Ephesians 5:16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. A better rendering would be, "Buying up the opportunity, because the times are hard." But no mere translation can fully convey the idea St. Paul had in his mind. The picture or parable suggested by the Greek is this. Here stands a wise and wary merchantman, keen for spiritual traffic and gain. Like Milton, he has fallen on evil times; on "bad times," as men of business would say. The days drag slowly by, bringing him few means of moral culture, rare occasions in which he can trade with his talents and make them more. But, at last, as the caravan of Time moves tardily by, among the captives in its train he espies an opportunity such as his heart has long craved. He leaps at it, seizes it, redeems it, i.e., pays a price for it, and makes it his own. This seems to have been the conception, the picture, in the apostle's mind. And thus he defines the Christian attitude toward Time. Its days and hours are for the most part in bondage to vanity and corruption. We are to watch them as they pass by, keen and prompt to rescue them from their bondage, to set them free by devoting them to the service of God and man, to purchase any precious opportunity they may bring with them, whatever it may cost us. There are many reasons why we should take and maintain this attitude. 1. Opportunities are only too apt to slip by unrecognized. Even the wisest of us is hardly wise enough to recognize his opportunities till they are past. As a rule our days are samely and monotonous. There is not sufficient difference between them to awaken attention and inspire hope. Our days, moreover, come to us masqued for the most part, so that even when they bring us a great opportunity, we do not recognize its greatness at the time, and therefore do not seize upon it and improve it as we should if we knew its worth. The current of our life is often turned by seeming trifles, which we assume to be quite incapable of seriously affecting it. When the crises of our life occur, when the great opportunities come to us, which come so seldom, they are hidden from us by a multitude of subsidiary accidents and occurrences. If there were no God above us, ruling even the accidents of life for our good, and working out the counsels of His will even when we let our wills drift on the tide of chance or drive before the waves of impulse, what would become of us all? 2. These opportunities, critical as they are, when once they are gone, can never be recalled. The occasion once lost, can never be recalled. Says Plato, "It is quite clear, quite clear, that if a person lets the right moment for any work go by, it never returns. For the thing to be done does not choose, I imagine, to tarry the leisure of the doer." Our past neglects should lend new force and urgency to the apostolic injunction, "Redeem the time," and make our obedience to it more prompt and vigorous. Today we may listen to the Divine voice to which yesterday we were deaf. Today we may renounce those hurtful passions and lusts which ought to have been renounced long ago. Today we may begin to grasp occasions as they rise, and to do the duty we have often thought of doing, and even talked of doing, but have not done. 3. But if we set ourselves to seize and redeem present opportunities, we shall need to remember that they are only to be redeemed at a certain cost. In St. Paul's view these opportunities were as captives which the days led by in chains; and to redeem a captive we must pay a price. We can avail ourselves of no occasion of serving God and man except as we rouse ourselves to labour and self-sacrifice. And these sacred opportunities, like the Sibylline books, both rise in price and grow fewer every time we refuse to purchase them. If it be hard to subdue passion and the cravings of irregular desire today, it will be harder tomorrow, should we leave the hours of today unimproved. If it would cost us much to do what we know to be the will of the Lord today, it will cost us more every day we neglect our duty. 4. Finally, the apostle warns us that when the times are hard, we should be the more eager to redeem the opportunities they bring us. Hard and evil times, indeed, bring opportunities of a special value, not only because they are scarce, but also because they have a great intrinsic worth. Nay, more, hard times, sorrowful times, times of temptation and difficulty, are themselves opportunities of preeminent value. Then, if ever, we have a chance of showing of what stuff we are made, of testing and proving the sincerity, the genuineness, of our religious life. Too often we forget that every provocation, wrong, loss, hardship, is an opportunity to be redeemed; that it is sent by God even though it comes from men; that He tasks our strength to test our character, to teach us what we really are, to wake us up from any delusion into which we have fallen about ourselves. (S. Cox, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. |
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