Redeeming the Time.
I. The words of the text in the English version have become proverbial, "Redeeming the time"; but the words of the original, although they would hardly bear to be differently translated, are even more expressive: buying up the opportunity; not missing anything of what the passing moment has to give. And if the call is significant, so also is the reason of the call: "because the days are evil." To some men the feeling that they have fallen on evil days has an enervating and paralysing effect. They spend their time in inquiring why the former days were better than these, or torment themselves and others with timorous apprehensions concerning the future. Not so reasoned, not so acted, the leaders of the early Christian congregation. Although "the days darkened round them, and the years;" although they thought that the world in which they lived was doomed to destruction, coming suddenly in an instant; yet this made to them only more imperative the duty of proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of heaven, of using this world as not abusing it, of living to the glory of God. And if the same spirit is amongst us still, making those who partake of it in any measure to be as He was in the world, it will be like a sharp goad within them, ever driving them onward to "redeem the time." It is true that as individuals severally we can do very little; but that is the reason why we should all together resolve to be up and doing, to awake and live.
II. The Apostle warns us that in order to redeem the time, to buy up the opportunity, we must seek to understand the problem of our age; in other words, we must ask what our Lord would have us do as Christians. We cannot err in thinking that God is calling us in this present age to diffuse as widely as possible every element of good; to draw class and class together, or rather to draw together man and man; to diffuse the treasure that was saved to us in the ark of the early Church; to bring all the rays of goodness and truth that shine upon us from the past or from distant lands into one focus, to harmonise them through a liberal application of the Spirit of Christ. Let us then make full use of the opportunity, and eagerly buy up the golden hours while they last, in the deeply grounded hope and faith that even this age may be made a means of blessing to the coming ages. The Christian aim and motive are not bounded by the horizon of time, and we believe that every true endeavour on the side of good, every right word and noble act, though it may fail of earthly continuance, though it may find no acceptance amongst men, has yet a place among the eternal things, and is of enduring value in the sight of God.
L. Campbell, The Christian Ideal,p. 223.
References: Ephesians 5:15-17. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. v., p. 31.Ephesians 5:15-21. Ibid.,vol. ii., p. 302.