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Time is precious. As Christians, how are we to use it? Does the gospel offer any help on this issue, or are we left to our commonsense and to the "wisdom" of secular time-management specialists?
If you go looking in the New Testament for practical "how-to" information on time management you won't find it. But what you will find are principles that shape the way you use time.
You will find, for example, that the gospel teaches that our lives are united to Christ through faith. We are no longer our own but are members of his body. We have been raised with him and our lives are hidden with him in God. Christ has, in fact, become our life. Consequently, all we do in word or deed is to be done in his name (1 Cor. 6:15, 19-20; Col. 3:1-4, 17).
As F.F. Bruce puts it in his commentary on Colossians 3:1, "believers have no private life of their own. Their life is the life of Christ, maintained in being by him at God's right hand and shared by him with all his people. Their interests must therefore be his interests" (The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians, NICNT, p. 134).
This surely should affect how we use time. If we belong to Christ, we must use our time for Christ. We must keep him foremost in our thoughts when deciding what to do in any particular situation. We belong to him and are called to live every moment of our lives for him. How then, we must ask ourselves, can I best use my time and strength for him?
This is not to say that we must be always preaching the gospel or attending church meetings. Life in Christ is broader than that. It includes our family life, our recreational life, and our work life. Everything we do is to be done "unto the Lord", as those who serve Christ not men (Col. 3:23-24). This means that even when we are romping with our children, striving on the sports field, and toiling in our workplaces, we must still be using our time for the Lord.
The gospel tells us something else about our use of time. It tells us that we will have to fight to use it well. Sin's corrupting influence has affected this aspect of life as well as others. Our own selfish inclinations, the charms of the world, and the deceptions of Satan all tempt us to misuse time. Calvin put it well in commenting on Ephesians 5:16 when he wrote, "Everything around us tends to corrupt and mislead; so that it is difficult for godly persons who walk among so many thorns, to escape unhurt." As a result of this, he continues, "time cannot be dedicated to God without it in some way being redeemed." We have to "buy it back" as it were, and we can only do this as we "withdraw from the endless variety of allurements which would easily lead us astray; to rid ourselves from the cares and pleasures of the world; and in a word, to abandon every hindrance." The gospel tells us, in other words, that effective time management will involve an intense struggle.
These are just two ways in which the gospel affects our approach to using time. There are others as well. Together they provide an essential spiritual context for time management. At the practical, day-to-day level, there is still a place for "budgeting time" and using "proven" time management techniques. But by themselves these will never guarantee that we use time "unto the Lord". Nor will they give us the strength to do it. Only the gospel can do that.