Life, not Law

Important Times

This process started as a result of reading almost the whole bible in a different translation and finding things - strange!

Romans 13:11 Do this because we live in an important time. It is now time for you to wake up from your sleep, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. That’s in the NCV. 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. Thats’ the NKJV

That stopped me in my speed reading! Do I ever feel inadequate when called upon to speak to the church - and especially in these important times! But we are living in important times. The Covid19 crisis has been joined by the campaign against racial discrimination as issues of national and international importance.

Before we come to that, there is something else that ‘woke’ me in that passage. I have always thought of salvation in a number of ways. First of all it was an event, something that took place in my life that brought a dramatic change in my life - and character. Eph 2:18 Then I began to see that it is also a process - something that is still ongoing as in 1 Cor 15:1-4 . Next, and this took me some time to come to - Jesus is salvation. In Lk 2:30 Simeon prays that he can now die as he has ‘seen your salvation’ - a baby! But now Paul is talking about ‘salvation’ that is still ahead, up there in the future! And he was not talking just about those pesky Romans, it is ‘our salvation’ which is ‘nearer than when we first believed. In 1 Peter 1:3-5 we read

So what are we to do in these important times?