Romans 13:11-14 has the theme of the special need of ethical consecration because of the approaching eschatological crisis. He has just referred to the command to love as the primary preparation for the “end.”
Our passage brings Christian hope and Christian life together. Our hope for the future means we are to live a certain way today. Paul consistently held together two horizons. He is quite aware of the human plight of sin and darkness. He is also quite aware of the hope for a new creation in Christ. He will point out that much of humanity is asleep both to the plight and to the hope. Even we in the church can slumber. We need to awaken. Every moment contains the possibility of being our time for God. We are in the night but waiting for the full light of day to come. If we are really waiting for the day, then we need to live in the light of the daylight we see coming in Christ. It will be a battle. The darkness is not yet gone. The light is not yet fully come. So we need to put on the armor. We need to have the mentality of a soldier when it comes to spiritual life.
11 Besides this, you know what time (καιρόν) it is. They know the time is short, which is actually the basis for respect for the state and for love of neighbor. Do not waste time squabbling with either. In that sense, J. Louis Martyn has insightfully described Paul’s vision as “bifocal.”[1] Paul simultaneously has an eye on two horizons — that which is happening on earth because of the enslaving power of sin in the old age and the in-breaking of God’s kingdom into this earthly sphere. These verses reveal the apocalyptic vision of Paul, his understanding that this present age is passing away and his certainty that God is ushering in a new age. They know how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. Paul expresses this concern in other letters. In I Thessalonians 5:2, he reminds them that the Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. In 5:4-8, they are not in darkness, but children of light. They are not to sleep, but rather, are to keep awake and be sober. They are to put on the armor of faith, hope, and love. In Colossians 4:2, Paul encourages his readers to be watchful in prayer with thanksgiving. Karl Barth has an extensive discussion of the importance of “awakening” in conversion. Where someone awakens and therefore wakes and rises, he has been asleep. Christians have been asleep, just like others. What distinguishes them is their sleeping is in the past. Yet, is there not still a Christianity that sleeps with the world and likes it? His answer is affirmative. The admonition here, in fact, assumes that Christians still need the admonition to waken. Christians are those who are awake in the sense they awaken a first time, and then again, to their shame and good fortune. They are, in fact, those who constantly stand in need of reawakening and who depend upon the fact that they are continually reawakened. The sleep from which they awaken is the relentless downward movement caused by their sloth.[2] Barth also says that the notion of “awakening” in conversion is the result of the influence of pietism and Methodism. He thinks it legitimate in that it has proximity to the resurrection of Jesus, it suggests a specific word that awakens, and passages like this suggest the need for continual awakening. The Kairos is the eschatological era or last days, begun by Christ's death and resurrection and is co-extensive with the age of the church, the age of salvation. Paul evokes the notion of time not with the basic reference to the Greek term chronos, but to kairos. Here he signals that this is a special sense of time, namely God's time and God's activity in history. The "time" is technically before the second coming. Paul refers to the time that does not occur in time; a moment that is not moment in time.[3] Barth will say that between the past and the future, between the times, a “Moment” exists that is no moment in time, the eternal Moment. At that point, time reveals its secret. Time has not come and gone, but the person is one who has been and will be, who dies and lives, falls and stands. We are the ones who spend our years as a tale that we tell, which is the secret of time made known in the Moment of revelation, a Moment that always is, and yet is not. Every moment in time bears within it the unborn secret of revelation. Yet, distinctions within time are appropriate, for some are near and some are far. A tension exists between the “then” and the “now,” a tension that is not just chronological. We stand on the boundary of time. Thus, the “end” of which the New Testament speaks is no temporal event, no legendary “destruction” of the world, but a true end. He makes fun of the “short and perfectly harmless chapter entitled” Eschatology, without naming Schleiermacher.[4]
In the ancient world, "sleep" was a metaphor for spiritual inattentiveness. Jesus himself warned against spiritual snoozing lest he return and find his feckless followers asleep instead of awake and at work (Matthew 24:43; Mark 13:36). Paul argues that the dawn has already broken, daylight is burning, "the night is far gone, the day is near" and "salvation is nearer to us than when we became believers" (Romans 13:12). This "salvation" is both a present and future reality: present, because it can bring us into a saving relationship with God right now, and future, because Christ's return brings salvation and wholeness to the entire creation. The kairos is getting short, says Paul, and it is time to wake up. What will it take us to wake up and be alert to what God is calling us to be and to do? To continue with the analogy, when you wake up spiritually, make sure you put on the spiritual clothing, sometimes called armor, because you are in a fight.
Everyone is familiar with the phenomenon of feeling more or less alive on different days. Everyone knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call forth, but which he might display if these were greater. Most of us feel as if we lived habitually with a sort of cloud weighing on us, below our highest notch of clearness in discernment, sureness in reasoning or firmness in deciding. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damp, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.[5]
One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of the status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. The large house in which we live demands that we transform this world-wide neighborhood into a world-wide brotherhood. Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will perish as fools.[6]
For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers. This assertion of the imminence of the day of Jesus’ return is quite like what Paul wrote in I Thessalonians (4:15; 5:4-5) and I Corinthians (7:29). In other words, the salvation of the Roman Christians has not completely arrived. It is emerging. This eschatological expectation places the horizon of God's activity in Jesus Christ far beyond any individual's situation, compliance, or non-compliance with the law. Paul signals here that God is at work and that in Jesus Christ, God's saving purposes continue to emerge. While early Christians expected Christ’s coming imminently, the delay did not shatter the foundations of their faith. Rather, through the risen Lord and the Spirit, eschatological salvation had already become a certainty for believers, so that the length of the remaining span of time was a secondary matter.[7] Put another way, the turning-point of history occurred, even if the “end” has not. 12 The night is far gone, the day is near. Waiting for the return of Christ is like being in the night and waiting for daylight to come. Night would be the time of spiritual sleep. The life prior to being born in Christ into the Spirit was known as "sleep," "darkness," and "night." The life in Christ and in the Spirit is being "awake," "living in the light," and "in the day." Such a metaphor of night and day, sleep, and wakefulness captures the power of transformation that adult Christians experience in baptism and in being bound together in the Spirit of Christ. By evoking this contrast rhetorically, Paul both reminds the Roman Christians who they are (as opposed to who they were) and encourages them to be steadfast in the commitment to the life that God is calling them to in Christ. God has achieved this transformation within them. They have awakened, and it is now upon them to keep in the light. Barth stresses that this sense of the shortness of the time available arises because of Christ. The promised reign of God drew near and came right up to them, and with it the end of time. The new day is the event in which to which they in their time bore witness. They continue in their time, but only as they are in the time of the revelation, declaration, and realization of their time in its hastening toward the end that has already come. As Barth sees it, Christ rules time, time is short, and the duration of time is unknown to those who live in it. Essentially, the vanishing of the night and the breaking of the day have begun, and nothing can no longer stop it. The same Lord stands at the beginning and the end, he is also Lord of the time between. [8]
Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. The use of the light/darkness dichotomy to symbolize good and evil was widespread in ancient Judaism and Christianity. Within the Christian Scripture, for example, we see the dichotomy in wisdom literature and in John.
Proverbs 4:16-19
16 For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong; they are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble. 17 For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence. 18 But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. 19 The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what they stumble over.
John 12:35-36
35 Jesus said to them, "The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light."
One could also find many other texts. It is particularly prominent in apocalyptic texts. For instance, the tension between good and evil in some of the most important texts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls is presented as a struggle between the “sons of light,” who are gathered under the banner of the “angel of light,” and the “sons of darkness,” who rally around the “angel of darkness (e.g., 1QS 3.13-4.26). Just as the night was associated with certain behaviors, so, too, was the approach of dawn. In Paul's experience as a working stiff in the hot eastern lands, the earliest hours of the newly dawned day were the busiest. With the exhausting heat of mid-day still far off, the cool of the morning was the best time to work hard, work fast and work well. The Jewish historian Josephus noted that one could even find the pagan populace in the theater at dawn, enjoying God's air conditioning along with the dramatic productions. Dawn was the busiest time at the temple, as priests bustled about preparing the offerings for the new day. Pious Jews and Essenes took these earliest morning hours to offer prayers and praises to their God.
We expend a lot of effort to keep our “real” selves a secret. In some areas of our lives, we are asleep and live in darkness. We are not even engaging the spiritual battle. Keeping secrets, particularly ones involving our own behavior, is a full-time job. As Thomas Carlyle, the 19th-century British writer, once noted, “He who has a secret should not only hide it but hide that he has to hide.” St. Ignatius of Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises, says that temptations are like secret lovers. He uses the image of a young woman who has a good father. The secret lover wants to stay secret, in the dark, trying to get you to do things you know the father, who loves you and wants the best for you, would not approve. St. Ignatius says sin is like that. Keep everything in the dark, hidden, and secret. I wonder if the reason Paul encourages us to wake up is that we are asleep when it comes to dangers that confront us spiritually. We spend too much time covering up who we really are.
Paul reminds us that since we cannot separate the eschatological from the ethical, therefore, we are to lay aside the works of darkness and, using an image drawn from warfare, he urges them to put on the armor of light. We find the image in I Thessalonians 5:8, “But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation.” In addition, in II Corinthians 6:7, we read, “... the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left ...” Warfare and the equipment of war were common sources for ethical metaphors among many writers in Greco-Roman antiquity. For example, the first-century Stoic philosopher and teacher Epictetus compared the challenge of living a virtuous life to a soldier out on campaign. “Each person’s life is a kind of campaign, and a long and complicated one at that. You have to maintain the character of a soldier, and do each separate act at the bidding of the general, if possible divining what he wishes.”[9] The most famous example of military imagery to describe the Christian life can be found in Ephesians 6:10-17, where the various pieces of the “armor of God” are discussed.
13 Let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling (κώμοις, carousing, orgies, wild parties) and drunkenness, not in debauchery (κοίταις, literally “beds” or “couch,” thus metaphorically improper/promiscuous sexual relations) and licentiousness (ἀσελγείαις, defined in the BDAG Greek lexicon as “lack of self-constraint which involves one in conduct that violates all bounds of what is socially acceptable expression of sexual desire), not in quarreling (ἔριδι, variously translated as strife, dissension, wrangling and rivalry) and jealousy (ζήλῳ, perhaps better translated more narrowly as envy BDAG understands it to mean “intense negative feelings over another’s achievements or success,” and thus disobedience of the tenth commandment, “You shall not covet.”) He is offering a small version of his vice list. Some other lists of such behaviors are in Romans 1:29; 9:10; I Corinthians 1:11; 3:3; 2 Corinthians 12:20; Galatians 5:21; Philippians 1:15. These activities all threaten the life of the community. They are the inverse of the commandments of the law and hence are the inverse of love. They provide opportunities for self-interest, social divisions, and broken relationships. These activities make for sleep. However, Paul reminds the Romans that in Christ God has awakened them to a new life in the Spirit. We are to live as if the new order were already here. We must act like what we are, citizens of heaven. Karl Barth refers to Augustine, who said that it was not self-evident that such activities as described in verse 13 are not compatible with walking, as in the day. He goes on to say that this verse ought to sober our naïve talk about the spiritual life of the earth. From the point of view of the Christian individual, we have here a degree of worldliness for which one would justly condemn the church later. He thinks we should ask whether we might not see the worldliness of the Christian individual more radically here and given its true name, whereas the true evil of the later church consists in the fact that the humanity of its members could disguise itself more cleverly. At any rate, a radical admonition is necessary. Its final word is also the first word, to put on Jesus Christ.[10] 14 Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires (ἐπιθυμίας, lust, inordinate desire, I Thessalonians 4:5 and Ephesians 4:22). We might connect the "armor" to the concrete manifestation of the law fulfilled as love - that is, none other than "the Lord Jesus Christ" himself. As the dawn of "the Day" or any day approaches, by "putting on" the mind of Christ, Christians are completely prepared for and protected from whatever may assail them in the next 24 hours. Or the next two millennia. “Putting on” should remind us of baptism. In Galatians 3:27, he writes that those who have received baptism “have clothed” themselves “with Christ,” which is probably an allusion to the practice of the newly baptized receiving a white robe to put on immediately after baptism. Yet, they must continually renew that life with which baptism has clothed them. In Ephesians 6:12, he reminds his readers that “we” are not contending against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, and the rulers of this present darkness, and against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Chapters 5-8 of the letter provide some of the most treasured lines of Christian Scripture regarding Christ and salvation. Furthermore, in Chapters 9-11 Paul lays out a complex argument for the relationship of the church to the salvation of Israel, as he considers the reconstitution of the people of God in light of Christ. Here Paul expands the notion of salvation from personal transformation to the cosmological and historical saving purposes of God for all creation. The battle is between light and darkness. Paul reminds his readers again of the eschatological tension that exists due to the saving act of God in Christ, and thus, time itself is no longer just a matter of chronology, but of the action of God.
Most Christians in apostolic times believed the Parousia was at hand and would happen in their lifetime. Paul has statements that imply he expected Christ’s coming in his lifetime. However, he also gives the impression that he looked for the attainment of a full life in Christ by his own death. While they expected Christ’s coming imminently, the delay did not shatter the foundations of their faith. Rather, through the risen Lord and the Spirit, eschatological salvation had already become a certainty for believers, so that the length of the remaining span of time was a secondary matter. The “delay” of the coming did not seem to create a crisis. A Christian sense of time is not just clocks and calendars. It is the tension between the ways of God and our ways, good and evil, light and darkness. It translates into a way of life. The trial on earth is a night of gloom that precedes the arrival of morning.[11] Paul says that the return of Christ is even more reason for his hearers to contour their lives after the pattern of Christ. He bases his appeal on the fact that they “know what time it is.” There is no time to squabble with the state or their neighbors. He urges them to respect the state and to love their neighbors because their time is short. They must instead be witnesses of what God is doing in the present. In that sense, the vision of Paul is “bifocal.”[12] Paul simultaneously has an eye on two horizons — that which is happening on earth because of the enslaving power of sin in the old age and the in-breaking of the rule of God into this earthly sphere. These verses reveal the apocalyptic vision of Paul, his understanding that this present age is passing away and his certainty that God is ushering in a new age.
Hope is more important that we know. St. Augustine says that hope has two beautiful daughters: anger at the way things are and courage to see to it they do not remain the way they are. Our dissatisfaction with the present arises out of our hope the future. As Reinhold Niebuhr said: "Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime." Hope always looks ahead, to something greater and better than we have now.
Why is hope so important for your life? This life has an incomplete character. Hope suggests its possible fulfillment. Our hope has its basis in the promise of God. Our hope is not just for our individual lives. Our hope includes the rest of humanity and even the entire creation. We can move toward the future with confidence, patience, and cheerful expectation of the revelation of the will of God for humanity. We hope for the one in whom we believe and love. While the specifics of that future elude us, of course, we know what is most important. The content of the future is Jesus Christ in his final form, as he completes the work begun in his life, death and resurrection and in the sending of the Spirit. The content of our hope is Jesus Christ coming in glory. This hope means pardon for humanity. It means a movement out of darkness and into light. It means transformation and eternal life. The hope is for the completion of the reconciling act of God in Christ. Such redemption means peace between Creator and creation. Slumbering humanity needs to awaken to the significance of the coming of Christ as providing the basis for this hope. Christians offer their witness and service today in light of that hope. We move toward the goal. We live with the hope for the dawn of the great light, but we also have joy over the little lights we experience today. The Holy Spirit is the one who awakens us to this hope.
William Wilberforce lived in England from 1759 to 1833. He was heir to a sizeable fortune. At 23, the people elected him to the Parliament. A few years later, he experienced a powerful conversion. In the movie Amazing Grace, a movie I highly recommend you watch, he wonders if he should give up his political life and devote himself to contemplation and enjoy God. He doubted he could serve God and serve his political vocation. He already had become convinced that slavery was wrong. In one scene (26:03 to 30:25) a table conversation occurs concerning slavery. “We understand you are struggling with whether you should do the work of God or the work of an activist. We humbly suggest that you can do both.” In the following scene (until 36:05), he meets John Newton, the writer of the famous hymn, Amazing Grace, who tells him that he still lives with the ghosts of 20,000 slaves that he delivered to slaveholders on slave ships. He convinces Wilberforce that combating slavery would be doing the work of heaven. “The principles of Christianity require action as well as meditation,” says Newton. Newton told him:
“God has raised you up for the good of the church and the good of the nation, maintain your friendship with Pitt, continue in Parliament, who knows that but for such a time as this God has brought you into public life and has a purpose for you.”
Wilberforce recalled the meeting in this way, “When I came away, my mind was in a calm, tranquil state, more humbled, looking more devoutly up to God.” He would lead a boycott of sugar made with the hands of slaves, trying to end the economic stranglehold that slavery had on the nation. In 1807, 220 years ago this year, after 20 years of trying, the slave trade ended in the British Empire. Although the crowning achievement of his attempts to reform British life would be ending slavery, Wilberforce sought many other reforms, including turning people away from gambling, heavy drinking, and promiscuity. He helped raise the moral tone of a whole nation.
One of the criticisms against Wilberforce by his colleagues in the Parliament was that he obeys the preacher in his head. I hope we do not just have a preacher for a few minutes on Sunday morning. I hope we carry one around with us in our heads. As leaders in the community, I hope you are finding your way to practice your faith in those places. It can take persistence. One can become tired. In 1791, John Wesley wrote what would be the final letter of his life to encourage Wilberforce.
“Unless God has raised you for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.”
In later decades, Abraham Lincoln remembered Wilberforce, saying he recalled the man who ended the slave trade, but could not name one man who tried to keep it alive. Sadly, trafficking in persons is still a global threat to the lives and freedom of millions of men, women, and children. Burma and North Korea still sponsor slavery. Most human trafficking today involves organized crime groups who make huge sums of money at the expense of the freedom of others. In his book Not for Sale, David Batstone says that 27 million slaves exist in our world today.
As Paul suggests, even the people of the church need to wake up.
We need to wake up to our families. We influence our spouses, children, grandparents, and grandchildren, far more than we know. We need to be sure that what we bring them is the light of day, and not the night of confusion. We need to wake up to the moment. We need to seize the day.
Ann Wells shares the story of her sister dying. She then shares this incident. "My brother-in-law opened the bottom drawer of my sister's bureau and lifted out a tissue-wrapped package. "'This,' he said, 'is not a slip. This is lingerie.' "He discarded the tissue and handed me the slip. It was exquisite: silk, handmade and trimmed with a cobweb of lace. It still had the astronomical price tag attached. "'Jan bought this the first time we went to New York, at least eight or nine years ago. She never wore it. She was saving it for a special occasion. Well, I guess this is the occasion.' "He took the slip from me and put it on the bed with the other clothes we were taking to the mortician. His hands lingered on the soft material for a moment, and then he slammed the drawer shut and turned to me. "'Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Every day you're alive is a special occasion.' As Ann reflected upon that moment, she wrote:
I'm trying to recognize those moments now and cherish them. I'm not 'saving' anything; we use our good china and crystal for every special event - such as losing a pound, getting the sink unstopped, the first camellia blossom. "'Someday' and 'one of these days' are losing their grip on my vocabulary. If it's worth seeing or hearing or doing, I want to see and hear and do it now.
Please, wake up to the moment.
We need to wake up to God. We often discover God in the strangest places. We might discover God in the smile of a child, the hug of a parent, or the simple greeting in church by someone you know really meant it when he or she asked you how things were going with you.
Frankly, as Paul puts it, salvation is nearer to us now than when we were believers. Therefore, Paul invites his readers, and us, to put on Christ, the source of faith, hope, and love. Instead of focusing too much upon sin, which can in fact give it more power over you, focus on Christ. Make him more part of your life. Take him with you, to your family, to your friends, to your work, and to wherever you go. That will wake you up. In fact, come to think of it, it may also wake up those around you. You will have increasingly less to hide and increasingly more to share.
[1](Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997], 279-297).
[2] Barth (Church Dogmatics, IV. 2, 66.4)
[3] Barth (Church Dogmatics, IV.3 71.2)
[4] Barth Romans, 497-500.
[5] --William James, "The energies of men," 1907, first published in Science, N.S. 25 (No. 635), 322-23. psychclassics.yorku.ca. Retrieved May 30, 2016.
[6] --Martin Luther King Jr., "The world house," in Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Harper & Row, 1967). umn.edu. Retrieved May 30, 2016.
[7] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume II, 366.
[8] Barth (Church Dogmatics, III.4, 56.1)
[9] Discourse 3.24.34
[10] Barth (Church Dogmatics, II.2, 38.3, p. 729)
[11] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume II, 366.
[12](Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997], 279-297).
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