Prayer is the work
What the “watching” believers are to do in these texts is not watch for Christ’s return, but watch their own life in light of the return of Christ. Believers need constantly to be “awake” to the nature of the times they live in—the “last days” of eschatological “fulfillment without consummation”—and to orient their lives accordingly.9
A study revealed that an average seventy-year-old man has spent twenty-four years sleeping, fourteen years working, eight years in amusements, six years at the dinner table, five years in transportation, four years in conversation, three years in education, and two years in studying and reading.
His other four years were spent in miscellaneous pursuits. Of those four years, he spent forty-five minutes in church on Sundays, and five minutes were devoted to prayer each day. This adds up to a not at all impressive total of five months that he gave to God over the seventy years of his life.
Even if this man had been a faithful churchgoer who attended Sunday school and three one-hour services per week, he would have spent only one year and nine months in church!i
The phrase “Watch and pray!” is used often in the Bible. It had its beginning in Bible history when Nehemiah was rebuilding the walls and gates of Jerusalem: “Nevertheless we made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch against them [the enemy] day and night” (Neh. 4:9).
There is no power in dull, listless praying. If there is no fire on the altar, the incense will not rise to God (Ps. 141:2). Real praying demands spiritual energy and alertness, and this can come only from the Holy Spirit of God. Routine prayers are unanswered prayers.
A true appreciation of the believer’s status, “dead” to the world and its powers, “alive” to God in Christ with all one’s sins forgiven, and destined for glory, will inevitably produce thanksgiving. And such an attitude of thanks will serve as a powerful deterrent to the inroads of the false teachers as well as a stimulus to pray.
While resisting the wrong kind of outside influence, the Colossian Christians nevertheless need to stay engaged with their fellow citizens and seek to win them to Christ.
Paul views the time in which believers find themselves as caught in the tension of the “already … not yet.” Believers live after the initial coming of Messiah and the inauguration of the redemptive kingdom. But they also live in expectation of a second coming of Messiah to complete the work of redemption. Paul has alluded to this tension in 3:1–4, and his call for believers to “watch” in v. 2, as we have seen, may also allude to this eschatological sense of time. Therefore the need to “buy time” is especially imperative because of Paul’s sense of the “shortness of the time” (1 Cor. 7:29).37 He does not mean by this that the Lord will return within a specified short period of time, but that the return of the Lord is always impending, rendering it entirely uncertain how much time we will yet be given. An important aspect of wise living is to use the (short) time God has given us to best effect. In Colossians, because of the focus on “outsiders,” this will refer specifically to making the most of the “open doors” (cf. v. 3) that God gives us to evangelize.38