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§32 The Future Is Retroactive (Rom. 13:11–14)

Christians sometimes make contradictory claims about their faith, for faith, like life, cannot be reduced to purely logical categories. A parent, for example, can love and hate a child at the same moment, or so it seems. Christians likewise assert one thing about God and then another thing quite different—but also quite true. Early in Romans Paul spoke of justification as though it were entirely of God. “When we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son” (5:10). It sounds as though we had nothing to do with it (which, in fact, we did not). That is the forensic or juridical meaning of justification. But in chapter 12 Paul began speaking of human involvement in the salvation process. “Offer your bodies as living sacrifices” (12:1), and “put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light” (13:12). The emphasis shifted from righteousness before God to righteousness in human relationships, from being accounted right with God to becoming right with ourselves and others. Salvation thus has an already and a not yet aspect. Christians are already justified by faith, but not yet conformed to the image of God’s Son.

The present section bears similarities in theme and vocabulary to Ephesians 5:6–20. Paul again (cf. 12:9–15) rises to poetic felicity with his careful balance between day and night, darkness and light, with the three couplets in verse 13, and especially with the imagery of putting on Christ.

In chapters 12–13 Paul rooted Christian behavior in agapē. He now adds that the final day of salvation is an equally important stimulus to Christian transformation. The admonition of 12:2 not to be conformed to this age is here completed in the transformation of life by the age to come. The model of the resurrected Jesus is even now the pattern for Christians. The teaching of the final consummation of salvation is no outmoded appendage to Christianity. It is, in fact, the eschatological perspective of the gospel which prevents Christianity from being reduced to a philosophy or moral code. The expectation of the return of Christ preserves the central truth of the faith. Christianity is a relationship with the person of Christ which begins in “cloth[ing] yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ” (13:14) and ends in glory by being fully “conformed to the likeness of [God’s] Son” (8:29).

13:11–14 / The present time of verse 11 is not clock-time, but the unique moment of time which began in God’s sending his Son (Mark 1:15; Gal. 4:4–6) and which concludes at the final revelation of Jesus Christ as Lord of all. It is the eschatological moment which transforms the otherwise monotony of time into an opportunity for decision and salvation. Paul utilizes imagery common to other NT writers in verses 11–14 (the hour [v. 11], waking from slumber [v. 11], night and day [v. 12]) to admonish believers to faithfulness before the coming Day of the Lord.

The present is a time of night and slumber, when the mind (see 12:2) is weak and inactive, and when ignorance, confusion, and wickedness prevail. But the night is nearly over (v. 12), and the day of salvation is nearer now than when we first believed (cf. Heb. 10:25; 2 Apoc. Bar. 23:7; 1 Enoch 51:2). Note the imagery. Paul does not say that people are getting better, or that the world is improving, or that humanity will find a way to overcome its problems and usher in the kingdom of God. Not even believers determine the nearness of salvation, but the nearness of salvation determines them. The present is a time of crisis not because of anything we do, but because of what God will do in the future. Even now the light of the coming age shines into the darkness of the present. With Abraham, believers see deadness in their bodies and the world around them (4:19); but because of the resurrection of Jesus and the beginnings of new life in them, they know that the deadness is not the final reality. The sharp antithesis between present and future is conveyed even by the consistent use of the aorist tense in this section. This sets before readers a summons to decisive action and recalls the vocabulary of conversion, or perhaps even the liturgy of baptism.

Believers can walk in the light because they are properly clothed in armor of light (v. 12), indeed in the Lord Jesus Christ (v. 14). They are to be done with shameful acts, with orgies and drunkenness, sexual immorality and debauchery, dissension and jealousy (v. 13). The word translated orgies (Gk. kōmoi), which originated in the Bacchus cult, means carousing and revelry to excess. In Greek the first four terms are plural, connoting frequency or habitual behavior. These are the properties of the flesh or sinful nature (v. 14).

Christians are summoned to cater no longer to the flesh, but to clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ (v. 14). The concrete imagery (getting up in the morning and getting dressed) is an unusually common metaphor for such a profound spiritual reality, and it reminds believers that the life of faith is not an esoteric or mystical experience, but a life of discipleship, intentionally following Jesus in the most common and practical matters. Discipleship is following Jesus step by step in the direction he leads, as opposed to any other, and, as the Greek says in verse 13, “walking honorably.” The idea that “the clothes make the person” is a theological truism in this instance, for in “putting on Christ” believers discover that Christ’s character and behavior become their own. This far exceeds mere morality, important as that is. It means claiming Christ’s identity as our identity, his way in the world as our way, and his promise of the future as our path in the present.