Miscellaneous: Wake Up! - Ron

I know this post is going live on Valentine's Day. And no, it isn't about love, marriage, dating, hand-holding, or embracing God's will in your singleness. Some will say that I missed a huge opportunity today. All I can say is that if you are looking for some sort of Valentine's Day love story with religious platitudes, read on all the way to the end! If you aren't looking for that kind of thing at all, you can read on to the end as well. I promise, if you are in the latter group you will not be disappointed. Many in the former group are going to be disappointed at some point today anyway, so it might as well start with me.

Let's go!

"...Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed" (Romans 13:11). Paul wrote that a long time ago, but it still applies today. By this, Paul means the full effect of our salvation, as in, the being-with-Jesus-part. For the Christian, each breath that you take brings you that much closer to being with Christ, whether through death or His return. 

But in the meantime, Paul says this knowledge means it is high time for Christians to wake up. John Gill, in his commentary on the book, says this speaks of the "carnal security and drowsy frame of spirit which sometimes attend the churches and children of God...in a backwardness to duty and a slothfulness in performance of it." In other words, it is possible for us to be asleep on the job, as it were.

Sleeping people aren't good for much. I haven't always been a heavy sleeper. But as I worked my way through about 5,632 nights of baby screaming, I have learned to sleep through things. In fact, sometimes, I wake up oblivious to what has gone on around me. 

There is nothing quite so terrifying as children wandering in the darkness. I remember one time, I woke up to complete darkness and the feeling of breath on my face. It was a son, who wanted me to know, at that very moment, that the tooth fairy had come. As if I didn’t know. 

Then there was the time that I woke up, and saw something crouching under our covers. I literally have never been so scared in my entire life. It just sat there. I started freaking out and pushing it, to find out that it was the head of a different son who had somehow crawled into bed, and decided it would be perfectly normal to sit on his knees in the middle of our bed underneath the covers. 

Both of these things were made possible by the fact that I was sleeping, and had no idea what was going on. On a different occasion, one of my other sons (I've got 3, and now you've met all of them) woke up to use the bathroom, but not actually in the bathroom. My wife and I were out in the living room, and here comes a son. This blessing from the Lord stumbles down the hallway--whining and mumbling--stands behind the couch, and begins peeing right into a basket of clean clothes.

In First Thessalonians 5, Paul says that people who are asleep have no idea what is going on. The same is true of those who are drunk. Sometimes the main reason people get drunk, is so they can forget what was going on, or so that they won’t remember what will go on. 

Paul says that Christians are to be different. Our conduct is different. Rather than be like those who will be left behind, we ought not to be lethargic or careless about spiritual things. Lost people are asleep to spiritual realities and incapable of properly responding to them. They are incapacitated by their own wicked lifestyle. But Christians are to be sober. We are to be spiritually alert at all times.  Paul uses the breastplate, which protects the heart, and the helmet, which protects the head, to remind us that our affections and thoughts are a favorite target of the enemy. 

Paul says much the same in the last handful of verses in Romans 13. Verse number eleven began this blog post, but verses 12-14 detail what Christians ought to be doing instead of slumbering away the interim between salvation and glory.

In short, we are not to love the things that this world has to offer. We are not to allow ourselves to be seduced by worldly philosophies, attitudes, and attractions. We are meant for more and we are waiting for more. This world isn’t our forever home. But we are still called to engage culture and to be salt and light. We are strangers and pilgrims, but we have been commanded to be ambassadors for Christ on our pilgrimage. 

In Acts 17:6, the apostles are described as those who have "turned the world upside down." Their brand of Christ-following had caused a significant disruption in the culture. This new way, markedly different from the immoral polytheism of the Greeks and Romans AND the self-righteous monotheism of the Pharisees, was breaking society. Christians were making a difference.

While it is hard to pinpoint exactly how many born-again Christians are in the United States, recent data suggests that 63% of American adults self-identify under the Christian label (Smith, 2021). That is over 200,000,000 people taking on the name. If even half of that number are Christians in the biblical sense, that would mean nearly 1/3 of the United States population is saved by grace and serving Jesus as Lord. 

That is a lot of salt and light. That is a mass of pilgrim ambassadors. And if the Jews thought some apostles were turning their world upside down, imagine if they were alive today to see the massive disruption that 100,000,000 Bible-believing Christians are making in the United States. Except, that isn't what they would see. What they would see is a society every bit as Godless as Corinth and Rome, maybe more so. They would encounter millions of Christians consuming culture that they ought to be marking and avoiding. They could use Google to find a plethora of articles describing America as a post-Christian nation.

A post-Christian nation comprised of 63% Christians? Perhaps we have been sleeping. You are nearer to meeting Christ now than you were when you started reading this post. It is high time for us to wake up.

Reference

Smith, Gregory. (2021). About three-in-ten U.S. adults are now religiously unaffiliated. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewforum.org/2021/12/14/about-three-in-ten-u-s-adults-are-now-religiously-unaffiliated/