[Songs in the Night - November 21]
Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. Ephesians 5:14
WHEN the believing, converted, consecrated, begotten,
sleeping "new creature" has been awakened—when
the eyes and ears of his understanding have been
opened to see the true conditions of the world, and to
realize himself as a new creature in Christ—his next
duty is to "arise."
His arising from the dead signifies
the activity of the new mind, the new will, in directing
and controlling his mortal body.
This implies effort;
the putting forth of all the energy of the new creature.
It requires no effort to sleep, or to lie after one gets
awake; but to rise requires the exercise of every muscle.
Arising is not an instantaneous act, but a process
requiring one movement after another, until it is fully
accomplished; so also is the arising of the new creature
from the dead conditions of sin and trespass against
the laws of righteousness and truth and purity; it requires
his every effort, and is a work of time.
Indeed
all experienced Christians who have followed the
apostle's injunction to arise from the dead have found
that it requires days, months, years, of energetic effort
to rise up above, superior to the fallen tendencies of
his own flesh, common to the world of mankind.
He
finds that even after he has risen fully up, so that he
does not wilfully practice sin, nor countenance it in
any sense or degree, he still must be on his guard
lest he be entrapped by the weaknesses of his mortal
body; or by the allurements of the world; or by the
temptations of the Adversary; and thus stumble again
over some of the things of sin and death from which he
had arisen by the Lord's grace. Z'02-73 R2967:1 (Hymn 20)