6. Christian Life In Days Of Crisis (13:11–14)
6. Christian Life In Days Of Crisis (13:11–14)
Paul recognized the critical nature of the times. He was under no illusions about the permanence of his present opportunity of preaching the gospel, but he was determined to exploit it to the full while it lasted. If he no longer uses the apocalyptic imagery of 2 Thessalonians 2:1–12, he knows that the restraint on the submerged forces of darkness and disorder may at any time be removed; Christians should therefore be on the alert. But the prospect should fill them with encouragement, not with despair: ‘when these things begin to take place,’ Jesus had said, ‘look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near’ (Luke 21:28). And Paul echoes his Master: ‘salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.’ The events of AD 64 and 66—the beginning of imperial persecution of Christians and the outbreak of the Jewish revolt, which was to end with the collapse of the Second Jewish Commonwealth—were already casting their shadows before. That these events would not be the immediate precursor of the Second Advent and the final salvation of all believers was something which Paul could not have foreseen; if knowledge of that day and hour was withheld even from the Son of man, it was denied a fortiori to his servant. But Jesus’ words, ‘he who endures to the end will be saved’ (Mark 13:13), verified themselves in the experience of his people who passed through these crises, as they have done in other crises since then. With the affliction comes the way of deliverance: ‘Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints’ (Rev. 13:10).
Meanwhile the children of light must live in readiness for the day of visitation, abjuring all the ‘works of darkness’. Elsewhere Paul speaks of putting on ‘the new man’ (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10); here, more directly, he bids his readers ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ’. The Christian graces, the ‘armour of light’, which he exhorts them to display instead of gratifying unworthy desires, what are they but those graces which were displayed in harmonious perfection in their Lord? Paul’s knowledge of the historical Jesus and his interest in him were much greater than is allowed by those who misinterpret his words about not knowing Christ ‘from a human point of view’ (2 Cor. 5:16) to deny such knowledge or interest on Paul’s part. For when Paul comes to enumerate in detail the graces which he desires believers in Rome and elsewhere to ‘put on’, they are the qualities which characterized Christ on earth.
11. It is full time now for you to wake from sleep. The duty of spiritual vigilance was constantly enjoined in apostolic teaching; cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:4–11.
Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. Salvation is here viewed in its future completeness; it is the ‘adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies’, for which believers wait according to 8:23; cf. the ‘salvation ready to be revealed in the last time’ for which, according to 1 Peter 1:5, they are ‘guarded through faith’. Its consummation coincides with the manifestation of Christ in glory (cf. Heb. 9:28).
12. The works of darkness … the armour of light. ‘Let us therefore throw off the deeds of darkness and put on our armour as soldiers of the light’ (NEB). The antithesis between darkness and light is found repeatedly in Paul’s writings (cf. 2 Cor. 6:14; Eph. 5:8; Col. 1:12–13; 1 Thess. 5:4–5), as well as in John’s. It is one of the most obvious points of contact in concept and language between the New Testament and the Qumran texts, where all human beings are governed either by the Prince of Light or by the Angel of Darkness, and the great conflict of the end-time is called ‘the war of the sons of light against the sons of darkness’.1 The ‘armour of light’ is described in greater detail in 1 Thessalonians 5:8 and Ephesians 6:13–17.
13. As in the day. The ‘day’ is the time for sobriety, for ‘those who get drunk are drunk at night’ (1 Thess. 5:7).
14. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. A literary parallel to this use of ‘put on’ is quoted from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 11.5, where ‘to put on Tarquin’ means to play the part of Tarquin.
The practical teaching given to Christian converts in the primitive church (see p. 145) appears to have been arranged, for easy memorization, under various catchwords, of which ‘Put on’ was one. They were urged to ‘put on’ Christian virtues as they would put on new clothes (cf. Col. 3:12); and as these virtues were all aspects of the new Christian character which they received at conversion, they might be told to ‘put on the new man’ (Eph. 4:24), or to live as befitted those who had put him on once for all (Col. 3:10). Since this ‘new man’ was the character of Christ reproduced in his people, it was a simple transition to say, ‘as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ’ (Gal. 3:27) or, as here, to exhort believers to ‘put on’ Christ in the sense of manifesting outwardly what they had already experienced inwardly. While Paul did not know the written Gospels which we have in the New Testament, it is noteworthy that, when he commends to his readers the cultivation of those qualities which the Evangelists ascribe to our Lord, he does so by telling them to ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ’.
And make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. Cf. 6:12. It was the words of verses 13 and 14 that kindled a flame of sacred love in Augustine’s heart (see p. 65).