Salvation is Near

September 10, 2023 homily on Exodus 12:1-14 and Romans 13:8-14 by Pastor Galen

The school year started a few weeks ago, and with it, I resumed the morning ritual that I carry out faithfully every weekday for 10 months of the year: urging, begging, reminding, and cajoling our kids to wake up and get dressed because it’s time to get ready for school. (Some of you might remember those days!)

On Saturdays and during summer vacation, getting dressed is not really an urgent task for our family. On those days, my kids like to keep their pajamas on as long as possible. In fact, when they were younger, they made up a song entitled “All Day in My P.J.s,” which pretty much describes their ideal day. But on school days, waking up and getting dressed is both urgent and important.

Salvation is Near

In Exodus chapter 12, Moses instructed the Israelites to eat their Passover dinner “with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover.” (Exodus 12:11b NIV). The Israelites had to be dressed and ready to go so that they could flee at a moment’s notice, as soon as they were released from captivity.

The Israelites had been enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, but now they were almost free. And so, on that first Passover evening, each family was instructed to kill a lamb and put some of the blood on their doorposts so that God would “pass over” their house and not bring the final plague on their household. They were to have their bags packed and eat their dinner dressed and standing at the door with their walking sticks in hand, ready to flee as soon as Pharaoh told them they could go. 

In Romans chapter 13, the Apostle Paul uses similar language to describe the urgency of the present time, saying, “It is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near (Romans 13:11,12a, NRSV). Paul urges his readers to “lay aside the works of darkness” (or in other words, the evil deeds that people tend to do under the cover of darkness, or at night), and to instead “put on the armor of light” (Rom. 13:12b NRSV) and to “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14 NIV).

The Message paraphrase of Romans 13:12-14 says it this way: “Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting the finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed. We can’t afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours in frivolity and indulgence…Get out of bed and get dressed! Don’t loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute. Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about!”

Paul sounds a lot like a parent telling his children to get ready for school, doesn’t he? “We must not squander these precious daylight hours…Get out of bed and get dressed! Don’t loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute. Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about!” (I might have to add some of these phrases to my morning routine!)

In both Exodus and Romans, there is a sense of urgency because there is a unique window of opportunity that might be missed if we are not “dressed” and prepared to go at a moment’s notice. 

For the Israelites, they might have missed their chance at freedom, since Pharaoh eventually regretted his decision to let them go. If they hadn’t been ready to leave at a moment’s notice, they might have remained enslaved in Egypt for the rest of their lives! (That’s a whole lot worse than missing the bus to school!)

Similarly, Paul wants to wake us up to the urgency of this moment, saying “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near” (Romans 13:11). We cannot afford to waste a single moment. We must not linger and loiter. Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first became believers.

Past, Present, and Future Salvation

Some of us might be confused, since we may be used to hearing about salvation mainly in the past tense. People talk about how they got saved, or ask the question, “Are you saved?” We might wonder, why then does Paul speak with such a sense of urgency here if salvation is something that has already been accomplished?

But in the Bible, salvation is talked about in the past, present, and future tenses. As one United Methodist Bishop pointed out, “Salvation may be understood as past if we think of what God has done for us in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Salvation may be understood as future if we think of the promise of resurrection to eternal life to those who believe in Christ. And, salvation may be understood as being present for all of us who participate in a new creation now by our faith in Jesus Christ through the energy of the Holy Spirit.”

In these verses Paul is focusing on the future aspect of salvation, urging us to be awake and to be alert, and not to waste a single moment, for we never know when Christ may return. We long and look forward to the day when Christ returns to make everything right, when we will spend eternity with God. But while we wait with hopeful anticipation for that day, there is much work to be done here and now, and we must not waste a single moment. We are called to pray and work for God’s Kingdom to come and for God’s will to be done here and now, on earth, as it is in heaven, even while we await the final fulfillment of the Kingdom.

And so we must get up, and get dressed. We must eat our dinner hurriedly, and have our walking sticks in hand, ready to go at a moment’s notice, making the most of each and every day, for freedom and salvation surely is near.

Clothed in Christ

Now of course the clothing that Paul is talking about here is not physical clothing. Rather, he says that we should “lay aside the works of darkness” (which, remember is referring to the evil deeds that people tend to do under the cover of night, which he lists here as reveling and drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness, and quarreling and jealousy) and we should instead put on the armor of light” (Rom. 13:12) and “clothe [ourselves] with the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14 NIV). 

Here we see some of the distinctiveness of the Christian faith. There are a lot of religious traditions that are essentially about self-improvement. Getting rid of toxic energy, transcending the physical realities of this life. Removing harmful habits and activities from our lives so that we can become better versions of ourselves. We’re told that the truth is within us, and all we need to do is ignore all of the distractions so that we can focus on the beauty within. 

But Paul is telling us not telling us to ignore the painful realities of life, nor to simply try to avoid harmful practices, but rather to cast them aside (as it says in the KJV). And he’s telling us instead to put on the armor of light and the Lord Jesus Christ. Here Paul is recognizing that we need help from an external source—God (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). It’s not just about finding the beauty within us or removing all of the evil deeds from our lives. If we try to do that, we’ll just keep revealing more and more evil deeds inside, since the reality is that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (see Romans 3:23) and “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10).

Rather, being clothed in Christ is about opening ourselves up to God’s work in our lives. And it’s about allowing God to transform us more and more into the likeness of Christ. It’s about being clothed with Christ’s righteousness and taking on the attitude and actions of Jesus Christ.

In the previous verses Paul has been extolling the importance of love, saying “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8). And so, undoubtedly, putting on the armor of light and putting on Christ describes a life marked by love—both for our neighbors, as Paul describes here in verse 10, and even our enemies, as Paul talks about in the previous chapter. 

What Would Jesus Do?

One movement to try to get Christians to be more loving life Christ was the What Would Jesus Do movement, or WWJD.

The phrase became particularly popular in the 1990’s, after a youth group leader in Holland, Michigan inspired the youth in her church to make bracelets with the phrase, inspired by Charles Sheldon’s book from the early 1900’s, entitled In His Steps. Wearing W.W.J.D. bracelets was a wonderful way to remind Christians that following Jesus is not just about going to church on Sunday mornings, but it is about seeking to live for the honor and glory of God each and every moment of the day, as we talked about last week.

One problem was that for many, WWJD bracelets eventually became so popular that they were no longer a convicting reminder of the need to submit everything in our lives to the lordship of Jesus Christ, and instead became a fashion symbol of sorts in the Christian world. In his book, The Irresistible Revolution, author and Christian activist Shane Claiborne even talks about a businessman who confined to him, “‘I too have been thinking about following Christ and what that means, so I had this made.’ He pulled up his sleeve to reveal a bracelet engraved with WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?). It was custom-made of twenty-four karat gold.”

One thing Jesus would probably not do is to spend a lot of money buying a solid gold WWJD bracelet when there are so many people facing poverty and housing insecurity in our world! And yet Shane Claiborne says that many of us “can relate to this man – both his earnest desire to follow Jesus and, bound up in the materialism of our culture, his distorted execution of that desire.” 

This is one reason why community is important. It’s important that we seek to follow Christ together with other believers. It’s so easy for us to lose sight of what’s important, so easy to get sidetracked, so common to become complacent. We need a community of other faithful followers of Christ to help wake us up, to remind us of the urgency of the moment, that there is no time to waste. 

Salvation is indeed nearer to us than when we first believed. So let us be dressed and ready, casting aside every distraction, and being clothed with Christ, making the most of each and every day, so that we can be ready when he comes.

Amen!