Most of us feel but little the stern reality underlying the metaphor,
that the whole Christian life is warfare, but that in that warfare there
are crises, seasons of special danger. The interpretation which makes
the 'evil day' co-extensive with the time of life destroys the whole
emphasis of the passage: whilst all days are days of warfare, there will
be, as in some prolonged siege, periods of comparative quiet; and again,
days when all the cannon belch at once, and scaling ladders are reared
on every side of the fortress. In a long winter there are days sunny and
calm followed, as they were preceded, by days when all the winds are let
loose at once. For us, such times of special danger to Christian
character may arise from temporal vicissitudes. Joy and prosperity are
as sure to occasion them as are sorrows, for to Paul the 'evil day' is
that which especially threatens moral and spiritual character, and these
may be as much damaged by the bright sunshine of prosperity as by the
midwinter of adversity, just as fierce sunshine may be as fatal as
killing frost. They may also arise, without any such change in
circumstances, from some temptation coming with more than ordinary
force, and directed with terrible accuracy to our weakest point.
These evil days are ever wont to come on us suddenly; they are heralded
by no storm signals and no falling barometer. We may be like soldiers
sitting securely round their camp fire, till all at once bullets begin
to fall among them. The tiger's roar is the first signal of its leap
from the jungle. Our position in the world, our ignorance of the future,
the heaped-up magazines of combustibles within, needing only a spark,
all lay us open to unexpected assaults, and the temptation comes
stealthily, 'as a thief in the night.' Nothing is so certain as the
unexpected. For these reasons, then, because the 'evil day' will
certainly come, because it may come at any time, and because it is most
likely to come 'when we look not for it,' it is the dictate of plain
common sense to be prepared. If the good man of the house had known at
what hour the thief would have come, he would have watched; but he would
have been a wiser man if he had watched all the more, because he did
_not_ know at what hour the thief would come.