Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

I looked up the word "awake" and found that is occurs 42 times in the King James translation. It is an interesting word. Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 13:11 the following, "And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." If we read the entire context, verses 8-14 we will find that love for one's neighbor is the theme. The Bible here is not speaking of the gushy love called by some sloppy agape so many try to make it mean. But rather as Paul said in 1st Corinthians 15:34a, "Awake to righteousness, and sin not..." Here, of course, he is speaking about whether or not the dead are raised. But in the verse previous he admonishes us not to be deceived for bad company will corrupt our godly manner of life. Oh yes, we should "awake to righteousness."

In 1st Corinthians 6:9-10 the Apostle asked the question, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God." Hey, we all fit the description somewhere in there for Paul went on in the next verse and said, "And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God."  We have been washed clean from the sins of our past lives, this is no time to go back to them.

"God is love," so said John in 1st John 4:8. But the kind of love that some show is as if a man were drowning and they were standing by saying, swim man, swim while he was yelling I can't swim! No, sloppy agape won't do the job. Apostle Peter said in 2nd Peter 2:22 "...But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." Again I would encourage you to read the entire chapter to get the context, which says in part, "While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption..." Let me say that the "they" in these scriptures are any who will say that God is love but will not declare "all the counsel of God," as Paul said he did in Acts 20:27. All the counsel of God is not only "His great love wherewith He has loved us," but also the coming judgement when we shall all stand before "the judgment seat of Christ" to give account for the deeds we have done. And we will give account! (see Ephesians 2:4 and 2nd Corinthians 5:10)

This Apostle Paul said in Ephesians 5:14, "Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." Again I would encourage you, whoever you are, to read from verse 1 to get the context of what Paul is saying.  The lord Jesus will give you and I light. John, who wrote that "God is love," also wrote in 1st John 2:15-17 "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."  If we will so do, we will be able to say with David of old in Psalm 17:15, "As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." As the old song says, "Oh that will be glory for me..."