Awake Out of Sleep

Paul encouraged the Saints in Rome with these words: “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light” (Romans 13:11-12). Reading those words yesterday made me laugh now that I am tasked with the difficult job waking up a teenager for school each morning—Paul has given me some great language to use—but of course his encouragement was not about physical sleep but spiritual apathy. His words remind me of those of Lehi to his sons: “O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe. Awake! and arise from the dust, and hear the words of a trembling parent…. Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust” (2 Nephi 1:13-14, 23). Lehi yearned for Laman and Lemuel to come out of the spiritual fog they were constantly in and see the light of the Lord. They were asleep as to spiritual things and refused to understand the ways of the Lord, or as Zeniff put it: “They understood not the dealings of the Lord” (Mosiah 10:14). Lehi’s son Jacob used similar language to his people many years later: “O my brethren, hearken unto my words; arouse the faculties of your souls; shake yourselves that ye may awake from the slumber of death; and loose yourselves from the pains of hell that ye may not become angels to the devil, to be cast into that lake of fire and brimstone which is the second death” (Jacob 3:11). We have to come out of the “slumber of death” and awaken to the light of the Lord. Alma described the process that his fathers went through in these words: “Behold, [the Lord] changed their hearts; yea, he awakened them out of a deep sleep, and they awoke unto God. Behold, they were in the midst of darkness; nevertheless, their souls were illuminated by the light of the everlasting word” (Alma 5:7). Each of us must ultimately go through that transformation to have our hearts changed and to come out of spiritual sleep to awaken unto God.  

                It may be that Paul and these Book of Mormon writers who encouraged us to “awake” unto the Lord got this metaphor from Isaiah. The prophet wrote these famous words: “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old…. Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling, and wrung them out…. Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean” (Isaiah 51:9, 17; 52:1). The Lord in our day explained what Isaiah meant here: “He had reference to those whom God should call in the last days, who should hold the power of priesthood to bring again Zion, and the redemption of Israel; and to put on her strength is to put on the authority of the priesthood, which she, Zion, has a right to by lineage; also to return to that power which she had lost” (Doctrine and Covenants 113:8). So perhaps to truly awaken unto the Lord and put on His strength is to put on the full power of the priesthood. And we do that through the ordinances of the priesthood: as we are baptized, receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and make other covenants with the Lord through the authority of the priesthood, we are being awakened unto Him. That is, I believe, how we then fulfill Paul’s later injunction in the same chapter: “But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:14). We must awaken to our covenants with Him and put on Jesus Christ through the ordinances He provides us in His gospel.