Romans 13:11

Romans 13:11. And this. It is not necessary to supply anything; the sense is: and ye should the rather do this, i.e., Move one another' (Romans 13:8), as afterwards expanded.

Knowing the season; since ye know the season. What this means is then explained: that it is already time, etc. We prefer this rendering as more exact

For you. The received text has ‘us.' which does not appear in the E. V., but the oldest authorities support ‘you,' which is the subject of the following infinitive. We therefore supply ‘you' in our explanation of the preceding part of the verse, the whole being hortatory in its tone.

To awake out of sleep; it is already time that you should awake out of sleep. Meyer joins ‘already' with the infinitive clause, which seems unnecessary. Since this exhortation is addressed to Christians, ‘sleep' must be taken in a relative sense, and explained of ‘the state of worldly carelessness and indifference to sin, which allows and practices the works of darkness. The imagery seems to be taken originally from our Lord's discourse concerning his coming: see Matthew 24:42; Mark 13:33, and Luke 21:28-38, where several points of similarity to our Romans 13:11-14 occur' (Alford).

For now (not the same word as ‘already') is salvation nearer to us (or, ‘is our salvation nearer') than whom we first believed. This is the motive for the preceding exhortation. Of the renderings we give, the former is favored by the order of words in the original. ‘First believed' is a correct paraphrase, indicating the single act of faith with which the Christian life began. ‘Salvation' is regarded by most of the recent commentators as referring to the second coming of Christ. Others object to this view on the ground that it implies a mistaken expectation on the part of the Apostle, as well as because either the word ‘coming,' or, ‘appearing,' would be used, if that were the sense. The latter objection is not of much weight, since the word ‘salvation' often has a future reference, and in the Apostle's mind the blessedness of the future was intimately associated with the coming of the Lord. Further, even if Paul had a personal hope that the Lord would soon return, that did not interfere with his so writing that his teaching corrected the errors of others, because it was itself inspired. He himself knew that he could not know the time; and therefore he could not, and did not, teach any error on this point. Indeed, the very statements which are used to prove that he had this expectation prove even more clearly their own adaptation to the needs of the waiting church. They have been literally true in their application to Christians for centuries. On this great subject the Apostle taught the truth, as well as rebuked error. But Stuart, Hodge, and others maintain quite strongly the exclusive reference to the deliverance from present evil, the consummation of salvation for the individual believer in eternity. Undoubtedly we must accept such an application and press it as a motive, but the other view seems to be the correct one.