We are still considering, as most of you will remember, the last section in the 13th chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

So let me read again from verse 11 to the end of the chapter, 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 believe.

The night is far spent. The day is at end. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness

and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering

and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not

provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereon. This is the last great appeal that the Apostle makes to us and to these Romans, to whom he first wrote,

to put into practice the instructions with regard to daily life and living,

which he has been outlining in the whole of chapter 12 and this chapter

up until the end of the seventh verse.

He's already given us another motive, and that is that this is the way to fulfill the royal

law of love, or the commandments asunder briefly in this saying, namely, thou shalt love thy neighbor

as thyself. But then here is an additional inducement. Here is grounds of his final appeal.

Now, I've suggested that this statement here in these verses quite naturally can be divided into two main sections.

He puts doctrinal considerations to us. He reminds us of the doctrine which we've already believed.

Indeed, his whole case is based on that. He introduces it with the word knowing.

If we don't know these things, well, then his appeal falls to the ground.

But he assumes that we know these things, and we've considered what those things are.

We know the time in which we're living.

We realize the nature and the character of the world in which we're living.

We know something about where we are going, and the life that awaits us there, and we're aware of what's happened to us, ourselves.

Now, in the light of all these things, we draw certain deductions, and we've already done that.

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