not embarrassed by this transition. In the words: And this, Paul sums up all the foregoing precepts, all the duties of love and justice, enumerated chaps. 12 and 13, with the view of passing to the fourth and last section of this part: “And all that [we fulfil], knowing”...The idea of fulfilling did not need to be specially expressed, because the foregoing precepts along with the idea of duties included that of their execution.

Faithfulness in the realization of such a life rests on the knowledge which Christians have of the present situation of the world and of its significance: “The hour is solemn; time is short; we shall soon be no longer able to labor on the work of our sanctification; there is not an instant to lose.” In the following proposition: “It is high time for you to awake out of sleep,” the apostle compares the Christian’s position to that of a man who has begun to awake from the sleep in which he was plunged, and who, by an energetic act, requires to overcome the last remnant of sleepiness. Sleep is the state of forgetfulness of God and of estrangement from Him, and the cannal security of the man of the world in this state. Awaking is the act by which man reaches the lively conviction of his responsibility, gives himself to the impulse of prayer drawing him to God, and enters into communication with Him to obtain through Christ the pardon of his sins and divine help. As to awakening, his readers had already experienced it; but the most awakened in the church has still need of awakening; and hence the apostle reminds his readers that the meaning of the present situation is the duty of awakening thoroughly. The word ἤδη, already (now), is well explained by Philippi: at length, “high time.”

The reading ὑμᾶς, you, is to be preferred to the reading ἡμᾶς, us. The latter evidently arises from the following verb, which is in the first person plural.

The need of a complete awakening arises from the rapidity with which the day is approaching to which we are moving on. Paul understands by this day the decisive moment of Christ’s coming again, which he proceeds to compare (Rom 13:12) to the rising of the sun in nature. He here calls it salvation, because this will be the hour of complete redemption for believers; comp. Rom 5:10, Rom 8:23-25, Rom 10:10.

The march of events to this goal, or of this goal to us, is so rapid, says the apostle, that the interval which separates us from it has already sensibly diminished since he and his readers were brought to the faith. To understand this saying, which is somewhat surprising when we think of the eighteen centuries which have followed the time when it was written, it must be remembered, 1st. That the Lord had promised His return at the time when all the nations of the earth had heard His Gospel; and 2d. That the apostle, looking back on his own career, and seeing in a sense the whole known world evangelized by his efforts (Col 1:6), might well say without exaggeration that the history of the kingdom of God had made a step in advance during the course of his ministry. Of course this saying supposes that the apostle had no idea of the ages which should yet elapse before the advent of Christ. The revelation of the Lord had taught him that He would return, but not when He would return. And when it was sought to fix this time, the apostle himself opposed the attempt (1Th 5:1-2; 2Th 2:1 et seq.). He expresses himself sometimes as a possible witness of it (1Th 4:17; 1Co 15:52); sometimes as if he were not to have part in it; 1Co 6:14 (ἡμᾶς, us, the undoubted reading); 2Ti 4:18. And is it not thus we ought to live constantly, waiting without ceasing? Is not this attitude the most favorable to progress in sanctification? Did not Jesus claim this of His own when He said, Luk 12:36: “Be ye like unto men that wait for their lord when he-will return from the wedding, that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately”? And if it is not He who comes to us in the Parousia, is it not we who shall go to Him in death? Is not death for the individual what the Parousia is for the church as a whole, meeting with the Lord?

The interval between the time when the readers had come to the faith and that of this solemn meeting, individual or collective, was therefore sensibly shortened since the day of their conversion.

Vv. 12. On the one hand the night advanced, on the other the day drew near. The former of these figures signifies that the time granted to the present world to continue its life without God had moved on, was shortened; the latter, that the appearing of the kingdom of Christ had approached. Hence a double inference: As the night is dissipated, there should be an end of the works of the night; and as the day begins to shine, awaking should be completed, and there should be effected what may be called the toilet worthy of full day.

The works of darkness: all that dare not be done by day, and which is reserved for night (Rom 13:13). The term ὅπλα may be translated in two ways: the instruments or arms of light. The parallel, 1Th 5:4-11, speaks in favor of the second sense. In that case the reference would be to the breastplate, the helmet, the sandals of the Roman soldiery, arms which may be regarded as garments fitted on in the morning to replace the dress of night. But the delineation as a whole does not seem to apply to a day of battle; rather it appears that the day in question is one of peaceful labor. And for this reason we think it more natural to apply the expression ὁπλα here to the garments of the laborious workman who, from early morning, holds himself in readiness for the hour when his master waits to give him his task. These figures are applied in Rom 13:13-14: the works of night, in Rom 13:13; the instruments of light, in Rom 13:14.

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom_13:11

And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than then we believed. From this verse to the end of the chapter, Paul exhorts his readers to discharge the duties already enjoined, and urges on them to live a holy and exemplary life. The consideration by which this exhortation is enforced, is, that the night is far spent, and that the day is at hand, the time of deliverance is fast approaching. The words (καὶ τοῦτο) rendered and that, are by many considered as elliptical, and the word (ποιεῖτε) do is supplied; And this do. The demonstrative pronoun, however, is frequently used to mark the importance of the connection between two circumstances for the case in hand, (Passow, Vol. 2., p. 319,)‹71› and is, therefore, often equivalent to the phrases, and indeed, the more, etc. So in this case, We must discharge our various duties, and that knowing, etc., i.e., the rather, because we know, etc.; compare Heb_11:12; 1Co_6:6; Eph_2:8. Knowing the time, i.e. considering the nature and character of the period in which we now live. The original word (καιρός) does not mean time in the general sense, but a portion of time considered as appropriate, as fixed, as short, etc. Paul immediately explains himself by adding, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; it was the proper time to arouse themselves from their slumbers, and, shaking off all slothfulness, to address themselves earnestly to work. For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. This is the reason why it is time to be up and active, salvation is at hand. There are three leading interpretations of this clause. The first is, that it means that the time of salvation, or special favor to the Gentiles, and of the destruction of the Jews, was fast approaching. So Hammond, Whitby, and many others. But for this there is no foundation in the simple meaning of the words, nor in the context. Paul evidently refers to something of more general and permanent interest than the overthrow of the Jewish nation, and the consequent freedom of the Gentile converts from their persecutions. The night that was far spent, was not the night of sorrow arising from Jewish bigotry; and the day that was at hand was something brighter and better than deliverance from its power. A second interpretation very generally received of late is, that the reference is to the second advent of Christ. It is assumed that the early Christians, and even the inspired apostles, were under the constant impression that Christ was to appear in person for the establishment of his kingdom, before that generation passed away. This assumption is founded on such passages as the following: Phi_4:5, The Lord is at hand; 1Th_4:17, We that are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air; 1Co_15:51, We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, etc. With regard to this point, we may remark

1. That neither the early Christians nor the apostles knew when the second advent of Christ was to take place. But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, nor the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe were, so shall the coming of the Son of man be, Mat_24:36, Mat_24:37. They (the apostles) asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power, Act_1:6, Act_1:7. But of the times and seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you, for ye yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night, 1Th_5:1, 1Th_5:2.

2. Though they knew not when it was to be, they knew that it was not to happen immediately, nor until a great apostasy had occurred. Now we beseech you, brethren, by (or concerning) the coming of the Lord Jesus, and our gathering together to him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind … as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, etc., 2Th_2:1-3; and 2Th_2:5, Remember ye not, that when I was yet with you, I told you these things? Besides this distinct assertion, that the second advent of Christ was not to occur before the revelation of the man of sin, there are several other predictions in the writings of Paul, which necessarily imply his knowledge of the fact, that the day of judgment was not immediately at hand, 1Ti_4:1-3; Rom_11:25. The numerous prophecies of the Old Testament relating to the future conversion of the Jews, and various other events, were known to the apostles and precluded the possibility of their believing that the world was to come to an end before those prophecies were fulfilled.

3. We are not to understand the expressions, day of the Lord, the appearing of Christ, the coming of the Son of man, in all cases in the same way. The day of the Lord is a very familiar expression in the Scriptures to designate any time of the special manifestation of the divine presence, either for judgment or mercy; see Eze_13:5; Joe_1:15; Isa_2:12; Isa_13:6, Isa_13:9. So also God or Christ is said to come to any person or place, when he makes any remarkable exhibition of his power or grace. Hence the Son of man was to come for the destruction of Jerusalem, before the people of that generation all perished; and the summons of death is sometimes represented as the coming of Christ to judge the soul. What is the meaning of such expressions must be determined by the context, in each particular case.

4. It cannot, therefore, be inferred from such declarations as the day of the Lord is at hand; the coming of the Lord draweth nigh; the judge is at the door, etc., that those who made them supposed that the second advent and final judgment were to take place immediately. They expressly assert the contrary, as has just been shown.

5. The situation of the early Christians was, in this respect, similar to ours. They believed that Christ was to appear the second time without sin unto salvation; but when this advent was to take place, they did not know. They looked and longed for the appearing of the great God their Savior, as we do now; and the prospect of this event operated upon them as it should do upon us, as a constant motive to watchfulness and diligence, that we may be found of him in peace.

There is nothing, therefore, in the Scriptures, nor in this immediate context, which requires us to suppose that Paul intended to say that the time of the second advent was at hand, when he tells his readers that their salvation was nearer than when they believed.

The third and most common, as well as the most natural interpretation of this passage is, that Paul meant simply to remind them that the time of deliverance was near; that the difficulties and sins with which they had to contend, would soon be dispersed as the shades and mists of night before the rising day. The salvation, therefore, here intended, is the consummation of the work of Christ in their deliverance from this present evil world, and introduction into the purity and blessedness of heaven. Eternity is just at hand, is the solemn consideration that Paul urges on his readers as a motive for devotion and diligence.

Charles Hodge — Commentary on Romans (1835), First Corinthians (1857), and Ephesians (1856) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

An application taken of the circumstance of the time: which also itself putteth us in mind of our duty, seeing that this remaineth after that the darkness of ignorance and wicked affections by the knowledge of God’s truth be driven out of us, that we order our life according to that certain and sure rule of all righteousness and honesty, being fully grounded upon the virtue of the Spirit of Christ.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

And that--rather, "And this [do]"

knowing the time, that now it is high time--literally, "the hour has already come."

to awake out of sleep--of stupid, fatal indifference to eternal things.

for now is our salvation--rather, "the salvation," or simply "salvation."

nearer than when we--first

believed--This is in the line of all our Lord's teaching, which represents the decisive day of Christ's second appearing as at hand, to keep believers ever in the attitude of wakeful expectancy, but without reference to the chronological nearness or distance of that event.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 11. And that, knowing the time] Dr. Taylor has given a judicious paraphrase of this and the following verses: "And all the duties of a virtuous and holy life we should the more carefully and zealously perform, considering the nature and shortness of the present season of life; which will convince us that it is now high time to rouse and shake off sleep, and apply with vigilance and vigour to the duties of our Christian life; for that eternal salvation, which is the object of our Christian faith and hope, and the great motive of our religion, is every day nearer to us than when we first entered into the profession of Christianity."

Some think the passage should be understood thus: We have now many advantages which we did not formerly possess. Salvation is nearer-the whole Christian system is more fully explained, and the knowledge of it more easy to be acquired than formerly; on which account a greater progress in religious knowledge and in practical piety is required of us: and we have for a long time been too remiss in these respects. Deliverance from the persecutions, &c., with which they were then afflicted, is supposed by others to be the meaning of the apostle.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

11. Moreover, etc. He enters now on another subject of exhortation, that as the rays of celestial life had begun to shine on us as it were at the dawn, we ought to do what they are wont to do who are in public life and in the sight of men, who take diligent care lest they should commit anything that is base or unbecoming; for if they do anything amiss, they see that they are exposed to the view of many witnesses. But we, who always stand in the sight of God and of angels, and whom Christ, the true sun of righteousness, invites to his presence, we indeed ought to be much more careful to beware of every kind of pollution.

The import then of the words is this, “Since we know that the seasonable time has already come, in which we should awake from sleep, let us cast aside whatever belongs to the night, let us shake off all the works of darkness, since the darkness itself has been dissipated, and let us attend to the works of light, and walk as it becomes those who are enjoying the day.” The intervening words are to be read as in a parenthesis.

As, however, the words are metaphorical, it may be useful to consider their meaning: Ignorance of God is what he calls night; for all who are thus ignorant go astray and sleep as people do in the night. The unbelieving do indeed labor under these two evils, they are blind and they are insensible; but this insensibility he shortly after designated by sleep, which is, as one says, an image of death. By light he means the revelation of divine truth, by which Christ the sun of righteousness arises on us. He mentions awake, by which he intimates that we are to be equipped and prepared to undertake the services which the Lord requires from us. The works of darkness are shameful and wicked works; for night, as some one says, is shameless. The armor of light represents good, and temperate, and holy actions, such as are suitable to the day; and armor is mentioned rather than works, because we are to carry on a warfare for the Lord.

But the particles at the beginning, And this, are to be read by themselves, for they are connected with what is gone before; as we say in Latin Adhoec — besides, or proeterea — moreover. The time, he says, was known to the faithful, for the calling of God and the day of visitation required a new life and new morals, and he immediately adds an explanation, and says, that it was the hour to awake: for it is not χρόνος but καιρὸς which means a fit occasion or a seasonable time.

For nearer is now our salvation, etc. This passage is in various ways perverted by interpreters. Many refer the word believed to the time of the law, as though Paul had said, that the Jews believed before Christ came; which view I reject as unnatural and strained; and surely to confine a general truth to a small part of the Church, would have been wholly inconsistent. Of that whole assembly to which he wrote, how few were Jews? Then this declaration could not have been suitable to the Romans. Besides, the comparison between the night and the day does in my judgment dissipate every doubt on the point. The declaration then seems to me to be of the most simple kind, — “Nearer is salvation now to us than at that time when we began to believe:” so that a reference is made to the time which had preceded as to their faith. For as the adverb here used is in its import indefinite, this meaning is much the most suitable, as it is evident from what follows.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(11) And that, knowing the time.—And that there is all the more urgent motive for you to do—this law of love it is the more incumbent on you to practise—because you know what a critical moment it is in which you are living. The word for “time” is different from that used in the next clause, and means a definite and critical season.

Awake out of sleep.—A striking metaphor. The true, the genuine Christian life is like the state of a man whose eyes are open and whose faculties are all alert and vigorous. All besides, whatever it be, the state of heathenism or of imperfect and lukewarm Christianity, is like the torpor of sleep.

Our salvation.—That blissful participation in His kingdom which the Messiah at His Second Coming should inaugurate for His people. (Comp. Rom_8:19; Rom_8:23, “the manifestation of the sons of God,” “the redemption of the body;” Luk_21:28, “your redemption draweth nigh.”)

When we believed.—When we first became Christians. Every hour brings the expected end nearer.

(11-14) The Apostle now gives a reason for enforcing this and other duties upon his readers. The end of the world itself is near.

St. Paul, like the other Apostles (comp. 1Pe_4:7; Rev_22:20, et al.), certainly believed that the Parusia, or Second Coming of Christ, was near at hand. This was in strict accordance with Mar_13:32, and resulted naturally from the peculiar form of the Jewish Messianic expectation. A great shock had been given to the disciples by the crucifixion of Him whom they thought to be the Messiah, and though they began to recover from this as soon as they were convinced of His resurrection, they yet could not reconcile themselves to it entirely. The humiliation of the cross was still a stumbling-block to them taken alone, but falling back upon another portion of their beliefs, they looked to see it supplemented, and its shameful side cancelled, by a second coming “in power and great glory.” Their previous expectations, vague as they were, led them to regard this as part of the one manifestation of the Messiah, and they did not expect to see a long interval of time interposed.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

11–14. Christian practice: duty enforced by the prospect of the Lord’s Return

11. And that, &c.] In this last section of the chapter, St Paul enforces all the preceding precepts (of cch. 12, 13) by the solemn assertion of the approach of the eternal Day of Resurrection and Glory. Then all that was painful in effort would be over, and the results of “patient continuance in well-doing” would be realized for ever.

Language such as that of this passage is often taken to prove that St Paul expected an imminent return of the Lord, and taught it as a revealed truth. But the prophetic part of ch. 11 is sufficient to shew that he looked for an extended future. And the expectation here expressed, as a main item of Christian truth, by this great prophet of the Gospel, has been accepted ever since by successive generations of believers as the just expression of their own attitude of hope.

It is plain that the Lord Himself both implied and sometimes distinctly foretold a long interval. See Mat_25:19.

the time] the occasion; same word as Rom_3:26, where see note. The “occasion” is, in fact, the “last days;” the times of Messiah. (See Act_2:16-17.)

out of sleep] The sleep of languor and forgetfulness.—The Lord had used this metaphor in connexion with His Return; Mat_24:42; Mat_25:13. See elsewhere in St Paul, 1Th_5:6. Also Rev_3:3; Rev_16:15.

our salvation] See note on “salvation,” Rom_1:16. It is here the “salvation” of resurrection-glory.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And that knowing the time,.... That it is day and not night, the Gospel day, the day of salvation; in which the grace of God shines forth, like the sun in its meridian glory; life and immortality are brought to light, righteousness and salvation are revealed; and so a time not for sloth and sleep, but business; in which the saints should active in the exercise of grace, and discharge, of duty; owing no man anything but the debt of love; and that the dawn of grace, and day of spiritual light had broke in upon their souls, and dispelled the darkness of sin, ignorance and unbelief; that the darkness was past, and the true light shined, and the sun of righteousness was risen on them: all which they full well knew and were conscious of, and therefore should observe,

that now it is high time for us to awake out of sleep; since sleep is for the night, and not the day; the Alexandrian copy reads, "for you". This is to be understood, not of the dead sleep of sin, in which unconverted persons are, to be awoke out of which is a work of divine power; but of the carnal security and drowsy frame of spirit which sometimes attend the churches and children of God, the wise as well as the foolish virgins; and lies in grace being dormant in, the soul; in a backwardness to duty, and a slothfulness in the performance of it; in resting in the outward duties of religion; in lukewarmness about the cause of Christ; in an unconcernedness about sins of omission and commission; and in a willingness to continue in such a sluggish frame: all which arise from a body of sin and death, and an over anxious care for the things of the world; from a weariness in spiritual exercises, and an abstinence from spiritual company and ordinances and from outward peace and liberty: such a frame of spirit, when, it prevails and becomes general is of bad consequence to the churches of Christ; the spirit of discerning, care and diligence in receiving members, are in a great measure lost, and so they are filled with hypocrites and heretics; Christ absents himself from them; leanness of soul is brought upon them; and they are in danger of being surprised with the midnight cry: the methods God takes to awaken his people out of such a sleep are various; sometimes in a more gentle way, by the discoveries his love, which causes the lips of those that are asleep to speak; sometimes by severe reproofs in the ministry of the word; and sometimes by sharp persecutions in providence; and at last it will be done by the midnight cry: the argument, showing the reasonableness of awaking out of sleep, and that it was high time to do so, follows,

for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed; by which is meant, not temporal salvation, or a deliverance from the persecution the saints endured in Judea, from their own countrymen, by the departure of them from Jerusalem, a little before its destruction, by the destruction of that city, and the peaceful times of Vespasian; but a spiritual and eternal salvation: not Christ the author of it, who was come to effect it; nor that itself, as obtained, which was now done, finished, and completed; nor the application of it to their souls, which also had been made; but the consummate enjoyment of it in heaven, the salvation of their souls at death, and both of soul and body at the resurrection; consisting in a freedom from every evil, and in a full possession of all that is good and glorious: this is brought nearer to the saints, to their sight and view, as their faith grows and increases; and they are nearer the enjoyment of that than when they first believed; and which is a strong reason why a sluggish, slothful frame should not be indulged; what, sleep, and heaven so near at hand! just at their Father's house, ready to enter into the joy of their Lord, into his everlasting kingdom and glory, and yet asleep!

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

11 And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

Ver. 11. To awake out of sleep] While the crocodile sleepeth with open mouth, the Indian rat gets into his stomach, and eateth through his entrails. While Ishbosheth slept upon his bed at noon, Baanah and Rechab took away his head. Security ushereth in destruction. Go forth and shake yourselves, as Samson did when the Philistines were upon him; lest Satan serve you, at least for your souls, as Captain Drake did the Spaniard at Taurapasa in the West Indies, for his treasure; he found him sleeping securely on the shore, and by him 13 bars of silver to the value of 40,000 ducats, which he commanded to be carried away, not so much as once waking the man. (Camden’s Elisa.) Or lest Christ himself deal by us, as Epaminondas did by the watchman, whom he found asleep; he thrust him through with his sword, and being blamed for so severe a fact, he replied, Talem eum reliqui, qualem inveni, I left him as I found him.

For now is our salvation nearer] Stir up yourselves, therefore, and strain toward the mark. There is a Greek word (νυσσα) signifying the end of a race, which is derived of a word that signifieth to spur or prick forward (νυσσω). Surely, as they that run their horses for a wager, spur hardest at the race’s end; so, sith our salvation is nearer now than ever it was, therefore we should run faster now than ever we did. When a cart is in a quagmire, if the horses feel it coming, they’ll pull the harder; so must we, now that full deliverance is hard at hand. Rivers run more speedily and forcibly when they come near the sea, than they did at the spring; the sun shineth most amiably towards the going down. Tempus iam est (said old Zanchius to his friend Sturmius, who was elder than he) ut ad Christum et caelum stelliferum a terra properemus, &c. It is even high time for you and me to hasten to heaven; as knowing that we shall shortly be with Christ, which is "far far the better," Php 1:23.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. Some will have the sense to be, that our salvation is now nearer, when the gospel is preached, and Christ offers us his graces, than when we believed the Messias was to come. Others expound it, that the more our life is spent, we come nearer to the judgment of God, and to the salvation promised in heaven. (Witham)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

And that; or, moreover; the speech is elliptical, something must be understood, as, I say, or add: q. d. Unto this exhortation to Christian love, I further add what follows.

Knowing the time; i.e. considering it is a time of great trial, or time of gospel light.

Now it is high time to awake out of sleep; i.e. to shake off slothfulness, security, and all former sinful courses. See the like, 1Co 15:34; Eph 5:14; 1Th 5:6-8. q.d. Consider, now it is the hour or season to awake or rise up, to lay aside your night clothes, as it is in the following verse.

Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed; or, salvation is nearer to us than when we first began to believe. Some would understand it of temporal salvation, and deliverance from those persecutions which befell the Christians in the infancy of the church; from these they were saved and delivered by the destruction of the Jews their persecutors. This was foretold by Christ, and expected by the Christians; and it was nigher at hand than when they first embraced the Christian faith. But most understand it of eternal salvation, which he says was nearer than when they first believed. In which words is couched another argument to awaken or stir up the believing Romans; the first was taken from the consideration of the time or season; the second, from the nearness of the word. Therefore it should be with them as with those that run in a race; the nearer they come to the goal, the faster they run, lest others should get before them.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

11. And that—The apostle, with a startling abruptness, as if from a sudden impulse, turns from the law to the great and closing execution of the law at the judgment seat of Christ. He speaks of it as if conceptually and practically standing in close connexion with the close of human earthly existence, whether individual or general. So in 2Ti_4:5-8, when he was assured that his own death was at hand, he held the righteous Judge as conceptually close upon death.

Sleep—Life is a night; time and its sublunary engrossments are a sleep; death, judgment, salvation, are the approaching dawn before us; it becomes us to be awake out of sleep, and watch the approaches of the morning, of the glorious day at hand.

High time—Urgent reason.

Nearer than—Each passing moment draws us nearer to the gates of blessedness.

When we believed—We are midway between our first earthly salvation and our final heavenly one.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 11-14. There is now interposed among the particular admonitions a call to watchfulness, with a view to holiness in all relations of life, on the ground that the day is at hand. There can be little, if any, doubt that the apostle had in view the second coming of Christ, which he with others supposed might be close at hand, Our Lord had said that of that day none knew but the Father, (Mat_24:36 Mar_13:32; cf. Act_1:7) and that it would come unexpectedly. (Mat_24:27, 37-44 Mar_13:36) Further, in the same addresses to the disciples before his death in which these things were said, he seems to have disclosed a vista of the future, after the manner of the ancient prophets, in which more immediate and more distant fulfilments of the prophetic vision were not clearly distinguished; so that words which we now perceive to have pointed to the destruction of Jerusalem, which was typical of the final judgments, might easily have been understood as referring to the latter. Such are, "This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled". (Mat_24:34 Mar_13:30; cf. also Joh_21:22, Joh_21:23) Hence it was natural that the apostolic Church should regard the second advent as probably imminent. We find in the apostolic Epistles several intimations of this expectation; (cf. 1Th_4:13, seq.; 2Co_5:2-5 Php_4:5 Heb_10:25 1Pe_4:7 1Jn_2:18,re 1Jo 22:20) and though it was not realized in the event, the authority of the apostles as inspired teachers is not thus disparaged, this being the very thing which Christ had said must remain unknown to all. Nor does their teaching, enforced by this expectation, lose its force to us; for, though "the Lord delayeth his coming," and may still delay it, yet to each of us at least this present world is fast passing away, and the Lord may be close at hand to call us out of it. The duty of watchfulness and preparedness remains unchanged. The Parousia or, as it is called in the pastoral Epistles, the Epiphany (in 2Th_2:8, epifaneia thv parousiav) of Christ is here, as elsewhere, presented under the figure of the day appearing, (cf. 1Co_3:13 Eph_5:14 1Th_5:4 Heb_10:25 2Pe_1:19) the previous ages of the world being regarded as the time of night. The figure is found in the prophets with reference to that day the coming day of the Lord, (cf. e.g. Isa_9:2 Isa_60:1-3 Mal_4:2) But though the day has not yet come, Christians are viewed as already in the radiance of its dawn, in which they can walk as children of the day, and be on the watch, and not be surprised asleep, or doing the deeds of darkness, when the full daylight bursts upon them. For in the first advent of Christ the day dawned, though, to those who loved darkness rather than light, but as a light that shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. (Joh_1:5, seq.; Joh_3:19, seq.; cf. 2Pe_1:19 1Jn_2:8; and also Luk_1:78, seq.; Luk_2:32)

Vers. 11-14. The Christian"s duty in the present age.

The Christian is not to be insensible to the movements of the world. "Knowing the time," says the apostle (ver. 11). Mr. Spurgeon says he reads the newspapers to see how God is governing the world. It is well for us to know what are the current beliefs and motives of our fellow-men.

I THE CHRISTIAN"S CONFIDENCE.

1. The night is far spent.

(1) The forces of evil are far spent. Some Christians are always looking on the dark side of things. They see no traces of the breaking day. With them it is always night. They would have us believe, with Canon Taylor, that missions are a failure. They would have us believe, with Lord Wemyss, that prohibition of the liquor traffic is a failure. They would have us believe that Sunday closing is a failure. But it is those who want such movements to fail that usually originate such a cry. There is no failure in the forces of right. Failure is written on the forces of sin. Its night is far spent.

(2) The clouds of mystery will soon be lifted. There are difficulties in reconciling religion and science. Yet the. difficulties are only apparent. They are only temporary clouds. There are difficulties in God"s providence that we cannot understand. But by-and-by they will all be made plain. Every mystery will be solved. "Now we know in part; but then shall we know even as also we are known.

(3) The dark hours of pain and sorrow will soon be over. How dark is the hour of sickness! how dark the hour of bereavement! What shadows disappointment causes to pass over our lives! But the night is far spent. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

2. The day is at hand. " The day of our Saviour"s coming is rapidly drawing nearer. Already we may hear the sound of his chariot-wheels. Gradually his kingdom has been making progress in the earth, his truth has been gaining the victory over error. The Reformation shook off the dust of centuries from the Word of God. The discovery of printing had already prepared the way for the spread of the emancipated Bible. Old kingdoms that encouraged error and fostered ecclesiastical despotism have been falling. New nations have arisen to sway the destinies of the world the nations of the Bible-loving, liberty-loving, Anglo-Saxon race. Old wrongs have been redressed. Our King is coming. "The day is at hand.

II THE CHRISTIAN"S CALL.

1. A call to activity. "Now it is high time to awake out of sleep" (ver. 11). It is plain that this exhortation is addressed to Christians, for the writer adds, "for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." Many Christians are asleep. They are inactive and idle, and are doing nothing to prepare the way of the Lord. It may be addressed also to the unconverted. This very passage, the closing part of this thirteenth chapter, was the means of converting St. Augustine.

2. A call to amendment. "Let us cast off the works of darkness" (ver. 12). Some works are literally works of darkness, as for example those specified in the thirteenth verse. Drunkenness and impurity are most practised in the night. "They that be drunken are drunken in the night." But "works of darkness" may be regarded as including all sinful works. Sin loves concealment. The Christian is to cast off everything that will not bear the light, to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. "The day is at hand." How shall we abide the day of our Lord"s coming if we do not, by Divine help, separate ourselves from sin?

3. A call to conflict. "Let us put on the armour of light" (ver. 12). We are to wage war with our own temptations, and with the evil that is in the world. Let our armour be the armour of light. Let us not fight the world with its own weapons with hatred, or bitterness, or deceit. Let our weapons be good weapons the weapons of truth, justice, love. They will conquer. Let us never do evil that good may come.

4. A call to Christ-likeness. "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ" (ver. 14). That is to say, "Be clothed with his spirit." This is the secret of strength. Like Sir Galahad, whose strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure, the man who is Christ-like in spirit will overcome all temptations, and will grapple victoriously with all difficulties. This is emphatically a call which the Christian needs to hear in the present age, when there is so much in the Church as well as in the world that is contrary to the spirit of Christ. Let us, then, hear the trumpet-call of duty, and, as we go forth, let us brace up our spirits with the inspiring thought that "the night is far spent, and the day is at hand. C.H.I.

Vers. 11, 12. And that, (for a similar use of kai touto , or kai tauta , cf. 1Co_6:8 Eph_2:8 Php_1:28 Heb_10:25 Heb_11:12) knowing that it is high time for you to awake out of sleep (more literally, that it is the hour for you to be already roused out of sleep); for now is our salvation nearer (or, now is salvation nearer to us. The salvation here meant is "the restitution of all things", (Act_3:21) the "manifestation of the sons of God", (Rom_8:19) "the regeneration", (Mat_19:28) the "gathering together in one of all things in Christ,", (Eph_1:10) which is yet to come) than when we believed. (i.e. than when we first became believers; cf. Act_19:2 1Co_3:5 1Co_15:2 Gal_2:16. Time has been gradually advancing since then, bringing the consummation we look for ever nearer) The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore put off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Former habits of life are here, as elsewhere, regarded as clothing once worn a man"s habitual investment, though not part of his real self which is to be put off; (cf. Eph_4:22Co Eph_3:8, Eph_3:9) instead whereof are to he put on, as a new investment, the graces and virtues, supplied to us from the region of light, which constitute the Christian character. (cf. 1Th_5:8 2Co_6:7 Eph_6:11, seq.) In all these passages the new clothing to be put on is designated as armour, the idea being carried out in detail in Eph_6:11, etc.; and thus the further conception is introduced of Christians being as soldiers on the watch during the watches of the night, awaiting daybreak, equipped with arms of heavenly proof, careful not to sleep on their post, or to allow themselves in revelry or any deeds of shame, such as are done in the night under the cover of darkness.

Vers. 11-14. A startling summons.

The admonition of this passage is especially addressed to Christians; yet to Christians who stand peculiarly in need of a rousing appeal and summons, to call them to a more spiritual and a more watchful life.

I THE CRISIS OF LIFE.

1. The night is well-nigh gone. Between our Lord"s first and second comings stretches the dawn of the world. Behind his first coming lay the night of humanity. Beyond his second advent the daylight beams, with the brightness of knowledge, of holiness, of happiness, of glory.

2. Salvation is nearer than ever. In one sense, indeed, salvation is a present blessing; for we are delivered from condemnation if we are in Christ Jesus. In another sense it is future; for we shall hereafter receive the end of our faith, even the salvation of our souls. It is something to be looked forward to with keenest joy of hope, something the prospect of which may well inspire us to endurance and to toil.

II THE SUMMONS OF GOD.

1. To spiritual energy. To such a period, drowsy, slumberous inactivity is utterly inappropriate.

2. To the renunciation of all that interferes with the fulfilment of our calling and the realization of our hope.

3. To a spiritual warfare and campaign.

4. To purity of body and of mind, as those who are in their whole nature redeemed, that in their whole nature they may be consecrated.

Vers. 11-14. Night and day.

Christian motives are brought forward to incite to moral duties. We are called upon to do right, not only by the voices of expediency and of authority, but by the voice of revelation. Christians are addressed as those who know the seasons, who discern the signs of the times, who regard the present as a period of probation, of discipline, of education, and whose gaze is ever forwards, whose hope is in their Lord"s return to judge and to save.

I THE RETROSPECT OF THE PAST. "The night is far spent.

1. The spiritual night of the world is passing away. The true Light is shining, and the radiance of his beams is illumining the darkest and most distant shores.

2. The night of time is departing, and eternity, resurrection, the new heavens and the new earth, are about to dawn.

3. The night of life is nearly spent, and the day of immortality approaches. If this is the case with all, how manifestly is it so with the aged!

II THE PROSPECT OF THE FUTURE.

1. "The day is at hand." So far as the opportunity for labour is concerned, we may admit that the night cometh, when no man can work." But, in another sense, it is a welcome truth that "the day dawns, and the shadows flee away." Full light shall soon be shed upon our intellectual and spiritual darkness. The fears, the ignorance, the doubts of the present shall cease to be; we shall see Christ as he is, and we shall know even as we are known.

2. "Salvation is nearer to us than when we first believed" A fortress is beleaguered by the forces of the foe. The garrison, long besieged, is feeble, weary, and all but exhausted, ill supplied with provisions and ammunition, and in great straits. But relief is planned, and is approaching. At night the prospect seemed dark. But now, when the morning breaks, the besieged, looking from their walls, behold the banners of the deliverer drawing near, and hear the welcome music of his march. Salvation is at hand! It is in this light that we are encouraged to look at life, at time. Now we are besieged by our spiritual foe, and our condition is often apparently desperate. But our redemption draweth nigh, and our salvation is nearer. The perfection of our salvation, the fulfilment of the promise of victory, this is in the future.

III THE DUTY OF THE PRESENT. This is not the time to indulge mere sentiment, whether of retrospect or of anticipation. The living present demands all our energy.

1. "It is time to awake out of sleep;" to arouse ourselves from indifference to concern, from half-belief to earnest faith, from inactivity to zeal.

2. To "cast off the works of darkness." By the clothing, the impediments thus designated, we understand the negligences, the sins, which are inconsistent with true spirituality.

3. To "put on the armour of light." Holiness and diligence, patience and devotedness, these are the spiritual exercises appropriate to those who have a hope so glorious and promises so sure as ours. Let the soldier see to his weapons, the servant to his work, the steward to his trust!

APPLICATION. Every crisis of human life, of Church history; every day which tells of the flight of time; every instance of human mortality, speaks loudly to us, summoning us, as children of the day, to live as in anticipation of the Divine Deliverer"s speedy and welcome approach.

Vers. 11-14. Awake and arm!

It is strange that, at the very commencement of a new dispensation, the prospect of its close should be so often presented to the view. No sooner had Christ"s first coming ended, than his people were taught to anticipate his second coming. Thus the thoughts and affections of Christians are clustered around their Lord, and the revelation of the past suggests the approaching epiphany. The contrasts of this passage are very striking. When carefully analyzed, they appear

I As applied to CONDITION.

1. The night of danger is nearly over. This applies to the individual, to any community, to the whole Church.

2. The morning of deliverance is dawning. An inspiration and comfort to the pilgrims, the soldiers, who are often oppressed by the gloom of the present perils.

II As applied to CHARACTER.

1. The works of night are to be abandoned. These belong to the era which now lies in the remote distance, and from which Christ has emancipated his people.

2. The life of the spiritual day is to be adopted. If the flesh and its lusts are to be crucified, what is to be crowned? The Lord Jesus is to be "put on," the armour of light is to be taken and worn; and the Christian soldier is to go forth to meet the coming day, with his face towards the rising sun, with his heart bounding with delight at his great Captain"s long-expected appearance.

Vers. 11-14. The day breaketh!

"And this the work of progressive sanctification, in all its aspects and relations this surely claims our strong attention now, when the day of God is nigh unto dawning! For, visibly to us, the shadows pass and the morning breaks. It is the night-watch still, but the day is at hand. We have here to consider the nearness of the day of God; our full awaking.

I THE DAY OF GOD. In and through all the declarations of the Scriptures there mingles this warning note the day of God will come! Men seem to have their day, and work their will; God will have his day, and will work his will. We must not narrow the meaning of this presentment of the Scriptures: whenever God interferes amid the doings of men to show forth his power, his day has come. In our individual life-histories, in the histories of nations, as well as in the larger history of the race, God has come, does come, many times and in many ways. For mercy? Yes; to deliver those who trust in him and seek to work his will. And for judgment: for "wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together." But amid these many manifestations of God"s power, there are some which stand out conspicuously, like the mountain-peaks among the lower hills. Such was the advent of the Christ, looming large before the vision of Old Testament seers. Such is the second advent of the Christ, looming large to the view of the apostles and to us. For mercy and for judgment was the former; for mercy and for judgment shall be the latter. To the Christian believer, for fall salvation! Oh, what a hope is this! It has glowed before us as we have traced God"s purposes declared in foregoing chapters; Paul would have it burn as our beacon-light, ever brighter and more near! A beacon-light? Nay, rather it is the dawn of the new day, when the shining of God"s full-orbed love shall scatter for ever all the lingering shades of night.

II OUR FULL AWAKING. But what shall be our attitude in view of such a daybreak? We must surely be watchers for the morning, children of light! The very regeneration of those to whom he writes was truly an awaking out of sleep; but there might be need still for a more thorough arousal and readiness. Nay, is there not, in each one, this need? The works of darkness will cling to us, if we do not ever resolutely cast them off. We may forget that the day is shining, and sink back into our sleep.

1. The works of darkness? Yes, such works as pertain to the corruption of the night-time of the world base revelry, impure pleasures, passion, and strife. The works of the flesh, which are manifest. (Gal_5:19-21) And oh, what a night-time the world has had! what a night-time has been ours! We have loved the darkness, because our deeds were evil.

2. But we, as children of light, are to put on the armour of light, to walk honestly, as in the day. The gleam of that dayspring has already caught our vision and lit up our brow; it is to irradiate all our path. We are to walk as though the cloudless eternity were about us now. Your citizenship is in heaven! So then, while the children of the darkness "make provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof," seek ever to gratify their low desires, and make their whole life subservient to this, we are to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ." He is to be our clothing and adornment; the pure, spiritual nature which he showed to the world is to be our arraying for the new sunrise, bringing the world"s new year!

And that glorious goal of our best hopes, "salvation" in its fullest scope and working, is "nearer to us than when we first believed." Let us gladden our hearts and rekindle all our longings. We are not to be ever battling, weary, sad; but he whom we look for shall come; yes, "the second time, unto salvation! T.F.L.

Vers. 11-14. The approach of day.

Sin has been defined as "an act or state inconsistent with the relations" in which we stand. To act as our position demands is to act rightly. The apostle appeals to Christians as reasonable individuals desiring to behave as befits their condition. Incongruities excite ridicule, as when the sailor walks on land as if he had to steady himself against the tossing of his ship. Who has not dreamed of being found in daylight in the street attired in the garments of sleep, and felt the peculiar shame of such an incident? How different the decorations that look well enough by gaslight appear when the scene is surveyed in sunshine! the tinsel and gaudy brilliancy disgust a healthy eye.

I A CRITICAL SEASON. The daybreak is at hand, when the labourer should be found at work, the soldier engaged in conflict, and the traveller started on his journey. Night is the time in which Christianity has to struggle for existence, its adherents sometimes forced to resort to obscurity for fear of persecution. Christ"s departure was the setting as his advent shall be the rising again of the sun; the interval is summer night. Our salvation is nearer than when we began to believe. Faith commenced the process of sanctification, ushered us into that kingdom of God on earth, whose consummation, whose outward triumph and glory, are approaching. The apostle may have deemed Christ"s appearance nigh. Like the ancient seers, he viewed coming events in a picture, where the distinction could not always be accurately perceived between the background and the foreground. He knew, however, that certain occurrences must precede the Parousia. Surely this incentive to vigilance should be operative with us, to whom later centuries have rolled. Who shall say when the cry may resound, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh"? No doubt, too, that the apostle foresaw a rapid extension of evangelistic endeavours. The nearing downfall of Jewish hopes would cause many to turn to the gospel as the only possible fulfilment of their Messianic aspirations. Such times of potency are ever occurring to us individually and collectively. Like ardent men of business, we should be on the look-out to seize our opportunities. Both at home and abroad this is an unequalled season for missionary effort; doors are being opened on every side. To spend the night in rioting is to slumber during the day: the morning will find us heavy-eyed and dull of brain. And to each one the day of death is drawing near a day of deliverance, of full salvation to the faithful. Who would indulge the ambition of standing before the blaze of glory from the throne in filthy garments, with marks of sin upon the brow, and defiling stains upon the person? This night is our earthly day of service and opportunity. The day of heaven closes for ever the night of earth. The remembrance of wasted moments will diminish the splendour of the heavenly reward. "Work, for the day is coming!" The anticipation of such a season of disclosure is calculated to melt the stoniest heart into contrition. All deeds will stand confessed. "My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale.

II THE CONDUCT REQUISITE IN SUCH A CRISIS.

1. Cultivate a spirit of wakefulness. "When the sun ariseth, man goeth forth to his labour." Those who sleep heavily, like the drunken, know nothing of the signs of dawn, and are surprised that the morning could come without their noting its approach. "Awake thou that sleepest," for thy sleep is that of death! His voice sounding through the cavern shall give thee strength to arise, and in his light thou shelf see all things clearly. It is death to the sentinel to sleep at his post. The lover cannot rest when he pictures the joy of the morrow, and the bride of Christ may well watch with intense delight the multiplying tokens of her Lord"s arrival.

2. In due the appropriate attire. This involves, first, the "casting off" of the vestments of the night, and secondly, the "putting on" of the costume of day. The works of darkness are like an infected garment, which the instructed wearer throws aside as worse than no covering at all. The panoply of light, the faith, hope, and love in which Christ arrays his followers, this is the armour which will bear the scrutiny of the Captain, and prove a sure defence against the powers of evil. This negative and positive preparation is in essence one and the same, as the entrance of light scatters the darkness. Armour was the favourite dress of Romans, and though they would doff it for night revels, they would scorn to lack their accoutrements in the daytime. The cross of Christ is the tiring-room of his servants; there they die to sin and live unto righteousness; there they "put on Christ," imbibe his spirit, and receive his colours. The Northumbrian earl, conscious of the advent of death, desired to be clothed in the suit of mail in which he had won so many fights; but the eye became glazed, the nerveless hand could not grasp the spear, the ashen hue of mortality overspread his face. The Christian dons his equipment, never to lay it aside; in it he shall join the throng of those who have overcome.

3. Exert a decorous activity. Avoid evil by pursuing good. "Walk honestly," not indulging in intemperance, impurity, and discord, but leading a righteous, sober, godly life. Deeds of darkness are condemned by the light, revealing their hideousness, whilst habits of integrity and virtue shrink not from any scrutiny; they shine most lustrous in the brightest rays. Attain "to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," "growing up into him who is the Head in all things." We are now weaving and sewing and donning the vestments that shall be our glory or our shame through eternity. S.R.A.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And do this - Fulfil the law of love in all the instances above mentioned. Knowing the season - Full of grace, but hasting away. That it is high time to awake out of sleep - How beautifully is the metaphor carried on! This life, a night; the resurrection, the day; the gospel shining on the heart, the dawn of this day; we are to awake out of sleep; to rise up and throw away our night-clothes, fit only for darkness, and put on new; and, being soldiers, we are to arm, and prepare for fight, who are encompassed with so many enemies. The day dawns when we receive faith, and then sleep gives place. Then it is time to rise, to arm, to walk, to work, lest sleep steal upon us again. Final salvation, glory, is nearer to us now, than when we first believed - It is continually advancing, flying forward upon the swiftest wings of time. And that which remains between the present hour and eternity is comparatively but a moment.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Romans

LOVE AND THE DAY

SALVATION NEARER

Rom 8:11.

There is no doubt, I suppose, that the Apostle, in common with the whole of the early Church, entertained more or less consistently the expectation of living to witness the second coming of Jesus Christ. There are in Paul’s letters passages which look both in the direction of that anticipation, and in the other one of expecting to taste death. ‘We which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord,’ he says twice in one chapter. ‘I am ready to be offered, and the hour of my departure is at hand,’ he says in his last letter.

Now this contrariety of anticipation is but the natural result of what our Lord Himself said, ‘It is not for you to know the times and the seasons,’ and no one, who is content to form his doctrine of the knowledge resulting from inspiration from the words of Jesus Christ Himself, need stumble in the least degree in recognising the plain fact that Paul and his brother Apostles did not know when the Master was to come. Christ Himself had told them that there was a chamber locked against their entrance, and therefore we do not need to think that it militates against the authoritative inspiration of these early teachers of the Church, if they, too, searched ‘what manner of time the Spirit which was in them did signify when it testified beforehand . . . the glory that should follow.’

Now, my text is evidently the result of the former of these two anticipations, viz. that Paul and his generation were probably to see the coming of the Lord from heaven. And to him the thought that’ the night was far spent,’ as the context says, ‘and the day was at hand,’ underlay his most buoyant hope, and was the inspiration and motive-spring of his most strenuous effort.

Now, our relation to the closing moments of our own earthly lives, to the fact of death, is precisely the same as that of the Apostle and his brethren to the coming of the Lord. We, too, stand in that position of partial ignorance, and for us practically the words of my text, and all their parallel words, point to how we should think of, and how we should be affected by, the end to which we are coming. And this is the grand characteristic of the Christian view of that last solemn moment. ‘Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.’ So I would note, first of all, what these words teach us should be the Christian view of our own end; and, second, to what conduct that view should lead us.

I. The Christian view of death.

‘Now is our salvation nearer.’ We have to think away by faith and hope all the grim externals of death, and to get to the heart of the thing. And then everything that is repulsive, everything that makes flesh and blood shrink, disappears and is evaporated, and beneath the folds of his black garment, there is revealed God’s last, sweetest, most triumphant angel-messenger to Christian souls, the great, strong, silent Angel of Death, and he carries in his hand the gift of a full salvation. That is what our Apostle rose to the rapture of beholding, when he knew that the thought of his surviving till Christ came again must be put away, and when close to the last moment of his life, he said, ‘The Lord shall deliver me, and save me into His everlasting kingdom.’ What was the deliverance and being saved that he expected and expresses in these words? Immunity from punishment? Escape from the headsman’s axe? Being ‘delivered from the mouth of the lion,’ the persecuting fangs of the bloody Nero? By no means. He knew that death was at hand, and he said, ‘He will save me’-not from it, but through it-’into His everlasting kingdom.’ And so in the words of my text we may say-though Paul did not mean them so-as we see the distance between us, and that certain close, dwindling, dwindling, dwindling: ‘Now,’ as moment after moment ticks itself into the past, ‘now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.’ Children, when they are getting near their holidays, take strips of paper, and tear off a piece as each day passes. And as we tear off the days let us feel that we are drawing closer to our home, and that the blessedness laid up for us in it is drawing nearer to us. ‘Our salvation,’ not our destruction, our fuller life, not in any true sense of the word our ‘death,’ is ‘nearer than when we believed.’

But some one may say, ‘Is a man not saved till after he is dead?’ Is salvation future, not coming till after the grave? No, certainly not. There are three aspects of that word in Scripture. Sometimes the New Testament writers treat salvation as past, and represent a Christian as being invested with the possession of it all at the very moment of his first faith. That is true, that whatever is yet to be evolved from what is given to the poorest and foulest sinner, in the moment of his initial faith in Christ, there is nothing to be added to it. The salvation which the penitent thief received on the cross is all the salvation that he was ever to get. But out of it there came welling and welling and welling, when he had passed into the region ‘where beyond these voices there is peace’-there came welling out from that inexhaustible fountain which was opened in him all the fullnesses of an eternal progress in the heavens. And so it is with us. Salvation is a past gift which we received when we believed.

But in another aspect, which is also emphatically stated in Scripture, it is a progressive process, and not merely a gift bestowed once for all in the past. I do not dwell upon that thought, but just remind you of a turn of expression which occurs in various connections more than once. ‘The Lord added to the Church daily such as were being saved,’ says Luke. Still more emphatically in the Epistle to the Corinthians, the Apostle puts into antithesis the two progressive processes, and speaks of the Gospel as being preached, and being a savour of life unto life ‘to them that are being saved,’ and a savour of destruction ‘to them that are being lost.’ No moral or spiritual condition is stereotyped or stagnant. It is all progressive. And so the salvation that is given once for all is ever being unfolded, and the Christian life on earth is the unfolding of it.

But in another aspect still, such as is presented in my text, and in other parallel passages, that salvation is regarded as lying on the other side of the flood, because the manifestations of it there, the evolving there of what is in it, and the great gifts that come then, are so transcendently above all even of our selectest experiences here, that they are, as it were, new, though still their roots are in the old. The salvation which culminates in the absolute removal from our whole being of all manner of evil, whether it be sorrow or sin, and in the conclusive bestowal upon us of all manner of good, whether it be righteousness or joy, and which has for its seal ‘the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body,’ so that body, soul, and spirit ‘make one music as before, but vaster,’ is so far beyond the germs of itself which here we experience that my text and its like are amply vindicated. And the man who is most fully persuaded and conscious that he possesses the salvation of God, and most fully and blessedly aware that that salvation is gradually gaining power in his life, is the very man who will most feel that between its highest manifestation on earth, and its lowest in the heavens there is such a gulf as that the wine that he will drink there at the Father’s table is indeed new wine. And so ‘is our salvation nearer,’ though we already possess it, ‘than when we believed.’

Dear brethren, if these things be true, and if to die is to be saved into the kingdom, do not two thoughts result? The one is that that blessed consummation should occupy more of our thoughts than I am afraid it does. As life goes on, and the space dwindles between us and it, we older people naturally fall into the way, unless we are fools, of more seriously and frequently turning our thoughts to the end. I suppose the last week of a voyage to Australia has far more thoughts in it about the landing next week than the two or three first days of beating down the English Channel had. I do not want to put old heads on young shoulders in this or in any other respect. But sure I am that it does belong very intimately to the strength of our Christian characters that we should, as the Psalmist says, be ‘wise’ to ‘consider our latter end.’

The other thought that follows is as plain, viz. that that anticipation should always be buoyant, hopeful, joyous. We have nothing to do with the sad aspects of parting from earth. They are all but non-existent for the Christian consciousness, when it is as vigorous and God-directed as it ought to be. They drop into the background, and sometimes are lost to sight altogether. Remember how this Apostle, when he does think about death, looks at it with-I was going to quote words which may strike you as being inappropriate-’a frolic welcome’; how, at all events, he is neither a bit afraid of it, nor does he see in it anything from which to shrink. He speaks of being with Christ, which is far better; ‘absent from the body, present with the Lord’; ‘the dissolution of the earthly house of this tabernacle’-the tumbling down of the old clay cottage in order that a stately palace of marble and precious stones may be reared upon its site; ‘the hour of my departure is at hand; I have finished the fight.’ Peter, too, chimes in with his words: ‘My exodus; my departure,’ and both of the two are looking, if not longingly, at all events without a tremor of the eyelid, into the very eyeballs of the messenger whom most men feel so hideous. Is it not a wonderful gift to Christian souls that by faith in Jesus Christ, the realm in which their hope can expatiate is more than doubled, and annexes the dim lands beyond the frontier of death? Dear friends, if we are living in Christ, the thought of the end and that here we are absent from home, ought to be infinitely sweet, of whatever superficial terrors this poor, shrinking flesh may still be conscious. And I am sure that the nearer we get to our Saviour, and the more we realise the joyous possession of salvation as already ours, and the more we are conscious of the expanding of that gift in our hearts, the more we shall be delivered from that fear of death which makes men all their ‘lifetime subject to bondage.’ So I beseech you to aim at this, that, when you look forward, the furthest thing you see on the horizon of earth may be that great Angel of Death coming to save you into the everlasting kingdom.

Now, just a word about

II. The conduct to which such a hope should incite.

The Apostle puts it very plainly in the context, and we need but expand in a word or two what he teaches us there. ‘And that knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep, for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.’ To what does he refer by ‘that’ ? The whole of the practical exhortations to a Christian life which have been given before. Everything that is duty becomes tenfold more stringent and imperative when we apprehend the true meaning of that last moment. They tell us that it is unwholesome to be thinking about death and the beyond, because to do so takes away interest from much of our present occupations and weakens energy. If there is anything from which a man is wrenched away because he steadily contemplates the fact of being wrenched away altogether from everything before long, it is something that he had better be wrenched from. And if there be any occupations which dwindle into nothingness, and into which a man cannot for the life of him fling himself with any thoroughgoing enthusiasm or interest, if once the thought of death stirs in him, depend upon it they are occupations which are in themselves contemptible and unworthy. All good aims will gain greater power over us; we shall have a saner estimate of what is worth living for; we shall have a new standard of what is the relative importance of things; and if some that looked very great turn out to be very small when we let that searching light in upon them, and others which seemed very insignificant spring suddenly up into dominating magnitude-that new and truer perspective will be all clear gain. The more we feel that our salvation is sweeping towards us, as it were, from the throne of God through the blue abysses, the more diligently we shall ‘work while it is called day,’ and the more earnestly we shall seek, when the Saviour and His salvation come, to be found with loins girt for all strenuous work, and lamps burning in all the brightness of the light of a Christian character.

Further, says Paul, this hopeful, cheerful contemplation of approaching salvation should lead us to cast off the evil, and to put on the good. You will remember the heart-stirring imagery which the Apostle employs in the context, where he says, ‘The day is at hand; let us therefore fling off the works of darkness’-as men in the morning, when the daylight comes through the window, and makes them lift their eyelids, fling off their night-gear-’and let us put on the armour of light.’ We are soldiers, and must be clad in what will be bullet-proof, and will turn a sword’s edge. And where shall steel of celestial temper be found that can resist the fiery darts shot at the Christian soldier? His armour must be ‘of light.’ Clad in the radiance of Christian character he will be invulnerable. And how can we, who have robed ourselves in the works of darkness, either cast them off or array ourselves in sparkling armour of light? Paul tells us, ‘Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh.’ The picture is of a camp of sleeping soldiers; the night wears thin, the streaks of saffron are coming in the dawning east. One after another the sleepers awake; they cast aside their night-gear, and they brace on the armour that sparkles in the beams of the morning sun. So they are ready when the trumpet sounds the reveille, and with the morning comes the Captain of the Lord’s host, and with the Captain comes the perfecting of the salvation which is drawing nearer and nearer to us, as our moments glide through our fingers like the beads of a rosary. Many men think of death and fear; the Christian should think of death-and hope.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

nearer

"Nearer" in the sense of the full result of salvation in glory. (See Scofield "Rom 1:16"). Also, 1Jn 3:2.

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Christian’s walk in light:

v. 11. And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

v. 12. The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let US put on the armor of light.

v. 13. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying;

v. 14. but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.

As the Christian’s whole life is a walk in love, with the earnest purpose to conduct himself at all times as one trying to fulfill the will of his heavenly Father, so it is also a walk in light, in righteousness and holiness which is acceptable to God. To this end it is very necessary to avoid being tarnished by the world and its evil ways. The admonition therefore fits most admirably: And knowing this, namely, the time, that the hour is now upon us to awake from sleep. The Christians are acquainted with the time and the circumstances under which they live, and they should therefore attend closely to the lesson which the contemplation of the situation brings home to them. They should not wait, lose no time, but watch with the greatest care in what direction all indications are pointing and what necessity devolves upon them. It is high time, the critical moment, for the believers to awake from sleep, Eph 5:14; 1Th 5:6. The apostle refers to the spiritual sleep, which differs in no essential feature from spiritual death, the sleep of sin. To awake from sleep, to be wide-awake in spiritual matters is the special duty resting upon the Christians, to renounce all sinful walk and conduct, to direct the entire mind and heart to the fulfillment of God’s holy will. This condition was attained in the believers when they were converted, when they turned from darkness to light, from unrighteousness to righteousness, from the power of Satan to God. But the work of regeneration begun in that moment or at that time must be continued through life; there must be ceaseless progress in sanctification. That is the business of the Christian, so far as his own spiritual life is concerned, ever to be alert and attentive, lest he fall back and be snared in his former sins and lusts. In this sense the entire life of a Christian is a continual conversion; in this sense, also, this admonition is always timely, for the new man in the heart must daily come forth and arise.

Why it is now, always, time for the believers to be wide-awake and alert the next sentence shows: For now is our salvation nearer than when we began to believe. The salvation of the believers is near. Just as the children of God in the Old Testament, beginning with Eve, were always watchful and alert for the coming of the Messiah and never permitted their interest to lag although a number of millenniums went by without bringing the promised salvation, thus the believers of the New Testament are ever on the lookout for their final redemption. Everything that pertains to the perfect salvation of the believers has been accomplished, and they are therefore eagerly awaiting the dawn of the final great redemption, when the final deliverance from all evil will come to them. At the time when we attained to faith, we were chiefly concerned with deliverance from the wrath of God, with our justification in His sight, Gal 2:16. But now that we have attained to the reconciliation with God, the eyes of our faith are directed in eager longing to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, 1Co 1:7.

In order to stimulate our watchfulness and to work proper alertness in our hearts, the apostle adds: The night has advanced, the day is very near; it is almost time for the dawn to break. The day on which our final salvation will be completed upon us, the day which brings us the full possession of the blessings of our Savior, is the last day, the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, Php 1:6; Php 2:10; 1Th 5:2; 1Co 3:13. The night which precedes this glorious day is the period of this world. The time in which we are living is night, being governed by sin and death; the prince of darkness has his work in the children of unbelief. At the present time the believers are sighing: Watchman, what of the night? But we know it is the last hour. But a little while, and the dawn of eternity will break; the day of our salvation will come, and with it our reward of mercy, our eternal salvation.

But this being true, let us, then, lay aside the works of darkness, and let us rather put on the weapons of light. Because the day of eternal blessedness is about to dawn, therefore we should take off and cast aside, like an unclean garment, the works of darkness, the works which men commonly commit in the dark, the sins which they do not n-ant the omniscient eye of God to see. Acts that cannot bear the light of day should be shunned at all times by Christians, but especially now that the great day of final redemption is so near. Instead of the filthy garment of such works the Christians should put on, clothe themselves with, the weapons of light. Paul does not speak of garments, but of weapons, armor of light, because a righteous conduct is also a steady battle with the forces of darkness, Eph 6:10-17. The new man was indeed created in the believers in Baptism, but they still have the sinful old Adam to crucify and subdue, not to speak of the hostile world and Satan. Therefore the war must be waged without ceasing, particularly in view of the fact that the night of this world will be ended soon, and salvation will dawn. Therefore we hasten to the coming of the day of God with all holy conversation and holiness, 2Pe 3:11-12, therefore we strive to be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness, Php 1:10-11.

And again Paul shouts his warning admonition: As in the day, let us conduct ourselves honestly in our walk; let us live with all decency, in a proper, seemly, decorous manner. This manner of living excludes three sins to which there was great temptation in Rome, the capital of the world: intemperance, impurity, discord. Children of God will not walk and be found engaged in feastings, carousals, nor in intoxications; all the disorderly conduct which characterized the great heathen feasts then and now must be absent from the conduct of Christians. They will also not be found in chambering, in forbidden sexual intercourses, nor in any kind of wantonness and lasciviousness, sins of all kinds against the Sixth Commandment, many unnatural and revolting sins being practiced then as now. Children of God also cannot take part in quarrels, wranglings, and rivalry, in discord of any kind. All these works are found in the children of unbelief. But they all cannot bear the light of the great day, they cannot stand in the sight of the holy God; on their account the wrath of God will come upon the unbelievers, Eph 5:6. Christians, therefore, although subjected to the most insidious temptations on the part of the children of this world, seconded by their own lusts and desires, must conquer all these evil affections and sins.

As the apostle has warned the Christians against the great trespasses which threaten to stain their soul, so he also holds before them the positive side of their conduct: Rather put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Savior and Lord, whom we have put on in Baptism, Gal 3:27, we should continue to put on day after day, we should clothe our soul in His example and model, and follow Him on the paths of sanctification. Christ lives in His believers, in their entire life and conduct, and the virtues of Christ, His holiness, pureness, chastity, love, goodness, humility, kindness, are evident in all their words and deeds. And thus, with the image of Christ as their greatest ornament, the believers are looking forward to that great day when they shall finally be renewed after the image of Him that created them. Incidentally, therefore, the Christians do not make provision for the flesh for the purpose of gratifying its sensual appetites or any evidence of the corrupt nature. To take proper care of the body, to keep it in health by fulfilling the demands of a sensible hygiene, that is the duty of every Christian. But the great danger is that the body is spoiled by false tenderness, by an excessive care which tends to arouse, instead of subduing, the desires and lusts. Since this would interfere decidedly with the calling of the Christians and with their preparation for the coming of the great day, therefore they will avoid this danger with its temptations and keep themselves pure.

Summary

The apostle enjoins obedience to government as an agency of God, love for one’s neighbor as the fulfillment of the Law, and an open and honest behavior in view of the fact that the day of the Lord is near.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Here begins the last part of the chapter, which treats of our duty towards ourselves, namely, sobriety, temperance, mortification of sin, and all the works of darkness, such as rioting and drunkenness, chambering and wantonness, and the like; and the argument or motive which the apostle uses in this verse to excite and quicken the converted Romans to the last-mentioned duties, is drawn from the consideration of their present state and condition; they were believers, the gospel light was risen upon them, and they were nearer salvation now than when they first believed: Now is your salvation nearer than when you believed. this, by the way, is a meditation full of comfort to a gracious person; every breath he draws, draws him a degree nearer to perfect happiness; he is nearer heaven, nearer his reward, than when in the infancy of his faith; therefore let him gird up the loins of his mind, and be more cheerful and more laborious in the Lord’s work.

Lord! how transporting is it to thy faithful ones, to consider how small a matter is betwixt them and their complete salvation! no sooner is their breath gone, but the full desire of their souls is come; their salvation is near, very near, much nearer than when they first believed. But, O! what a meditation of terror is it to a wicked person! his damnation is near, and every hour nearer and nearer; there is but a puff of breath betwixt him and hell; ere long his last breath and his last hope will expire together.

Lord! give sinners heart to consider, that a graceless man ere long will be a hopeless man; the state he was born in was sad, the state he is now in is worse, but the state he will shortly be in, without conversion, will be unspeakably worst of all: his damnation is near, it slumbereth not.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

GOD’S BRIGHT DAY AND SATAN’S DARK NIGHT

11. “And knowing this time that it is already the hour when we should wake out of sleep: for our salvation is nearer than when we believed.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

[At Rom_12:1-2 Paul began this hortatory division of his Epistle by reminding his readers of the past mercies of God, making of those blessings which lay behind them a strong motive, impelling them by every sense of gratitude to go forward in the Christian life. He here closes his exhortation with an appeal to the future rewards of God, summed up in that endless and glorious day of salvation which lay before them, attracting them by every sense of heavenly aspiration to continue on in the faith-life. Thus the spiritual forces of memory and hope are made use of by the apostle to push and pull his readers heavenward.] And this [see note at Rom_13:9 ], knowing the season, that already it is time for you to awake out of sleep ["The imagery seems to be taken originally from our Lord's discourse concerning his coming ( Mat_24:42 ; Mar_13:33 ; Luk_21:28-38 ), where several points of similarity to our verses 11-14 occur" (Alford). For other uses of the imagery, see 1Co_15:34 ; Eph_5:14 ; 1Th_5:6-8 ; Mat_25:1-13 . Sleep is a figurative expression denoting that moral inattention, indifference and carelessness which permits sin. Out of this torpor the Christian is evermore striving to rouse himself, and into it the worldling is as constantly seeking to resign himself, that conscience, fear, and other awakening influences, may not disturb him. To be fully aroused is to be keenly and thoroughly conscious of all spiritual facts and responsibilities, all truths and possibilities. Some need to make the effort to come back to consciousness: all need to keep up their efforts to prevent the return of drowsiness. The warning here is addressed to Christians. "Whiles the crocodile sleepeth with open mouth," says Trapp, "the Indian rat gets into his stomach, and eateth through his entrails. While Ishbosheth slept upon his bed at noon, Baanah and Rechab took away his head. Security ushereth in destruction. Go forth and shake yourselves as Samson did when the Philistines were upon him; lest Satan serve you for your souls, as Captain Drake did the Spaniard at Tamapasa in the West Indies for his treasure; he found him sleeping securely upon the shore, and by him thirteen bars of silver to the value of forty thousand ducats, which he commanded to be carried away, not so much as waking the man. Or lest Christ himself deal by us as Epimonidas did by the watchman whom he found asleep: he thrust him through with his sword; and being blamed for so severe a fact, he replied, 'I left him as I found him'"]: for now is salvation nearer to us than when we first believed . [Paul meant that his readers were nearer that state of final blessedness which we call salvation than they were when they were converted. The thought that each day takes from us forever an opportunity of service, and that it also brings us that much nearer the time of accounting, is a most powerful incentive to action; "one of the most awakening exhortations," says Plumer, "that can be presented. The Judge standeth before the door. Eternity is at hand." (Comp. Heb_10:25 ) In and of itself "nearer" does not necessarily imply that Paul expected the speedy approach of Christ; but the context, full of suggestion of a day about to dawn, does imply close nearness. In fact, the need of the immediate awakening suggested by "already it is time," lies as--much in the rapidity as in the certainty of Christ's coming: a coming so rapid that the interval had appreciably diminished since Paul's readers had entered on the new life. Now, the second coming of Christ may be viewed under two aspects; i. e., either as racial or individual. In either case it is speedy, but the comparative speed, or the proportion of speed, is measured far differently, for the centuries of the life of the race are long compared with the brief span of life apportioned to each individual. Viewed racially, the long night of heathenish darkness was drawing to a close. The day began to dawn when Christ was born. An increase of light came when he gathered his first disciples, and now the full light, and consequently the salvation accompanying the second coming of the Christ, was spiritually (rather than temporarily) nearer than when believers first began to gather to the Master. While such a construction is well suited to the large ideas of Christ's coming, we yet prefer the more personal construction which limits the range of view to the individual. For the members of the church at Rome the day began to dawn at the hour of their conversion, and since then the advancing years had brought them nearer their salvation. There is, moreover, no direct mention of the Lord's coming; but it is clearly implied. This implication, however, suits the idea of the individual Christian's entrance into the Lord's presence by death as readily as does the Lord's approach to all in the hour of final judgment. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord ( 2Co_5:8 ; Phi_1:23 . We naturally look upon death as a going on our part; but may it not likewise be truly a coming on the part of Christ? (See Joh_14:3 ; Luk_12:37 ) Surely to the individual Christian salvation speedily grows nearer after conversion, and this night period of sin and sorrow soon gives place to the day of salvation, the state of eternal blessedness and peace and joy unending, and the brevity of the individual life is far more of a stimulus than the brevity of the race life. The commands of our Saviour to watch for his coming are a constant tonic if viewed as addressed to the individual, but they lose in power if viewed from the standpoint of the race. There are many apparently unfulfilled prophecies which delay our expectation that he will come for final judgment in the next year or two at least, but there is nothing, prophetic or otherwise, which justifies any one in feeling assured that he may not come for us individually before nightfall. "Stir up yourselves, therefore," says Trapp, "and strain toward the mark. There is a Greek word (nuosta) signifying the end of the race, which is derived of a word that signifieth to spur or prick forward. Surely as they that run their horses for a wager spur hardest at the race's end, therefore, since our salvation is nearer now than ever it was, we should run faster now than ever we did. When a cart is in a quagmire, if the horses feel it coming they pull the harder; so must we, now that full deliverance is hard at hand. Rivers run more speedily and forcibly, when they come near the sea, than they did at the spring: the sun shineth most amiably toward the going down. 'It is even high time for you and me,' said old Zanchius to his friend Sturmius, who was elder than he, 'to hasten to heaven; as knowing that we shall be with Christ, which is far, far better.'"]

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

11–14. It is high time to awake out of sleep. To awake from carelessness and indifference. For now is our salvation nearer, etc. Their eternal salvation. That was certainly true of them, and is true of every believer now. Some have thought that Paul referred to the speedy second coming of the Lord. He did not know the time of that event, nor did any man (Matt. 24:36), but it might be that he shared the hope of the early, suffering church, that it would be speedy. See 1 Thess. 5:1, 2; 2 Thess. 2:1.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

you know the time, that it is already time for you to awake out of sleep

Paul speaks of the need for the Roman believers to change their behavior as if they needed to wake up from being asleep. (See: Metaphor)

The night has advanced

Paul speaks of the time when people do evil deeds as night. AT: "The sinful time is almost over" or "It is as though the night is almost finished" (See: Metaphor)

the day has come near

Paul speaks of the time when people do what is right as the day. AT: "the time of righteousness will begin soon" or "it is as though it will soon be day" (See: Metaphor)

Let us therefore put aside the works of darkness

Paul speaks of of "works of darkness" as if they are clothing that a person puts aside. Here to "put aside" means to stop doing something. Here "darkness" is a metaphor for evil. AT: "Let us therefore stop doing the evil things that people do in the dark" (See: Metaphor)

let us put on the armor of light

Here "light" is a metaphor for what is good and right. Paul speaks of doing what is right as if it were putting on armor to protect one's self. AT: "let us start doing what is right. Doing this will protect us from what is evil like armor protects a solider" (See: Metaphor)

translationWords

asleep

save

believe

works

day of the Lord

darkness

armor

light

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

11–14. The exhortations to the detailed development of the Christian character are enforced by the reminder that the times are critical, and demand effort; that the full ‘day’ of Christ’s coming is near: and the contrast between the life of the natural man and of the regenerate is drawn in a few bold lines. The whole is summed up in the description of the Christian aim, as a repeated effort to ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ,’ and a complete abandonment of the satisfaction of the lusts of the flesh; a return to the thought of Rom 12:1-2.

11. καὶ τοῦτο, cf. 1Co 6:6; 1Co 6:8; Eph 2:8; cf. καὶ ταῦτα, Heb 11:12; resumes with emphasis the whole exhortation.

εἰδότες. Cf. Luk 12:56; Mar 13:33 = realising the character of the present period and its demands upon you.

τὸν καιρόν. Cf. 1Co 7:29; Eph 5:16; 1Pe 4:17; Rev 1:3; Rev 22:10; Luk 21:8; almost technical for the period before the Second Coming, S. H.

ὅτι explains the characteristics which they ought to realise.

ὑμᾶς ἐξ ὕπνου ἐγερθῆναι. ὕπνος metaph. only here; cf. Eph 5:7-14. Here the contrast is not with the heathen state, but of the awakened and alert spirit with the sleeping and inert: a warning against acquiescence in the present. Giff. cf[262] Mat 25:1 f.; perh. cf. 1Co 11:30.

[262] confert

ἡ σωτηρία. Cf. Rom 5:9; 1Pe 1:5; 1Th 5:8-9. It is not always clear whether the word is used of the present state in which the Christian is by faith: or the final state which is the object of his hope and is brought about by the Second Coming. Here the context decides for the latter.

ἐπιστεύσαμεν. We became believers—a good instance of the ‘ingressive’ aorist; cf. Moulton p. 129 f.; cf. [Mk] Rom 16:16; Act 2:44; Act 19:2; 1Co 3:5; 1Co 15:2; Gal 2:16; Eph 1:13; Heb 4:3.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

11-14.] Enforcement of the foregoing, and occasion taken for fresh exhortations, by the consideration that the day of the Lord is at hand.

11.] καὶ τοῦτο, and this, i.e. ‘and let us do this,’ viz., live in no debt but that of love (see reff.), for other reasons, and especially for this following one.

ὥρα ἤδη ἐγερθῆναι] “The Inf. Aor. here, as after verbs of willing, ordering, &c., betokens the completion of the act in question. See Winer, § 45. 8 (edn. 6, § 44. 7).” De Wette.

ὕπνος here = the state of worldly carelessness and indifference to sin, which allows and practises the ἔργα τοῦ σκότους. The imagery seems to be taken originally from our Lord’s discourse concerning His coming: see Mat 24:42: Mar 13:33, and Luk 21:28-36, where several points of similarity to our vv. 11-14 occur.

ἐγγύτ. ἡμ. ἡ σωτ. ἢ ὅτε ἐπιστ.] σωτηρία, as ἀπολύτρωσις Luk 21:28, and ch. 8:23, of the accomplishment of salvation. ἡμῶν [is best] taken with ἐγγύτερον, ‘nearer to us,’ see ch. 10:8, [though] ἐγγίζει ἡ ἀπολύτρωσις ὑμῶν, Luk 21:28, seems [at first sight] to favour the usual connexion with σωτηρία.

ἐπιστ.] we first believed;—see reff. Without denying the legitimacy of an individual application of this truth, and the importance of its consideration for all Christians of all ages, a fair exegesis of this passage can hardly fail to recognize the fact, that the Apostle here as well as elsewhere (1Th 4:17; 1Co 15:51), speaks of the coming of the Lord as rapidly approaching. Prof. Stuart, Comm. p. 521, is shocked at the idea, as being inconsistent with the inspiration of his writings. How this can be, I am at a loss to imagine. “Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no not the angels in heaven, nor [even] the Son: but the Father only.” Mar 13:32.

And to reason, as Stuart does, that because Paul corrects in 2Th_2 the mistake of imagining it to be immediately at hand (or even actually come, see note on ἐνέστηκεν there), therefore he did not himself expect it soon, is surely quite beside the purpose. The fact, that the nearness or distance of that day was unknown to the Apostles, in no way affects the prophetic announcements of God’s Spirit by them, concerning its preceding and accompanying circumstances. The ‘day and hour’ formed no part of their inspiration:—the details of the event, did. And this distinction has singularly and providentially turned out to the edification of all subsequent ages. While the prophetic declarations of the events of that time remain to instruct us, the eager expectation of the time, which they expressed in their day, has also remained, a token of the true frame of mind in which each succeeding age (and each succeeding age a fortiori) should contemplate the ever-approaching coming of the Lord. On the certainty of the event, our faith is grounded: by the uncertainty of the time our hope is stimulated, and our watchfulness aroused. See Prolegg. to Vol. III. ch. v. § iv. 5-10.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

11. The Apostle adds a motive for the Christian standard of life, the nearness of our final salvation.

καὶ τοῦτο, ‘and that too’: cp. 1Co 6:6, 1Co 6:8; Eph 2:8, &c.: it resumes the series of exhortations implied in the previous sections; there is no need to supply any special words with it.

τὸν καιρόν: used of a definite, measured, or determined time, and so almost technically of the period before the second coming of Christ: cf. 1Co 7:29 ὁ καιρὸς συνεσταλμένοσ; Mar 1:15; and so ὁ καιρὸς ὁ ἐνεστώς (Heb 9:9).

ὅτι ὥρα ἤδη κ.τ.λ. ἤδη with ἐγερθῆναι. The time of trial on earth is looked upon as a night of gloom, to be followed by a bright morning. We must arouse ourselves from slumber and prepare ourselves for the light.

νῦν γὰρ ἐγγύτερον κ.τ.λ. ‘For our completed salvation, no longer that hope of salvation which sustains us here, is appreciably nearer for us than when we first accepted in faith the Messianic message.’ ὅτε ἐπιστεύσαμεν refers to the actual moment of the acceptance of Christianity. The language is that befitting those who expect the actual coming of Christ almost immediately, but it will fit the circumstances of any Christian for whom death brings the day.

In ver. 11 the original ὑμᾶς (א A B C P, Clem.-Alex.) has been corrected for the sake of uniformity into ἡμᾶς (אc D E F G L, &c., Boh. Sah.). In ver. 13 ἐν ἔρισι καὶ ζήλοις is a variant of B, Sah., Clem.-Alex. Amb. In ver. 14, B, and Clem.-Alex. read τὸν Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν, which may very likely be the correct reading.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And that knowing the time - now. Referring to the injunction of ver. 8. Knowing, seeing that ye know. The time [τον καιρον] , the particular season or juncture. Rev., season. See on Mt 12:1. Now [ηδη] , better, already.

Our salvation [ημων η σωτηρια] . Others, however, and better, as Rev., construe hJmwn of us (salvation of us, i e., our) with nearer, and render salvation is nearer to us. This is favored by the order of the Greek words. The other rendering would lay an unwarranted emphasis on our. The reference is apparently to the Lord 's second coming, rather than to future glory.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.