Woke, or Awakened?

It’s tough to keep up with the changes in language. Lately, you need to know whether you’re “woke” or not.

According to Merriam-Webster, “woke” means “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues.” But these “important facts and issues” don’t have much to do with what we used to learn in school: spelling, math, literature. They have much more to do with hot-button cultural issues, like racism, issues of social justice, and gender-identity. If you’re not “up” on these subjects, and even more so, “with it,” you’re not “woke.” I guess that means you’re “un-woke.”

A couple of us are using a selection of sermons by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, called “Saved by Grace Alone: Sermons on Ezekiel 36:16-36” as a discipleship tool. At the close of a chapter on the phrase, “I will put My Spirit within you,” he asks about our “awareness,” and whether or not we have been “awakened” by the Gospel. And so I ask the question, are you “Woke,” or “Awakened”?

I think there is a big difference. On the one hand, “woke-ness” insists that you need to be taking your cues from the culture. It is shifting swiftly, and you need to keep moving and changing to keep up. On the other hand, “awakened” implies that you have been asleep, as though you were dead, and have been “brought to” by the grace of God in the form of the Gospel message that God is real, that Jesus, His Son is alive, and that what was accomplished on the cross is the remedy you need to be restored to fellowship with God, and to have the image of God re-created in you. 

The second term, “awakened,” is a response of faith to a message, and to a Person who stands behind the message, and to a Person who is the center of the message. It is to be rescued from the old life, and to begin anew, living in the light of forgiveness, and in the hope of glory, serving the One who saves you.

This, unlike “woke-ness,” is not evolutionary. Rather, it is revolutionary. You can become “woke” by listening and learning. But that won’t result in redemption. For that, one needs to be “awakened,” “born again,” “saved.”

John Newton wrote the song, “Amazing Grace.” “I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see.” He could have added a line: “once dead, but now alive; asleep, but now awakened.”