Deeper Reflection
IT IS BY PUTTING ON “THE BREASTPLATE OF FAITH AND love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation” that we can “be sober” and “keep awake” as “children of light, children of the day” and not be surprised by Christ’s Second Coming (vv.4-8). To be “sober” (nēphō) has to do with the mind and behaviour. It means to be “well composed in mind; to be in control of one’s thought processes and thus not be in danger of irrational thinking”¹⁸, and “to behave with restraint and moderation, thus not permitting excess in passion, rashness or confusion”¹⁹. To “keep awake” (grēgoreō) means “to remain awake because of the need to continue to be alert and watchful, with eyes open, being able to see what is happening”²⁰.But we believers can be spiritually drunk. “To be drunk spiritually is to imbibe too much of the world’s way of looking at things and not enough of the way God views reality. To be intoxicated with the world’s wine is to be numbed to feeling any fear in the present of a coming judgment.”²¹ It is “the overall numbing of one’s sensibilities to God”²². Paul elsewhere contrasts drunkenness with being filled with the Holy Spirit (Eph 5:18). When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, with “the Word of Christ dwelling in us richly” (Col 3:16), we will be enlightened to see the way God views reality. We can also be spiritually dead – “spiritually indifferent”²³. The danger in spiritual slumber is “you are alive, but you are dead”; and for this condition, Christ says to us, “Wake up!” (Rev 3:1-2).

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¹⁸ Johannes P. Louw & Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, Second Edition, Volume 1 (UBS, 1988, 1989), 30.25 ¹⁹ Johannes P. Louw & Eugene A. Nida, 88:86 ²⁰ Johannes P. Louw & Eugene A. Nida, 23:72 ²¹ G. K. Beale, 147 ²² Gary S. Shogren, 208 ²³ Jeffrey A. D. Weima, 1-2 Thessalonians, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2014), 358