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Urgent Need in Times of Crisis: Put on Christ

(Overcomer Wu)

“And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.” -- Romans 13:11-14

“Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep; Arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” -- Ephesians 5:14

In this short passage we have a blueprint for action spelled out for Christians who, in the providence of God, are called upon to meet the challenge of both the church and a society in crisis. Is not this the situation in which we find ourselves today? Paul is writing to the fledgling church at Rome. Roman society and civilization at that time were in a sad state of decline – not unlike the situation with our societies today throughout the world. The Empire was starting to break up and fall apart starting with its decline in its moral standard. In its earlier history it had had a relatively high standard of law and order, political integrity, moral behavior, and civil obedience. But at the time when the apostle penned this epistle the seeds of decadence, lawlessness, permissiveness, self-indulgence, greed, ambition and compromises had taken root and was rampant in both the society and in the churches as is characteristics of the situation in the last days before the Lord's return. Edward Gibbon, the famous historian who wrote the classic, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, made that famous, enlightening and accurate remark that the decline of the great Roman Empire came not because of opposition without but because of corruption and decay within.

That was the kind of backdrop against which the fledgling church in Rome was cradled. The Roman Christians were living in times of social, political, economic and moral crisis, and the decay and compromises are slowly finding their way into the churches -- much like the day in which we are living at this end times. Verse 11 above we read, "Knowing the time, that Now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed." The Apostle Paul uses the word "time" twice: "Knowing the time, that Now it is high time..." In the original these are two different words. The first word "time” -- "knowing the time" -- means it is a special occasion and usually used of a seasonable time. It is not the usual or the normal word used for time. Literally it means a period marked by adverse or emergency circumstances, crisis times. The unfamiliar translation of the Bible by Williams translated it well by pointing out the exigency of the situation: "knowing the present crisis." In writing to the church in Rome, the Apostle Paul identifies the time as days of crisis, an emergency situation.

The second word used for time, "Now it is high time to awake out of sleep...," indicates strongly that it is the moment for immediate action without delay. There is a sense of urgency, a sense of pressure due to the shortage of time remaining. The hour is late, is what he is trying to get across. It is like the floodgate or the dam is broken, we need to evacuate immediately and board the ship! It is a call to immediate action. The bomb and emergency siren is sounding if we have the spiritual ears to hear. Perhaps in our times, the 5^th seal in the book of Revelation is on the verge of being broken and opened.

Paul gives us more details with regard to the situation as we read on. In verse 13 he says, "Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy." Obviously that is not a complete list of the sins of that society nor of ours. It is meant to be merely a summary. There are three couplets. It has been suggested that these three different classifications could include all sins; they cover the whole range of iniquities. All the sins of men may be classified in these three categories: word, thought and deed; body, senses and mind.

In the first couplet Paul says, "Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness..." This particular aspect of sin involves bodily sins, rioting. The idea is that they were going wild like a wild horse in a corral; they were letting loose and were carousing in unbridled revelry. Gangs of people would go around completely indifferent to law and order. It is total pandemonium: people would do what they liked, beat up whom they liked, tear down what they liked. Vandalism was the order of the day. Rioting is complete disregard for law and order – much like the days after the showing of the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, California. As we think of our society, we can certainly identify with this in the rising crime rate, road-rages, even the crimes among the teenagers of this country was simply unheard of before where there are so many murders being committed by teenagers.

Furthermore, it mentions drunkenness – intoxication, intemperance, losing one’s self-control, drinking orgies among colleges and universities on a weekly basis has become a commonplace that it's not even newsworthy. What is the number one social problem in today’s society? Alcoholism is in fact the underlying cause of many more serious problems in our society. For example, a drunken person let's loose his guard and engage in fornication or adultery or bar fights and drunk-driving that leads to fatalities. And once they are hooked in drunkenness, they cannot even hold a job and cannot function properly as a normal person. Many people are enslaved by that terrible curse. Many times elders/pastors of churches have been called upon to visit homes and see fathers and mothers completely captive to that awful curse, destroying themselves, their relationships, and their children.

Of course I am not suggesting that as Christians we are guilty of this... very few Christians are but it is mostly among those who have left their normal walk with Christ; however, one thing that bothers me is that how Christians today are being too tolerant of their unbelieving friends acting that way without saying a word of correction to act as the light of this world and the salt of the earth. They have lowered their standards inadvertently. I am alarmed that now social drinking is an acceptable thing among Christians. We all know that most people don't know when they cross the line from drinking a little wine for the good of their stomach to being a little drunk during social drinking. Yet many young families today think that this is not a big deal especially among the Europeans and also some Americans.

Then Paul continues with the list of some sensual sins that are listed in our text: “lewdness and lust.” Lewd behavior is no sense of modesty, lust, licentiousness, sensuality. Dictionary definition includes obscene and indecent behavior. Paul is talking about Rome about two thousand years ago, but he could just as well be talking about our society today which is no better. We cannot point a finger at the Roman society, for our society is guilty of the same and we need to heed the call to action. The word translated “lust” means filthiness and debauchery. It is the ugliest word in the Greek vocabulary. They gloried in their shame. Thus, we're told in Romans 1:24: “Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves.” Homosexuality has become so acceptable a standard in certain countries that they look at you as the one being abnormal if you do not accept that type of lifestyle. This is simply abominable, sickening, and despicable to say the least.

Then there are the dispositional sins he mentions: "Not in strife and envy." The word strife means pugnacious, contention, rivalry, etc. . What a sad reality that these two evils are also found in most churches today among Christians. The reason for this is because of their lack of the walking in the divine agape love, for 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 listed these as the very opposite characteristics of the agape love of God. May we be filled with love of Christ by putting on Christ, as we are exhorted to do in the last verse of this chapter, Romans 13. When we are filled with His love and compassion, not only will envy and strife be foreign to us, but we will also have the capacity to put any offenses behind us and let brotherly love prevail.

After Paul paints a negative backdrop of a society that was seething and fomenting with evil and filth. He points us to the fact that we are living in the critical hour and the days of crisis. Something had to be done, and there in the sovereignty of God was this newborn church, this very colony of the kingdom of heaven upon the earth in that rotten society. In writing to this infant church, Paul calls them to action; therefore, he gives them a five-fold call to action for churches and Christians in a day of crisis, in an emergency situation, or at the day when the Lord's second coming is near as alluded to in Romans 13:12, “the day is near.”

The First call is to awake out of sleep. Verse 11 says, "Knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep..." Here, Paul is not merely urging them/us to action. He was trying to arouse them out of their spiritual indolence, apathy, spiritual drunken stupor, by saying, "Wake up because the time is so desperate and the time is so short before the Lord returns." We need to redeem the time, for the days are evil (Eph 5:16).

To understand what the apostle Paul has in mind here you have to realize the background of the figure he was using here. Paul was in fact referring to a military figure. It relates to the Imperial Guard at that particular time, to one of whom the apostle was chained night and day. So he became familiar with the habits, the customs and the ways of the Guard. If they were not in public duty they were allowed out at 4:30 p.m. in the afternoon. They would put on their civilian clothes and go into the society. They did not have to report back until reveille in the morning at whatever time it was, 5 o’clock or 6 o’clock. Usually the guards would go out and spent the night carousing, a night on the town. They came back in the morning completely exhausted and worn out, and had to face the day and carry on with their duties. This was the picture Paul has in mind. It is not that they were lazy, but they were squandering their time. They were frittering away on lesser things, precious time to serve the Lord.

We need to examine ourselves whether perhaps it might also be true of many of us today who named the Name of Christ. It is not necessarily that we are lazy, but we are worn out. Many are exhausted in the pursuit of temporal things and the pleasures of this life by having to work multiple jobs and work overtime to climb the corporate ladder and earn the big bucks. It is a startling summons, when you consider he is talking to Christians here, to believers, those who already believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. Obviously he feels that they/we need to be stirred and roused to a more spiritually watchful, vigilant and sober life.

I believe that as we look at both the situation and the spiritual time clock today, there is no time to squander on lesser things. This is no time to just fritter away the day of opportunity in the pursuit of temporal things and secular pleasures. Yet how often do we hear of excuses in the church today the response of why they could not spend more time in the Word and in fellowship with the saints in the meetings, "I am too busy." But when you ask yourself, "Too busy doing what?" In nine cases out of ten it is not the work of the Lord (and even if they are “work of the Lord”, we need to be careful that they are not done in our fleshly effort lest they are counted as being in vain before the Lord), the things in Christ Jesus. Lives are cluttered up with the pursuit of temporal things.

We need to be those who have ears to heed the call of the Spirit among the churches, knowing that the time is short and the crisis situation. The hour in God's time clock for humanity is late. It is time for us all to wake up from our spiritual slumber and apathy. It is time we become serious and put away the earthly things with all our personal busyness and get down to this business of living for and by Christ Jesus, and fulfill God’s purpose in putting us here, which is ultimately the building of His House, the Church.

It is the deception of the enemy to make so many Christians to be content and feel self-sufficient with themselves like the church in Laodicea. They feel like they are rich spiritually and have need of nothing, but not knowing that they are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked (spiritually, Rev 3:17). Due to their being blinded to their true condition before God, they are satisfied with the way they are. A healthy attitude we should always maintain is like that of the apostle Paul, who in spite of his having reached a certain spiritual state of maturity, still continued to pursue to gain more of Christ; thus, he said in Philippians 3:13, “Brethren, I do not consider myself to have apprehended.”

The Second call is to cast off the works of darkness. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand: therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light." The expression, "the works of darkness," would seem to be the activities that characterize those who know nothing of saving faith in Jesus Christ, those who are still walking in darkness and know nothing about a living relationship with the One Who is Light, for the Lord Jesus said in John 8:12: “I am the Light of the world, he who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the Light of life.” Since we have been transferred from the darkness into Light and from the authority of Satan unto God (Acts 26:18), we need to walk in the Light as children of Light. “For you were once darkness, but now light in the Lord. Live as children of light” (Eph 5:8).

To “cast off the works of darkness” is to eliminate those things that characterize the unbelievers who are still in the darkness of satan's dominion. The words "cast off" mean to divest yourself, excommunicate it, fling it away, to discard it forcefully. It is the same idea basically in Hebrews 12:1: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” To “lay aside” means to divest yourself of, to put off. The figure here is that of an athlete in contest. Thus, to “lay aside every weight” is the idea of throwing off any extraneous and the smallest unnecessary item or even a piece of clothing that would impede or slow his progress.

In other words, the apostle Paul is essentially saying, "You are in a race – the greatest race under heaven that we are privileged to participate in. Don't squander your privilege given to you by Christ Jesus dying on the cross to qualify you to run. Now discard out of your life anything that would be an obstacle to you, that would impede your progress; toss them out without a second thought and just wear the appropriate clothing (which is none other than Christ, as shown in Romans 13:14) to win the race and to reach the goal." It is a call to divest ourselves of those things which, perhaps in and of themselves are not wrong, but they are weights in our spiritual race. Maybe as far as others are concerned they do not appear to be too wrong or bad, but we know that they weigh us down in our spiritual race and there is no time to be carrying those extra weight in our last stretch towards the finishing line! Therefore, we have to get rid of them once and for all and attend to the serious business of our high-calling of God in Christ Jesus. He is calling for a life of discipleship and commitment – a life of a living sacrifice holy and well-pleasing to Him (Rom 12:1). If you have already offered yourself as a living sacrifice to the Lord, then this is the kind of life we ought to be living for and by Christ.

The Third call is to "Cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light." What is the Christian’s armor? We are clearly told in Ephesians 6 that it is the Church corporately as a soldier of Jesus Christ. At the same time, it also speaks of the various fundamental spiritual elements that each of us cannot do without: we need our loins girded about with the truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, having our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel, the shield of faith, the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. Note in this list that there is no reference to a a pair of pajamas, or an evening dress, or some kind of leisure wear, because we are in a battle and there is no time sleep or slack off. It says to put on the whole armor of God to be a good soldier of Jesus Christ. This is a time for mobilization and intense conflict with the forces of darkness. This is a call to fight the good fight of faith fully equipped with the weapons given to us by the Lord. The call is to your knees, to pray, to seek God, to wait upon Him, to know the Word; and to be those who are filled with the Spirit to meet the crisis of the hour in which we live.

How much we need this rallying call today in the churches. We have far too many draft-dodgers in the army of the Lord. We need those who will go to the front-line and confront the enemy head on in the strength of the Lord (Eph 6:10) with the weapons of the Lord, of course. We have four general fronts to fight: the world, sins, our own flesh and the devil. The apostle Paul fought a good fight; he finished the course; and he kept the faith (2 Tim 4:.7). May we all be able to say the same at the end of our lives.

Yet we must remember that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. We are not to use our own cleverness, our temper, eloquence, scheming, guile, politics, backside influence and maneuvering – all these are out of the question. We walk as those who are in the light. We are told in 2 Corinthians 10:4: "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God... bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" – this will accomplish far more than what we can muster up in even in our collective effort. And of course, never forget to wield our only pieces of offensive weapons against the enemies is the Word of God and prayers (Eph 6:17-18).

The Fourth call is to walk becomingly. "Let us walk properly, as in the day; not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy." The walk encompasses every aspect of the whole of Christian life. The original Greek word used here for “properly” can be better translated as to “walk becomingly;” in other words, to walk as befitting a Christian soldier of Christ, to walk consistently, and to “walk the talk” or to practice what you preach/speak. It means to not only be hearer of the Word but also doer of the Word (James 1). This also includes the five walks in Ephesians: to walk worthy of the calling wherewith we are called (4:1), to walk not as the Gentiles walk (4:17), to walk in love (5:2), to walk as children of light (5:8), and to walk circumspectly (5:15), that is, to walk carefully with great vigilance on how we use our time ( – is it being used for the furtherance of God's kingdom or for our own interests?), because this verse is immediately followed by “redeeming the time...”

Finally, the Fifth call is for us to put on Christ: "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts." We mentioned above many things that we need to put off, but here is one thing we must put on – the Lord Jesus Christ. Envelop and immerse yourself in Him. Galatians 3:27 says, “For as many as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ;” however, putting on Christ is not a once for all exercise. We need to continually put on Christ. And the wonderful verse of Galatians 3:27 gives us a picture of what is to put on Christ... by immersing ourselves in Him! In other words, in whatever we do or say, we need to be found in Christ (Phi 3:9a). The emphasis is not Christ in us, but we in Christ. This indicates that the initiative is dependent more on our side and our cooperation with Him. To immerse ourselves in Christ also means to die to ourselves just as the picture of baptism shows us in figure. Thus, to put on Christ is living the crucified life – the life that is fully surrendered to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Spirit, that He might live His life through us to the praise of the glory of His grace. In short, to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” is to live the life of “Not I... but Christ” (Gal 2:20).

People do not like to hear much about the crucified life these days, because it means total self-denial and the setting aside of our own self-will, self-interests, self-glory, and a self-centered life. A crucified man does not have his own will, opinion, ideas, preferences, or glory; rather it is a place of shame, of total self-abnegation and self-denial. He has no plans of his own. Being nailed on the cross, he cannot making up his own mind about his plans and what he is going to do, because he is not going anyway and in fact, he is dead to himself! Henceforth, the Lord shall made up his mind for him, set the direction of his life and he is subjected to the Lord's authority. As we die to our self-life, the life of Christ shall then come forth in resurrection and be manifested in our lives.

Indeed we are living in an hour of crisis not only because of the increasingly evil and darkness surrounding us, but also because we are living in the last days when the Lord shall soon return. The time is very short. But thank the Lord! For now is our salvation nearer than when we first believed. If even the apostle Paul back in the first century A.D. believed in the imminent return of the Lord Jesus Christ when he wrote this epistle, how much more we are truly living in the generation when the Lord will return... if we are vigilant, we cannot help but see the situations in many churches like that of Laodicea as prophesied in Revelation 3 that would characterized mostly the churches at the end times and see the storm clouds gathering on the horizon that spells persecution was soon coming upon those who named the name of Christ, and both the natural calamities have already gradually increased in both intensity and in frequency, while the supernatural calamities looms on the horizon.

Dear Saints, nobody knows exactly how much time we have left, but it would be prudent of us to be like the wise virgins who are fully prepared for the Lord's coming by first being awake out of our spiritual slumber. “Therefore He says: “Awake, you who sleep; Arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light” (Eph 5:14). It is high time we wake up and listen to the Lord's call! Today’s churches and society throughout the world are in crisis, and we have been put here by the sovereignty of God as the salt of the earth and the light of the world. We need to realize our calling and our mission for such a time as this! It is time for Christians to heed the call. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev 2:7, 11,17, 29, 3:6, 13, 22, 13:9) We need to all awake out of sleep! Cast off the works of darkness! Put on the armor of God! Walk becomingly! Above all, put on Christ! For apart from Christ, we are nothing, we have nothing of true value before God, and we can do nothing of eternal worth!

Lord, “teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psa 90:12).