And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed.  (12) The night is far spent, the day is at hand.  Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light.  (13) Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy.  (14) But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts. 

The great letter to the Romans was written by the apostle Paul to the Christians in Rome. Our verses today are an imperative from Paul to be awake and walk in God’s light.  This present world of our senses is not lasting; it’s beauty is but a shadow of the real thing. But we, as believers are promised the glory of the real thing if we persevere. And this future glory is by Gods free grace in Christ. The world of the unbeliever is in darkness concerning  God and man; in darkness concerning our purpose for living – and in spiritual death for all eternity.

Salvation here concerns our completed salvation, not just our justification in faith when we are transformed in Christ. The time Paul refers to is this present age between the first and second coming of Christ. The first coming of Christ was for the salvation of all who believe  and the second is for judgment.

C.S. Lewis writes so eloquently in his paper ‘The Weight of Glory’:  “St. Paul promises to those who love God not, as we should expect, that they will know Him, but that they will be known by Him. It is a strange promise.  Does not God know all things at all times?  But it is dreadfully reechoed in another passage of the New Testament.  There we are warned that it may happen to anyone of us to appear at last before the face of God and hear only the appalling words “I never knew you.  Depart from me”. In some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased from the knowledge of Him who knows all. We can be left utterly and absolutely outside – repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored. On the other hand, we can be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged. We walk every day on the razor edge between these two possibilities.”