Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1445
“That, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” Romans 13:11.
THIS exhortation, as you will readily perceive, is not addressed to the ungodly. These words are not spoken to those who are dead in sin, but to those who are alive unto God, though somewhat given to slumber. There are many expostulations and admonitions which appeal to the willful and wicked, to the indifferent and unbelieving, to those who err and are out of the way, but this is not one of them. Here we have a special charge to disciples of Jesus who know the time and also know that their salvation draws near. They are represented as being asleep and needing to awake from their present sluggishness. But they are not described as those who had ceased to be Christians, or whose salvation was in jeopardy. Though it is admitted that it is high time for them to awake out of sleep, their salvation is never questioned, but on the contrary they are reminded that now it is nearer than when they believed.
The tone and tenor of this call to circumspection suggest to us that when we address the Lord’s people and find occasion to rebuke and reprove them, we should never insinuate that they are likely to be banished from the household of faith, or to be cast away from the Presence of God, or to be treated as reprobates. Even if we feel convinced that they are asleep and that they must be awakened, we ought not to denounce them with railing accusations or threaten them with the wailings of the lost and the doom of unquenchable fire. You would not be pleased if anyone should touch your child with a horsewhip—nor will the Lord allow us to strike His chosen with the rod of the wicked. Legal thunders are not intended for justified saints—
“The terrors of Law and of God With us can ha ve nothing to do. Our Savior’s obedience and blood Hide all our transgressions from view.’
Even if the saints’ hearts are dull, their eyes heavy and they are evidently fast asleep, we are not warranted in raising a false alarm. It is not for us to tell the heirs of salvation to awake because they are in danger of the wrath to come, for they are in no such danger—that is past and gone. Rather let us remind them that their salvation is nearer than when they believed and so stir them up to watchfulness and activity by appropriate motives. The whip is for the slave, not for the child. The dread of punishment is for the condemned, not for the justified. The fear of wrath is not for those who are “accepted in the Beloved,” but for those who reject the Savior and put from them the eternal mercy of God.
While, then, I endeavor to speak frankly and faithfully to the Lord’s people, I shall try to avoid anything like a legal tone. I would gladly talk to God’s children as their Father in Heaven would have them talked to, somewhat sharply, perhaps, but still without a trace of the threats which belongs to the ungodly, but not to those who are saved in the Lord. From the connection it appears to me that Paul had in his mind’s-eye a kind of sleepy state into which God’s people may fall with regard to others—and upon that state of slumber we shall speak tonight.
I. Looking at the text in its true bearings, this is the lesson—SOME PROFESSING CHRISTIANS SEEM TO BE ALTOGETHER IN A DEAD SLEEP WITH REGARD TO OTHERS. It is all very well to take a passage of Scripture, isolate it from the context, and use it as the slogan of a sermon. But it is evidently not the natural and fair way of treating the Word of God. You may do so, for the most part, with tolerable safety, for God’s Truth, even when it is broken up into little pieces, still retains its purity and perfection like certain crystals, which, however much they may be subdivided, always bear the same crystalline form. So true in every particle and detail is the Revelation of God that though you should take it up and dash it to pieces, yet every little fragment will bear the original impression.
But this is no excuse for treating the Scriptures in an unjustifiable manner instead of expounding them according to the rules of common sense. Texts ought always to be handled with a reverential deference to the mind of the Divine Spirit who wrote them. When we attempt to rivet your attention on a verse or the fraction of a verse of the Bible, we desire you, also, to be scrupulously attentive to the affinities in which it stands. If any of my published sermons should in any instance appear to violate this rule, you will bear me witness that it has been my constant habit throughout all my ministry among you to read and open up, as best I could, the whole chapter from which I have selected a few words as the emphasis of my discourse. I have honestly endeavored to give you the special mind of the Spirit either in the exposition or in the sermon.