Romans 13:11-12“The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.”

Sometimes, when the Bible uses slumber or sleep as a metaphor, it is talking about unbelief. At other times “sleep” is a picture of death. I think it’s clear that Paul is writing this letter to members of a Christian church, so he assumes that they are spiritually awake by faith. And obviously he wouldn’t write a book of the Bible to dead people. “Slumber” here has to refer to something else.

Sometimes we Christians let our faith become quite lukewarm. There is very little fire in our belly for loving our neighbor or reaching the lost. Our prayers lack fervency and grow fewer and farther between. We aren’t much concerned about getting to know God better. If we still go to church or Bible study, it is mostly a matter of habit, going through the motions. We have stopped feeling a need or desire to be there. If the church grows, we feel no particular joy. If it struggles and shrinks, we feel no sense of alarm. We could always go somewhere else, or do something else, on a Sunday.

The problem is that we have become far too distracted by our purely earthly circumstances. We pour our energy into having the things we want, achieving the lifestyle and experiences we desire. Have you seen the movie The Bucket List? Two men fighting cancer make a list of things they want to do before they die, and then they go on the world’s greatest road trip. One of them even tries to convince the other of God’s existence along the way. There is nothing wrong with going skydiving, or climbing Mt. Everest, or visiting the pyramids, if you can do it. But this is not why God chose you as his own, or the purpose for which he has left you here.

What if you never earn that degree for which you study, or land the job on which you set your heart? What if your career goes nowhere? What if you never find love or raise a family? What if you never build the house you planned to make your home, or your retirement doesn’t turn out the way you dreamed? Don’t misunderstand me. All of these things may occupy a legitimate part of our time and attention. They are good and wholesome in and of themselves.

But if they leave no place for God; if they move into a place ahead of God, chances are we need Paul’s words to confront us. “The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber.” The time has come to wake up. Spiritually, we are asleep and of no use for something much more important.

Why is it so vital that we wake up and understand the present time? “because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.” We may be used to people speaking about “salvation” happening when we come to faith. It’s almost always what Christians mean when they ask, “Are you saved?” Have you come to faith in Jesus yet? Often the Bible uses the word that way.

But salvation is God’s work of rescue. Sometimes it refers to Jesus and his saving life and death, as Simeon meant when he took the baby Jesus in his arms and said, “…my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the sight of all people” (Luke 2:30-31). Here it is clear that salvation refers to God’s final rescue, when he puts a final end to all his enemies and takes us away to heaven’s safety.

That is nearer every day. More than that, “The night is nearly over, the day is almost here.” Jesus could return at any time, or he could end our lives in this world at any time, and our days here are limited. I don’t know about you, but there are people I know personally whose own salvation is doubtful at best. The clock is running out on our time to win them.

Perhaps I can’t spend every moment of every day trying to work on them and their faith. Living a life of love goes beyond personal witness and evangelism. It helps support our lives of witness and evangelism. But it ought not become the reason we neglect personal witness and evangelism. We need to understand the present time. It is time to wake up and put our faith to work, because the night of this world is almost over, and the day of heaven is almost here.