“Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”
Romans 13:11-14 ESV
In a time of drama and disquiet we’re prone to focus too much on the negative that’s going in with the world. Inflation and insecurity; war and conflict. Yes. It’s all important, don’t get me wrong. But the hour has come for us to no longer regard the world through the eyes of humanistic philosophy. We’re called to a renewed mind and to take all thoughts “captive” for Christ.
Inflation because man always wants something for nothing. He can’t print houses, productivity and businesses but he can print money and that causes inflation.
War because man is always trying to regulate and dominate his neighbor, playing god over him. Unable to find peace with God on his own terms, man tries to find security any other way and this leads to conflict.
School shootings. Guns. Drug overdoses. Scams. Shortages. The night is far gone, Christian. Don’t regard these things as mysteries but as the judgment-consequences of man’s continual war with God and His perfect law. Sin brings death…and it also brings chaos. So we train our minds to see all things in the Lord. We look at school shootings, regard the atheistic culture that has told our young that there’s no ultimate meaning or morality, but that boys can be girls and vice versa and we thank God for His mercy. These are warning signs meant to lead us to repentance. The “day is at hand” means that we can now see the paths of life illuminated by the wisdom of His word/law. The night was when we were walking in “brute facts” and there was no unifying theory before our eyes.
The night was walking in philosophical and moral nihilism. The night was in thinking this is no one’s world, it’s an accidental world, a void, an ultimate and meaningless mystery…a mere struggle for a hedonistic survival.
Pointless.
Everyone having to make of it what they will. The day is knowing that this is His world and that death and chaos come because of our war against Him but that in love, He has reached out and taken hold of us. He has gathered us to Himself and suffered for us. He is the Truth and the source of all truth. He is ultimate righteousness and the source/standard of all morality. The world is under the curse of sin, yes, but it’s not meaningless. It’s a world of love and beauty and Godly mystery. We don’t know all things and that’s okay because we know the God who loves us and He knows all things, is all things, and we have peace with Him through faith.
This is the day that’s at hand. Many don’t understand the nature of the life of the mind/heart they’ve been born again to live. We have the love of God poured into our hearts and this causes us to cast off the works of darkness. The armor of light is the knowledge of God in Christ that illuminates the lies of the flesh – the sexual indulgence that empties our lives of meaning, joy and honor. It shines a great light on the lies of drugs and alcohol. The life of partying is seen for what it is. The life of hedonism is rejected because the armor of light has those flaming arrows of lies bouncing and clanging harmlessly off of us.
Quarreling and jealousy come from man’s loss of God. A man/woman not content in the Lord will obsess about the success and failures of others. They will define themselves not through faith but by comparison to others. They’ll live horizontally rather than vertically and this is a prison; a daily death. It’s a life riddled with vanity or anxiety depending upon the terrain. It’s a life of fear and that fear is a beast that devours men’s hearts from within. He tries to quiet that beast by feeding it drugs, alcohol, sex, money, fame, and all the other simple sugars of life that destroy the health of men’s hearts. The man on a good diet can taste the poison of life’s French fries. Likewise, the one wearing the armor of light, which is complete and unhesitating faith in Christ, spits out the works of darkness. And he yearns to spit the taste clean out of his mouth.
Making no provision for the flesh is the mark of Christian living in that it’s the result of the mind that’s set on Christ. There’s no way to stop the flesh outside of grace. Asceticism won’t work. Self-help won’t work. Politics won’t do it. Education won’t do it. Achievement and success won’t do it. Only the heart that loves the love of God in Christ and has been broken by its sin, yet restored by all that divine love, will walk life’s path in light. A man alone in the wilderness knows the dangers of bears, of falls, of temperature swings. He makes provision for these particulars. A man/woman of Christ sees the danger of sin’s lies and knows, from the heart, that it’s the love of God, and love for God, that must govern his/her walk. He is the true vine and we are the branches. This is the heart of “make no provision for the flesh” – it’s the mind that’s set on Christ and sees itself as a slave to Him that’s made no provision for the flesh.
The day is at hand. You are saved from the penalty of sin. You are saved from the power of sin. Now live like it. Believe. And go do all in the name of the Lord. Whatever it is. No matter how small. Do it in His name and know that you are His ambassador, holy and righteous in faith alone, not by works. Stock a shelf at work. Empty the trash. Do your job. Talk to a friend or a stranger. Cut your grass. All is holy living in faith now. And soon…so very soon…in the blink of an eye…we know not exactly when, He will come. And when He does, it will all be known and even the presence of sin will be gone.
Yes, the day is at hand. Live like it.
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