Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
Ephesians 5:16
The time that God has allocated to each of us is limited.
The world loves money, and spends all its time in procuring the coveted commodity. As the saying goes, ‘time is money’. While there is truth to this saying, the time spent in procuring money is the more valuable of the two commodities. A man can regain lost money, but he cannot regain lost time.
Every man will one day render an account to God for the way he has spent his time. Alas! How much of this most precious of possessions have we poured out as though it were worthless?
Billions of hours are sucked into oblivion every day in this age of instantaneous media. If the depraved festivals of Bacchus made the days at Ephesus evil, how much more does the 24/7 access to perversion make our days evil? Even media that may not be evil in and of itself can delete years from our lives if we aren’t frugal.
While lost time is gone forever, we may determine to discipline our lives so that forsaken moments may in a sense be redeemed. In the previous verse to the one under examination, the Apostle remonstrates: ‘Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light' (Ephesians 5:14). By the virtue in the blood of Christ, we are commanded to arise from the state of being ‘dead in trespasses and sins’ (Ephesians 2:1). The same redeeming blood may so invigorate the remaining hours of our sojourn – and be productive of such good - that they who truly accept Christ even ‘redeem’ those hours that were lost in sin.
By active self denial, we may switch off from the world’s myriad distractions, and fix our gaze upon Christ’s redeeming virtue. So efficacious is His blood that even lost time may be redeemed through it.
Christopher Sparks