Wake up. The night is almost over.

[bdavidc]

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. ~ Romans 13:11

We live in a generation of sleeping people. Sleeping through work, sleeping through play, sleeping through life. We are busy being distracted and entertained and self-indulgent and self-centered. But the Bible doesn’t mince words or sugarcoat messages. It tells us straight up: Wake up. The hour is late. The day of salvation is nearer now than it ever was before.

Romans 13: 8–14 is not a soft suggestion, it’s a wake-up call straight from God’s Word. It kicks off with this command: “Owe no one anything, except to love each other” (Romans 13:8). In a world that runs on division and arguments and bitterness and strife, God’s people are told to live differently. Not to be led by debt or lust or any other thing, but by love. Not the mushy gushy, feelings-based love, but the love that fulfills His law, the love that refuses to harm, to lie, to cheat, to betray. “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10).

This is not “niceness.” This is urgency and holiness because “the night is far gone; the day is at hand” (Romans 13:12). We are running out of time. The return of Jesus Christ is coming nearer every day. And yet so many of us are still living as though this life is all we have. We are still grasping at sin and indulgence as though this world is our home. But the Bible says to “cast off the works of darkness”, to throw them away, to leave them behind, to walk away from the old life.

What are the works of darkness? God tells us plainly: “orgies and drunkenness, sexual immorality and sensuality, quarreling and jealousy” (Romans 13:13). That’s not the kind of thing you hear in a sermon or a sermon or self-help book. But God is not interested in your comfort. He wants your soul to be saved. Sin will always seem normal. Society will normalize everything, and at the end of the day sin always leads to death (Romans 6:23).

The only way to be ready is to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” and to stop making room in your life for sin to grow (Romans 13:14). You can’t walk in the light and still invite darkness into your life. You can’t call yourself a follower of Christ and keep feeding the flesh. Jesus didn’t die to make you just a little bit better. He died to make you brand new (2 Corinthians 5:17). You are either clothed in Christ or you are still clothed in sin. There is no in-between.

So this is the call for today: wake up. Eternity is coming. Salvation is not some pie-in-the-sky idea, it’s right at the door. Cast off the sin. Walk in the light. Love like Christ. Live like the judgment is real, because it is.

“And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1 John 3:3).