Wake From Your Sleep

[Christsfreeservant]

“Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,’ and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:8-10 ESV)​

The Scriptures talk much on the subject of love for God and love for our fellow humans, so that is a subject that we will find repeated much throughout the Scriptures. Most references to “love” in the New Testament, I believe, are to agape love, which means to prefer what God prefers, such as preferring to live through Christ and to embrace God’s will, choosing his choices, and obeying them in his power, strength, and wisdom. It means we are actively doing what God prefers and not what our flesh dictates.

So when we love God and other humans with this kind of love we will not lie to, cheat on, trick, manipulate, and/or betray other humans. We will not be malicious and spiteful toward them. We will not do evil things against them for the sole purpose to do them harm. But we will be kind, thoughtful, considerate, and compassionate towards them. We will act towards them in ways which are holy, righteous, morally pure, honest, faithful and obedient to our Lord. And we will speak the truth in love to them, too, and not lies.

“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)​

When we believe in Jesus Christ to be Lord and Savior of our lives, we enter into a marriage covenant with him, but not on a physical level, like between humans, but on a spiritual level. Jesus Christ becomes our husband, and we who believe in him, both male and female, become his bride. But it is like the Jewish marriage of the Bible where the bride and groom signed a marriage covenant but did not consummate the marriage until after the groom prepared a place for his bride and he came and took her to himself.

So it is with our relationship with Jesus Christ. And while we wait for him to return and to take his faithful bride to be with him for eternity, his grace instructs us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives. For Jesus Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works, the works God prepared in advance that we should walk in them (Titus 2:11-14; Ephesians 2:10).

But many people who profess faith in Jesus Christ here in America did not ever enter into that covenant relationship with Jesus Christ, for they never died with Christ to their sins so that they could live to him and to his righteousness, but they continued on living in sin and for self, not in walks of obedience to our Lord in surrender to his will. And some who were of genuine faith in Jesus Christ have since fallen away from their pure devotion to him and they have embraced again the ways of this sinful world.

So this is a strong encouragement here for any who are not walking in faithful obedience to the Lord, but who have gotten spiritually lazy or who have fallen back into sin or whose faith was never genuine faith in the first place, to wake up spiritually and to get passionate about serving the Lord Jesus and about holy living and moral purity and honesty and integrity and faithfulness, etc. For our salvation now is nearer to us who believe in Jesus Christ than when we first believed. So what does that mean?

It means that our salvation is not this one-time decision we make in our lives to believe in Jesus and then we are good to go to heaven regardless of how we live. For the Scriptures teach our salvation as progressive. We are saved (past), we are being saved (present active), and we will be saved (future) when Jesus Christ returns for his faithful bride and he takes us to be with him for eternity, which is when our salvation will be complete, but provided that we continue in that walk of faith and obedience to the end.

[Matt 7:21-23; Matt 24:9-14; Lu 9:23-26; Rom 1:18-32; Rom 2:6-8; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-14,24; Rom 12:1-2; Rom 13:11; 1 Co 6:9-10,19-20; 2 Co 5:10,15,21; 1 Co 1:18; 1 Co 15:1-2; 2 Tim 1:8-9; Heb 9:28; 1 Pet 1:5; Gal 5:16-21; Gal 6:7-8; Eph 2:8-10; Eph 4:17-32; Eph 5:3-6; Col 1:21-23; Col 3:5-17; 1 Pet 2:24; Tit 2:11-14; 1 Jn 1:5-9; 1 Jn 2:3-6,24-25; 1 Jn 3:4-10; Heb 3:6,14-15; Heb 10:23-31; Heb 12:1-2; Rev 21:8,27; Rev 22:14-15]

Therefore, all who are participating in any way with the fruitless deeds of darkness are to cast them off. And even those who are not are to be dying daily to sin, by the Spirit. So it should be our daily practice to cast away from ourselves all that is of the flesh and that is immoral and sinful and disobedient to our Lord. We must daily reject the temptation to engage in any of these sins mentioned here, and others, too. And we need to put on the armor of God to fight off Satan’s evil schemes against us.

And daily we are to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and to make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. And this takes commitment to the Lord and a desire to want to obey him and his commands, and it requires that we submit to the Lordship of Christ and that we surrender to his will and that we walk in obedience to his commands, in his power. And it necessitates us being students of the Scriptures so that we know what they teach so that we will do what they teach as our daily practice.

As the Deer

By Martin J. Nystrom
Based off Psalm 42:1

As the deer panteth for the water
So my soul longeth after You
You alone are my heart's desire
And I long to worship You

You alone are my strength, my shield
To You alone may my spirit yield
You alone are my heart's desire
And I long to worship You

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