In the season of Advent, we wait. God is on his way and we anticipate with joy and longing. The news that God plans to soon show up in our day, in our schedule, in our moments of hurt and confusion, ought to stir something up within us. Excitement, hope, and perhaps some uneasiness about the things in our lives we’d like to rectify as we prepare for his sudden presence in our midst.
“You know what time it is,” writes Paul in Romans 13:11-14. “It’s time for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers. The night is far gone and the day is near.” So much of what the Bible has to say to us is about waking from sleep. We do not have to make something happen, but rather wake up and become soberly alert to the something that God is doing.
This is Advent: wake up! The sun is rising and it’s time to put the darkness behind us! How does Paul define this “darkness?” Reveling, drunkenness, illicit sex, licentiousness, quarreling, and jealousy. We’re all guilty of something on this dark list (13:13). Where any of these vices are present, the “flesh” (ego) is alive and well. God is doing a new thing, something saturated in his light with no shadows for the ego to hide its secret desires. Salvation is closer than before, nearer to us than when we started. God’s desire to transform our hearts and minds is closer than before. God’s power to snatch us away from sin’s grip and make us completely his is closer than before.
We often use the word salvation to refer to our status in the afterlife; to be saved is to be assured that we are indeed “going to heaven when we die.” But that’s only a slice of what we mean, and what the bible means, when we say the word salvation. Salvation is God’s total claim upon us, God’s total renovation of the human heart, God’s rescue operation to deliver us from the power of sin and death over us. Salvation means God has not only slotted us into the category of saved, but has made us something fundamentally new, something truly in tune with the rhythm of his love and will and wisdom, something that has come out of the dark and into his purifying light. That salvation is nearer to us that when we first began.
And this is always true. When we woke up this morning, salvation was closer than before. When we lay down in bed tonight, salvation will be closer than before. The next time we drive to work. The next time we go to the doctor. The next time we sit down for a meal. The next time we beat ourselves up for the mistakes we make. The next time we feel afraid. God’s loving, redeeming, transforming action in our lives will be closer to completion than it was before. This can never not be true. And it is never in doubt.
We get to anticipate this happy news. We get to lean forward with excitement, joy, hope, and imagination at what God’s transforming work is doing in us and through us. It’s closer now that it has been any time before. What does this promise make us want to do in the meantime? What kind of prayers does it make us want to pray in the meantime? What habits does it make us want to form in the meantime?
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