Sober Christians

by Pastor Cornelius R. Stam

“Let us, who are of the day, be sober…” (I Thessalonians 5:8).

Many people entertain the erroneous idea that truly spiritual Christians must always be solemn and long-faced. In fact, they suppose that such Scripture passages as the above teach this.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, for the word “sober,” in our English New Testament does not mean solemn, but completely under control. This is also true of the original Greek word from which the English word “sober” is translated.

Sobriety in Scripture, as in modern English, is the opposite of drunkenness. This is brought out in the rest of the passage cited above. Along with its context, the above exhortation reads as follows:

“For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken be drunken in the night.

“But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and for an helmet the hope of salvation.

“For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,

“Who died for us that… we should live together with Him” (I Thessalonians 5:7-10).

Thus those who are “of the day,” and know Christ as their Savior, should not “sleep” on the one hand, or “be drunken” on the other, but should be awake and alert, their faculties completely under control, so that they might witness the more effectively to the saving grace of Christ.

If ever there was a time when true Christians should “watch and be sober,” it is now.