Redeeming the Time

How do you spend your time? Do you spend it wisely for the Lord and eternity or waste it on trivial and meaningless things? As the next most precious thing to life itself, how we spend our time speaks volumes about us.
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In English we have a phrase ‘redeem the time.’ It comes from Ephesians 5:16 (c.f. Colossians 4:5, “Making the best use of the time”). It is a command of the Lord’s. To redeem means to buy out of the market (i.e. to purchase a slave), or more simply to rescue. Time means not quantitative chronological time but qualitative time like an opportune moment, critical juncture or a strategic period. Because the “days are evil” to walk in wisdom means not to waste our time in sin or meaningless activities.  These are dead ends. To redeem the time means to spend our time in ways that honour the Lord, have eternal significance, help others and enrich our lives. We redeem the time by putting the Lord first in our week (the Lord’s Day), prioritizing His will in our lives (“seek ye first” Mt 6:33), doing all that we do out of a biblically and prayerfully rooted life, being productive (Christian work ethic), planning out our weeks, engaging in wholesome and meaningful activities, etc.

Two giants of church history and the evangelical revival stand out to inform and inspire us.

Jonathan Edwards (1703–58)
Evangelical minister of Northampton, MA. He not only witnesses and was part of revival but through his prolific writings helped to spread revival.

Early in his ministry he crafted his 71 Resolutions, which reveal a Puritan-evangelical piety.  One is to “Never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.”[1]

William Wilberforce (1759–1833)
Evangelical Anglican and Parliamentary abolitionist of slavery.

Saved from a wasteful life Wilberforce went on to say in his best selling book, Real Christianity (1797), "No man has a right to be idle. Where is it that in such a world as this, that health, and leisure, and affluence may not find some ignorance to instruct, some wrong to redress, some want to supply, some misery to alleviate?" He devoted himself to two great aims, “the abolition of slavery and the reformation of manners [the Gospel]” In the 1790s he kept a ledger in which he noted how he spent his time. If he wasted 15 minutes in a day he would lament![2]

God calls us to redeem the time. Will we heed his call?


[1] George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards (2003), 51; Edwards, J., The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 1, Banner of Truth Trust, 1974, lxii.

[2] This may give the impression that rest is wasteful, but this couldn’t be further from the true. Both men remembered the Sabbath day and took restful delight in many other areas of life. It does mean that they were intentional about how they incorporated rest into life, it was meaningful rest vs. pure amusement (amuser in French means to not think).