There have been many answers given to that question. One has been
that to be ready means to be perpetually having before us the
thought of the coming of the Lord, and that has been taken to be the
meaning of the watchfulness which is enjoined in the context. But
the parable itself points in an altogether different direction. Who,
according to it, were ready? The five who had lamps and oil. To have
these was readiness.
It is beautiful to notice how these five who _were_ ready when
the Master came had 'slumbered and slept' like the other five. Ah!
that touch in the picture shows that 'He knoweth our frame; He
remembereth that we are dust.' It is not in human nature to keep up
permanently a tension of expectation for a far-off good; and in
profound knowledge of the weakness of humanity, our Lord, in this
parable, says: 'While the Bridegroom tarried they _all_ slumbered'--and
yet the five were ready when the Bridegroom came. In like manner,
Christian men and women who have no expectation at all that the
Second Coming of the Lord will occur during their lifetimes, may
nevertheless be ready, if they have the burning lamps and the store
of oil. The question then comes to be, What is meant by these?
Perhaps harm has been done by insisting upon too minute and specific
interpretation. But, at the same time, we must not forget that, from
the very beginning of the Jewish Revelation, from the time when the
seven-branched candlestick was appointed for the Tabernacle, right
down to the day when the Apocalyptic Seer saw in Patmos the Son of
Man walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, the
metaphor has had one meaning. The aggregate of God's people are
intended to be, as Jesus told us immediately after He had drawn the
character of a true disciple, in the wonderful outlines of the
Beatitudes, 'the light of the world,' and they will be so in the
measure in which the gentle radiance of that character shines
through their lives, as the light of a lamp through frosted glass.
But the aggregate is made up of units, and individual Christians are
to shine 'as lights in the world,' and their separate brightnesses
are to coalesce in the clustered light of the whole Church. What
makes an individual Christian a light is a Christ-like life, derived
from that Life which was 'the Light of men.' The lamp which the five
wise virgins bear is the same as the light which the consistent
Christian is. The inner self illuminated from Christ, the source of
all our illumination, lights up the outward life, which each of us
may be conceived as carrying in our hands. It is not ourselves, and
yet it is ourselves made visible. It is not ourselves, but Christ in
us; and so we shine as lights in the world, only by 'holding forth
the word of life.'
That modification of the figure by Paul is profoundly true and
important, for after all we are not so much lights as candelabra,
and only as we bear aloft the flashing light of Christ shall we
shine 'in a naughty world.' Our lamps, then, are Christ-like
characters derived from Christ, and to have and bear these is the
first element in being ready for the Bridegroom.
Dear friends, remember that this whole parable is spoken to
professing Christians and real members of Christ's Church; and that
there is no meaning in it unless it is possible to quench the light
of the lamp. Remember that our Lord said once, 'Let your loins be
girt,' and put that as the necessary condition of lamps burning.
'Let your loins be girt' with resolved effort of faith and
dependence, and make sure that you have the provision for the
continuance of the light. So, and only so, shall any man be of the
happy company of them that were ready.