I’ve been reading slowly through Romans for the last two weeks. Just a chapter a day. Today I was in chapter 13 when the Lord impressed on me the urgency of today. As I was reading, reflecting, and studying, I was reminded that those who are in Christ strive daily to live godly lives. 

I would like to be the person who doesn’t need the reminder, or the conviction, but I am grateful for the daily grace the Lord gives through time in His Word. 

Romans 13:12-14 says, “The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

Don’t put off putting on!

These verses at the end of Romans 13 provide the urgency that we are to live by. Similar to the way that Paul writes in Colossians 3 that we are to do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are instructed that the time for putting off living for the Lord is over. 

The Christian life is not lived in the shadows; it is done in the light.

The Christian doesn’t wait for the right time to be godly or to do the right thing. No! As Paul says, the night has gone and the day is at hand. In 2 Corinthians 6, Paul quotes Isaiah when he says that today is the day of salvation, meaning we don’t delay in our faith or our obedience. 

And David wrote in Psalms 118, “This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

James Montgomery Boice writes that it was these verses in Romans that led to the conversion of Augustine. Augustine was moved from the posture of waiting one more day to trust the Lord to surrendering in the moment when he read. 

Augustine wrote in his Confessions of this moment: 

“No further would I read, nor did I need; for instantly, as the sentence ended—by a light, as it were, of security infused into my heart—all the gloom of doubt vanished away.” 

Reader, I pray that you capture the urgency of today and no longer delay your response to the call of the Lord. 

Put off what belongs to the dark, put on what belongs to the day. 

Don’t put off putting on Christ!