The Sleep of the Church.
There are many thoughts crowded together here, but each is necessary to the other. They will not bear to be separated, but we must disentangle them by considering how each of them bears on our own life and practice.
I. It is clear that the sleep or torpor which the Apostle speaks of is not one into which Jews or heathens had fallen. He was not writing to them. He was writing to a society of men confessing the faith of Jesus Christ, declaring Him to be the Image of God and the head of men. How could the Apostle think that such a society should fall into sleep? Because he knew what the temptation to it was in himself. He knew that he, who had been called by Christ Himself, who had had visions and revelations, who had been in the third heaven, might sink into indifference and listlessness.
II. A society is sleeping a death-sleep when its love becomes stagnant, when it is not a vigorous operative power. Now, St. Paul knew that no circumstances imparted this love to him; that if he depended on circumstances it perished. From personal experience he could testify that love to man might be as much killed by frosts as by suns; that if it is not kindled from within, everything from without may be fatal to it.
III. And how does he ward off the danger from himself? What contrivance does he use to wake them out of their slumbers? He reminded them that this indifference, lovelessness, this contention, self-seeking, was the accursed state out of which Christ came to redeem them. It was this hell into which He found His creatures sinking. It was to rescue them from this hell that He took flesh and dwelt among them and died on the cross and rose again and ascended on high. They had received the first pledges of this Redemption, of this Salvation. They had been enabled to feel and suffer for others, to desire their good, to love them as themselves. It was but a beginning; the glimpse of a Paradise; a first taste of the Tree of Life. They had a natural gravitation to self-indulgence, a preference for self-will, a desire for self-glory. These tendencies were always threatening to become supreme. Therefore St. Paul bids them think of the salvation which Christ had promised as something yet to come, as a blessing yet to be attained. This salvation from all which clogged their progress and hindered them from seeing things as they were this salvation from lies, from hatred, from indifference was all contained in the promise that He in whom is light and no darkness at all should be fully manifested. Every day and every hour was hastening on this manifestation, and therefore this salvation.
F. D. Maurice, Sermons,vol. v., p. 15.
Self-denial the Test of Religious Earnestness.
I. By "sleep" in this passage St. Paul means a state of insensibility to things as they really are in God's sight. When we are asleep we are absent from this world's action as if we were no longer concerned in it. It goes on without us, and if our rest be broken and we have some slight notion of people and occurrences about us, if we hear a voice or a sentence and see a face, yet we are unable to catch these external objects justly and truly; we make them part of our dreams, and pervert them till they have scarcely a resemblance to what they really are: and such is the state of men as regards religious truth. Many live altogether as though the day shone not on them, but the shadows still endured; and far the greater part of them are but very faintly sensible of the great truths preached around them. They see and hear as people in a dream; they mix up the Holy Word of God with their own idle imaginings; if startled for a moment, still they soon relapse into slumber; they refuse to be awakened, and think their happiness consists in continuing as they are.
II. If a person asks how he is to know whether he is dreaming on in the world's slumber, or is really awake and alive unto God, let him first fix his mind upon some one or other of his besetting infirmities. Many men have more than one, all of us have some one or other, and in resisting and overcoming such self-denial has its first employment. Be not content with a warmth of faith carrying you over many obstacles even in your obedience, forcing you past the fear of men and the usages of society and the persuasions of interest; exult not in your experience of God's past mercies, and your assurance of what He has already done for your soul, if you are conscious you have neglected the one thing needful, daily self-denial.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. i., p. 57.
I. The text tells us what we are. St. Paul is addressing Christians, yet even they are asleep. Sleep is a torpor of the powers. The more complete the suspension of the energies, whether of brain or muscle or limb, the deeper, the sounder, the more thorough is the sleep. If the Christian man is spoken of as sleeping, it must be with reference to the inactivity, to the torpor, of his characteristic activities. St. Paul does not say that we sleepers may not be dreamers, may not be imaginers, may not be somnambulists. This would be just his idea of the Christian sleeper. The children of light, living like children of the world, what are we, while this is true of us, but sleeping men, haunted by phantoms, disquieted by night's illusions, and traversing (candle in hand) the chambers and halls and gardens of earth, with eyes closed and sealed to the light of an immortal day?
II. To awake out of sleep what is it? There are acts of the soul as well as of the life. There are critical moments and there are decisive actions in the history of man's spirit. St. Paul knew this knew it in himself. A moment changed him from an enemy to a friend. He never looked back. It has been thus in ten thousand lives. St. Paul seems to recommend this kind of transaction a transaction between a man and his soul, between a man and his life in the short sharp watchword of the text.
III. The text adds a motive. "It is high time to awake." The nearness of the Advent is the motive for the awaking. It is a gratuitous supposition that St. Paul positively expected the Advent within the lifetime of the then living. St. Paul knew who had said, "Of that day and that hour knoweth no man," and yet had coupled with it the warning, "Therefore, be ye always ready." Each generation the first not least each successively until the latest should live in the expectation, gilding the darkness of death by the brightness of the coming. Happy they to whom it can be said, Christians, awake, for your salvation draweth nigh. This is the motive of the text.
C. J. Vaughan, Sundays in the Temple,p. 1.
References: Romans 13:11. E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation,p. 373; H. J. Wilmot Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year,p. 1; R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons,1st series, p. 1; Homilist,3rd series, vol. iv., p. 286; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. vii., p. 282; G. E. L. Cotton, Sermons and Addresses in Marlborough College,p. 481; H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit,No. 2893.Romans 13:11; Romans 13:12. G. Moberly, Parochial Sermons,p. 1; Homilist,new series, vol. ii., p. 456.