PAUL'S LESSON FROM CHRIST'S WORDS
By Uriah Smith
THIS is what Christ said: “Wherefore He saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” And this is the conclusion which Paul draws from His words: “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.” Eph. 5:14-16. A literal translation of these texts would read: “Arouse thou that sleepest, and rise up from among the dead, and the Christ shall shine upon thee. Take heed, therefore, how accurately ye walk, not as unwise, but as wise, ransoming the time, because the days are evil.” But in the stir of the rush, and activity, and panting turmoil of these days, the last thing the men of this world naturally think about is that they are asleep. What! they ask, this seething world around us, asleep? These millions, dashing, pressing, trampling over one another in the dusty highways of fortune, fame, or pleasure, asleep? Is this restless, surging ocean of life, over which the storm king rides in fury, asleep? Is humanity, whose tumultuous course neither darkness nor sickness nor satiety can check,—this aggressive world, quivering with anxiety and excitement, straining every nerve after that which it does not possess,—asleep? Any other term they think would better describe the situation than the term “asleep.” But in this their eyes are out of focus with the true Scriptural view. The Scriptures teach that a man may be spiritually asleep and morally dead when most carnally awake; indeed, that very kind of slumber and moral blindness is induced and fostered by living after the flesh, and following its low and debasing impulses and promptings; for in Eph. 2:1 Paul had just said that they who are involved in trespasses and sins are “dead,” and must be “quickened,” or made alive, before they can walk with Christ. And to Timothy he had said that the woman who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives; that is, spiritually dead, though physically alive. “Godless men,” says a forcible writer, “are not only asleep, but are somnambulists. They walk, but still are asleep. They speak, but still sleep. With open eyes, still they sleep. In the view of the gospel, eyes have they, but they see not; ears they have, but they hear not. They see what is not, and do not see what is. Things afar off seem to them near at hand; and things near at hand seem to them afar off. While they walk as wakeful men, their steps are not directed by the reality of things.” All such persons the Scriptures include in the vocabulary of those who are asleep, or dead. And we are summoned to arouse, and to rise up from among such dead ones. Two other scriptures immediately associate themselves with these words, spoken also by Paul on other occasions. One is his words to the Romans: “It is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” Rom. 13:11. The other is, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.” 2 Cor. 6:17. The promise is that when we hear what the Lord says unto us, and awake out of sleep, and rise up from among the dead ones, He will give us light, or will himself shine upon us. Christ will recognize all efforts upon our part to arouse and shake off the imperious demands of slumber, and to separate ourselves from the dead and fruitless branches that mar and cumber the vineyard. And when Christ shines upon us, can it not be said of us, and to us, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee”? And will not that other scripture be fulfilled to us, “But now are ye light in the Lord”? Eph. 5:8. “See then that ye walk circumspectly.” “Circumspectly” means watching in every direction, and upon every point, to guard against surprises and dangers. Everything available to the advancement of our work, or the progress of the cause of truth, should be laid hold of and utilized. No discoveries in science, no advancement in wisdom, no revelations from new inventions, can vitiate any truth of the Bible. Galileos by their discoveries may upset the theology of the Church; but that is all right, for his discoveries did not impeach a scintilla of revelation, nor obscure a single ray of light as it is in Jesus. God never intended that Christians should be remiss, nor insensible, nor that they should fall behind the times. Every faculty, and every salutary use of it, comes within the regenerating and quickening process which Christ came to perform for mankind, that they might be made quick and keen to stand in the vanguard of all improvement and progress. To walk without this circumspection is to walk as fools, not as wise, which we are exhorted not to do. The apostle reaches the climax of his conclusion in the words that immediately follow: “Redeeming the time,” he says, “because the days are evil.” Literally, “Ransoming the time,” or buying it up, and securing every opportunity that it presents; not missing a single item of what the passing moment has to give. The language is significant; and the reason for it is still more so: “Because the days are evil.” To cherish our life while here, in a way to insure beneficial results hereafter is a distinct duty. Time is short. Therefore opportunities are so much the more valuable. Infinite value is stamped upon all of them. Therefore use the world, but use it aright, by remembering that it is left us as an equally distinct duty to live above the world. If we have the world, let not the world have us. Unworldliness is the spirit of holding all things as not our own, in the perpetual conviction that they are not lasting. It is not to suppress life, and the beauty of the world in which we live, and thrust it away from us with a torturing hand; it is to use the world as not abusing it; to be master of the world, and not let the world be master of us. An Italian philosopher expressed, in his motto on his coat of arms, that “time was his estate;” but, like all other estates, it must be cultivated to be productive. “Without that, it will produce nothing; but it will abundantly repay the labors of intelligent industry. It will satisfy the most extensive desires if no part is wasted by negligence, or overrun with noxious plants, or laid out for mere show and useless display.”—E. H. Gillett, D. D., in “Life Lessons.” So all that life has which is good, or great, or valuable, or useful is fashioned out of time. Out of it we bring the well-spent hour, the well-spent year, the well-spent lifetime. For an intelligent being, life is the equivalent of existence; and we must estimate it by the capabilities or possibilities that it involves—what it can do for character, virtue, piety, integrity, the Christian's hope, beneficence, etc. This “time,” therefore, so all-comprehensive and so valuable, is to be redeemed, ransomed, or bought back. This implies that much of it has been perverted or misused; it can not show the results which it should have brought forth in our lives. These must be recovered, and this state of affairs must be remedied as far as may be. But how can time be redeemed?—Time itself, as a mere matter of duration, of course can not be. Time past is gone, and can not be recalled. But the results that have come from the use of time can be taken up, and often, when found to have been perverted or misused, can be swung around into the right channel, and so made profitable for the future. Time which has been used in a wrong direction, may be made to tell for the right, and so be redeemed. If, for instance, a man has devoted his life to the accumulation of wealth, for selfish ends, and has amassed a fortune, he can now devote a proper proportion of that to the objects from which it has long been withheld, and thus the object that God had in view in the first place in giving the man this wealth, or the power to acquire it (Deut. 8:18), would be met in the end, and the time spent in acquiring it be redeemed. All the time the means10has been accumulating, a portion of it has belonged to the Lord, but has been selfishly withheld. But if now it is in part or wholly restored, that wrong is in a measure made right; yet it would have been far better to have devoted it to its proper uses at the time it became due. But at last the cause got its help, and the time is redeemed. Here is another person who has spent large sums of money, and devoted much time, in the acquirement of some accomplishment, developing, perhaps, great musical or artistic talent; but he awakes at length to the fact that what he has done has not been calculated for the spiritual or eternal good of his fellow men. How can he redeem the time?—Turn whatever of value these talents or accomplishments represent, or can be made available for, into channels that will benefit the cause of the Redeemer, and support the work of truth and righteousness among men. Here is another, who has trained himself, by long years of study and practice, to the exercise of sound judgment in the conducting of commercial affairs and the management of business or official positions. How can he redeem the time?—By turning the skill he has acquired, directly to forwarding and helping the cause of his Lord in the earth, and giving that cause the benefit of all his experience and talent acquired in the earnest work of life. So, a long list of avocations might be run through, and a long list of attainments and talents be mentioned, to which the same rules would apply. Take the gift of oratory, the skillful use of the pen in literary productions, aptness to teach, ability to run successfully the canvassing work and circulate books, and in a thousand ways to lend a helping hand to a brother. Let the time be redeemed by turning all these talents and qualifications into the right channels, where the results will be to build up the cause of Christ in the earth. It may be assumed that every life represents something; something achieved, something gained, either in property, accomplishments, or skill of some kind or other. If these have not heretofore been used for the right purpose, the time they represent can now be redeemed by turning them to the best possible use. But if a life represents nothing, if it seemingly has been used to no purpose whatever, then for humanity's sake, for your own soul's sake, heed the injunction, “Awake thou that sleepest,” and let Christ shine upon thee, and the latent power be quickened to activity, and what is left of life and time be redeemed by being devoted to the highest and noblest purposes from this time forward. The reason for the exhortation, as remarked, is also significant: “Because the days are evil.” To some men, the feeling that they have fallen upon evil times has a depressing, paralyzing effect. But not so with the apostles and the early Christians. If dangers thickened around them, and time seemed to be short, and liable to close suddenly without warning, change, or delay, the thought with them seemed to be that they must quicken their pace and act with more energy. And have not we ourselves been warned, time and again, that duties neglected when circumstances were more favorable, will now have to be accomplished under more trying and unfavorable conditions? The days were evil; therefore what we had to do should have been done before times grew worse; and will times ever improve for our labors?—We have no reason to expect it. Therefore the days being evil, and destined to grow more and more so, because perils are to increase, and evil men and seducers to wax worse and worse, as the end approaches, let us redeem the time, with the help the Lord of the harvest stands ready to furnish us, that there may be as little loss as possible in the sheaves we should gather, and as little delay as possible in the time when we shall shout the harvest home.