Last month we considered how Christ, in His life on earth, made maximum use of the time He had to do His Father’s will. We did so in the light of Christ’s own words, “I must work the works of Him that sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work” (John 9:4). We will now seek to consider Him as our example; we too, by God’s grace, are to make good use of our time in this world. We have only a “day” in this world, but we do not know how long our day will last, how long we have until the night of death will fall on us, when we will have no further opportunity to do anything here on earth to God’s glory.
First, let us think on the situation of those who are still unconverted. They have sinned; their sins have not been washed away; they are still under condemnation. And that condemnation will continue unless they will look by faith to Christ Jesus as the One who came into the world as the Substitute for sinners. They have only a limited time – maybe a very limited time – in which to find Christ. In contrast with a literal day, when sunset and the darkness of the literal night that follows it can be exactly predicted, we cannot normally know when any of us will pass from this world into eternity. This darkness could fall without any warning, and the unconverted soul will enter “the blackness of darkness for ever” (Jude 13), where no light, nothing good, nothing conducive to happiness, no glimmer of gospel hope can ever enter.
How earnest everyone who has ever heard the gospel should be to make use of their opportunity while the day of gospel light lasts, to find Christ, salvation through Him and deliverance from eternal darkness! What authority we should feel to lie behind the call, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found”, to search for the Lord and the salvation He has set before us, before the darkness of eternal night falls and it becomes absolutely impossible to find salvation. It is God who has spoken; He knows the reality of the matter. Surely we should take Him seriously and seek Him at once. As another year draws to an end, we should feel all the more the urgency of the situation.
The same divine authority lies behind the words that follow: “Call ye upon Him while He is near” (Is 55:6). Christ is near us now, but He will not always be near. When the darkness of death comes, He will leave those who have rejected Him to the consequences of their sin; they can never again be called to come to Christ. Commenting on this verse, Matthew Henry warns, “There is a day coming when He will be afar off and will not be found, when the day of His patience is over and His Spirit will strive no more”. Henry further, and even more solemnly, warns, “There may come such a time in this life when the heart is incurably hardened”. It is as if a night of permanent spiritual darkness descends, before death, on some who have gone on wilfully rejecting Christ, refusing to call on Him while He was near them, as they sat under the preaching of the gospel. May we realise how serious a matter it is for sinners when Christ comes near them in the gospel and they remain determined not to seek Him or to call upon Him!
Yet there is a great danger of people imagining that they are walking in the light, on the way that will bring them to everlasting glory, although they have never sought the Lord in the way that He has appointed and have never called upon Him in faith. Christ warned, “Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name, and in Thy name have cast out devils, and in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity” (Mt 7: 21-23). Nightfall would come and find them unprepared. Whatever their standing in the Church, whatever their religious activities, whatever other people thought of them, Christ would not know them – He never heard them calling on Him from a sense of spiritual need. How great is our need to make our calling and election sure (2 Pet 1:10).
Second, believers, who have sought Him and found Him, still need to consider Christ’s example in making full use of the opportunities provided by the short “day” of life. Abraham and others like him, who lived by faith in the coming Messiah, considered themselves to be “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Heb 11:13). As a stranger, or a foreigner, Abraham did not belong to Canaan, and spiritually he did not consider this world to be his home. As a pilgrim, or a temporary resident, Abraham, so to speak, did not have a permanent visa for residence in Canaan; so he knew he would not stay on in this world indefinitely. That is how God’s children today are to think of themselves: they will not be here always. So it is their duty to follow the example of Christ and make full use of their opportunity, while the light of this life remains, to live according to the will of God and do whatever they can for His glory.
Some of them may feel that, because of their circumstances, they have no opportunities to serve God. Edward Pearse was a noted Puritan minister who suffered from tuberculosis for some time before he died in 1673, when he was only about 40 years old. He was conscious, in declining health, that he had done comparatively little of what he had wished to do; no doubt he felt that his opportunities for doing good had come to an end. But he prayed earnestly that something that he had done might be useful after he passed away; he was anxious to work while his short day of life would last. God answered his prayer through a book he wrote, entitled, The Great Concern, or, A Serious Warning for a Timely and Thorough Preparation for Death.1 One assumes that the person who recorded his prayer believed that the Lord had blessed this book to many souls after the author’s death.
Others may feel that, because they are not ministers and do not have any prominent role in society, they have no opportunity to do anything spiritually useful. But we may notice two ways in which every believer may do good to others and may live, however imperfectly, to God’s glory.
(1.) Paul speaks of believers being an “epistle . . . known and read of all men” (2 Cor 3:2). Other people could recognise in the lives of the Corinthian believers evidence that their attitudes had changed, and their whole manner of life was different. As these other people read such a letter, they may have asked questions about the source of the change and, having been told that it was through Jesus Christ, they may have gone on to ask further questions. When people live a consistent godly life today also, it may have a good effect on those who, for example, work with them. By God’s grace, their outward lives show something of love to God and their neighbour. May believers seek grace, so that they may be epistles that others may read and so be led to seek true religion! And even if these epistles are ignored, and no good is done to anyone else, God is glorified in the holy lives of His children.
(2.) Even those who, in their providence, scarcely come in contact with others may make good use of the remainder of their “day” on earth through their prayers to God. What encouragement to persevering prayer the Saviour gives through his parable of the “importunate widow”! She went on asking for justice from the unjust judge and, in the end, he gave her what she pleaded for. “And”, Jesus added, “shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry day and night unto Him, though He bear long with them? (Lk 18:7). Will He not answer persistent prayer? Indeed He will. Yet their time to serve Him in this way is limited; indeed nightfall may come far sooner than expected. May believers get grace to make full use of their opportunity to “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that [they] may obtain mercy” (Heb 4:16) for themselves and for others, for the Church and for the whole world!
1Pearse is best known today for his The Best Match; he was also author of two other books.