In with Him

Picture the procession, and picture yourself walking in it.

It is deep in the night, and the street is full of light. Ten young women have lifted their torches, and the fire dances above their heads, yellow and alive, casting shadows that move along the white walls of the houses. They have been waiting for hours. They have gone out to meet Him — the bridegroom, who is coming tonight to fetch His bride and bring her to the feast. And then, at the hour when no one expected it any longer, at midnight, it rings out through the sleeping city: "Behold, the bridegroom is coming! Go out to meet Him!" (Matthew 25:6). And the procession sets in motion. The torches go ahead, the light moves through the streets, the voices sing, and at the end of the road the banquet hall glows — the doors stand open, the tables are set, and inside waits the wedding feast that will last for days. And those who were ready, those who had oil, "went in with Him to the wedding" (25:10).

Not the closed door — that comes, and it is terrible, and it will be faced. But first this: the going in with Him. The cry that makes your heart leap. The procession that takes you up and carries you through the night. The flame above your head that lights the way. And then the threshold of the banquet hall, and the warmth that meets you, and the Bridegroom who turns and looks at you and says: come in, the feast is for you. This is where the whole parable leads for those who understand it most deeply: not the fear of being left outside, but the longing to go in with Him.

No parable of Matthew paints the glory so brightly and closes so inexorably. A wedding — the most open, most exuberant village feast the ancient world knew, where for days on end there was eating and drinking and dancing — here ends, for half the company, with a bolted door and five words at which a heart stands still: ouk oida hymas, "I do not know you" (25:12). And precisely for that reason it must sound aloud. Not to frighten you. To drive you to the oil, tonight, while the merchant is still open. For a name in the baptismal register is not oil in the lamp.

So first the glory. Only afterward the shadow it casts. Order is law. Whoever sees only the closed door reads a threat and is paralyzed. Whoever sees the feast first hears the warning as it is meant: not "watch out that you do not fall outside," but "a feast awaits that you would not miss for anything — make sure you are ready."

The third panel of a watchful discourse

This parable does not fall from the sky. It is the third panel of a five-part series. The whole discourse in which it stands — the Olivet Discourse, spoken on the Mount of Olives, facing the temple — is one long answer to one question of the disciples: "When will these things be, and what is the sign of Your coming?" (Matthew 24:3). And the answer comes out the same every time: you do not know the hour, so be ready.

First the days of Noah, in which people simply went on living, "until the flood came and took them all away" (24:39); then the thief in the night, who comes when the master of the house does not expect it (24:43). Conclusion: "Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect" (24:44). Then, just before the ten virgins, the faithful and the wicked servant. The faithful one is called phronimos, "wise" — the same word that will soon mark the wise virgins. The wicked one says in his heart: "My master is delaying" (24:48, the same chronizō, to tarry, as with the bridegroom) — and the master comes on a day when he does not expect him. After that the ten virgins, and after that the talents and the sheep and the goats.

Five times the same posture: faithfulness in the task, sustained expectation with one's own reserve, fruitful labor, the deed of mercy — each time the same heart: live as if He may come at any hour. And note to whom this is spoken. Not to the crowds, not to the opponents. To the disciples. To those who already follow and await Him. The company out of which the foolish virgins fall is from the outset a company of confessing expectants — and precisely for that reason this parable strikes us, who grew up in the church, who confess Him, who suppose that all is well, most sharply.

The ten who went out

See them before you, those ten. Bridesmaids, young women, parthenoi — the word Matthew also uses for the mother of the Messiah (1:23) and that Paul chooses when he presents the church "as a chaste virgin to one Husband" (2 Corinthians 11:2). They belong to the feast. They are invited, chosen to walk in the procession of honor. This is not a story about outsiders who never belonged. This is a story about people who stand right in the midst of it.

And note what they have in common, for that is nearly everything. All ten took their torches. All ten went out, into the night. All ten wanted to be with Him; none of them stayed home. All ten believed that He was coming. All ten waited. And — this detail makes everything sharp — when the waiting grew long, all ten fell asleep. "They all became drowsy and slept" (25:5). Not five. All ten. The wise slumbered just as much as the foolish.

If you had seen those ten women that evening, you would not have noticed the difference. Ten torches burning. Ten looking out for the bridegroom. Ten dozing off when it grew late. The difference lay hidden, in something small that only came to light at the decisive hour.

For there was one distinction, and only one. "The foolish took their torches but took no oil with them. The wise took oil with their torches, in their vessels" (25:3–4). That is it. Not their zeal — both groups went out. Not their wakefulness — both groups slept. Not whether they loved the bridegroom — both groups went out to meet Him. Not the torch — both carried one, and both burned when evening fell. The only difference was the reserve. The extra oil. The vessel that the wise took along and the foolish left standing.

In Depth — Lampas and elaion: a torch that devours oil

The word here translated "lamp" is lampas, and it is no chance choice. Matthew could have written lychnos, the small clay lamp one sets indoors on the stand (Matthew 5:15) — a dish of oil with a wick, that burns quietly for hours. But he chooses lampas: a torch. A staff with an oil-soaked cloth wrapped around it, made to burn outdoors, fierce and high, to light a procession through dark streets. (Well documented.)

That difference is load-bearing. A household lamp consumes its oil slowly; a torch devours it. The cloth burns fierce but brief and must be doused again and again, or it dies out after a few hours. Whoever takes a torch for a night that stretches on needs reserve — vessels, a supply to refill from. The oil is called elaion, ordinary olive oil, the fuel of the whole ancient Middle East; it falls four times in this short parable (25:3, 4, 8, 9). Alongside it stand the aggeia: the separate storage vessels in which the wise carried their extra oil, apart from what was already in the torch. (Well documented that the wedding torch quickly consumed fuel and had to be refilled.)

See now how symmetrically the parable is built, for that symmetry is the message. Ten virgins. All take torches. All go out. All wait, slumber, sleep, are woken by the same cry, rise, trim their torches. Point for point the two groups run parallel — and at exactly one place they diverge: the five wise took oil along in their aggeia, the five foolish did not. One detail, tucked away in verse 4, that determines the whole outcome. The foolish were not foolish because they had no torch; they had one, and it even burned. They were foolish because they took along an implement that devours fuel, without the fuel to keep it burning. And so: at midnight "our torches are going out" (25:8). Not because they had never burned — because there was nothing left to keep them burning. (Whoever still reads lampas as "lamp" does not lose the point: it is about flame and oil, and about the reserve that sustains the duration.)

A torch without oil

A torch without oil. Something that looks like light but cannot sustain it. Something that belongs to the procession, that has the form of devotion, that even truly flames at the start of the evening — and that fails at the decisive hour, because beneath the flame there was no supply.

This is the sin to which this parable points you, and it is not the sin you expect. Not the gross one. Not the man who walked away from the feast, not the open scoffer who said: there is no bridegroom coming, I am going home. The foolish virgins are not the scoffers. They believed He was coming. They went out. They carried their torch just as proudly as the others. Their sin was subtler, more comfortable, far harder to see — and therefore far more dangerous. Their sin was that they lived off the flame of the moment without their own reserve.

For it is so easy to carry a torch that is not your own. So easy to burn on another's oil. Think about it honestly, tonight. How much of what burns in you is your own? And how much is borrowed?

There is a piety that lives off the faith of your parents. You grew up with it, you breathed it in as a child, and it is good and you may be thankful for it — but it is their oil, not yours. There comes a midnight when the question is no longer what your parents believed, but what you have. There is a piety that lives off the warmth of the congregation. You go there, you sing along, you feel the presence in the hall, and the glow of fifty burning torches around you warms your face too — and you think you are burning, while you are only standing near people who burn. That is borrowed light. And there is a piety that lives off an old experience — a conversion years ago, a touch at a camp, a night when God was truly near — and you are still living on the afterglow of it, on the memory of a flame, without anything having been refilled since.

It is not enough to walk in the procession. Not enough to carry the torch. Not enough to feel the warmth of others and think it is your own fire. On the midnight of which this parable speaks, the Bridegroom does not ask whether you belonged. He asks whether you have oil. And another's oil no longer burns for you then.

The tarrying, and the sleep

There is something in this parable that must not be skipped over, for it is the sharpest comfort and the sharpest warning at once: the bridegroom tarries. "While the bridegroom was delayed" (25:5) — chronizō, the same word that sounds from the mouth of the wicked servant: "My master is delaying" (24:48). The bridegroom comes later than anyone had thought. The evening becomes night, the night becomes deep night, and still he is not there. And precisely that long waiting is the sieve that separates the two groups.

For as long as the bridegroom had come quickly, no one would have seen the difference. Had he appeared right after sunset, the torches of the foolish would have lasted easily — there was still oil in them, after all. The shortfall became visible only through the duration. The tarrying made the reserve the test. And this is precisely why a faith calculated only for the short term fails: it does not reckon with the waiting. Not with the years in which heaven is silent, in which the flame of the first enthusiasm has burned up and nothing has been refilled.

This is the distinction between the child and the adult in the faith. The child lives from hand to mouth: from feeling to feeling, from blessing to blessing, and when the blessing fails to come, the flame goes out. The adult lays in a store. He has, as the Letter to the Hebrews says, his senses trained by practice to discern (Hebrews 5:14); he knows how the night feels and sets oil aside for it. This is preeminently the posture of the pilgrim. The believer is in this world a stranger and sojourner, who looks out for the city with foundations, whose Builder is God (Hebrews 11:10, 13–16). He travels through a night he cannot shorten himself, toward a feast he does not yet see. And a pilgrim who takes no provisions for the dry stretches perishes along the way. The oil is the pilgrim's provision — the small, patient refilling, long before the journey grows hard.

And then the sleep. "They all became drowsy and slept." The parable does not condemn this. Nowhere does it say that the wise virgins were better because they stayed awake, for they did not stay awake — they slept, just like the foolish. This corrects an all-too-simple picture of watchfulness. The "be watchful" to which the parable leads cannot possibly mean "stay awake all night," for no one did that, and no one was blamed for it. The watchfulness that counts is deeper. Not the feat of sleeplessness, but the state of readiness that lies prepared whether you are awake or dozing. The wise virgin could sleep peacefully — for her oil lay ready. When the cry sounded, she did not have to panic; she rose, refilled, and was ready. That is watchfulness: not lying awake out of fear, but sleeping in peace because your supply is in order.

In Depth — The night and the midnight

Why does this parable take place at night? No chance setting. The ancient Jewish wedding knew the nocturnal torch procession — the bridegroom usually came in the evening or night to fetch the bride, and from her house a procession lit by torches moved through the streets to the house of the bridegroom. Psalm 45, a wedding song, depicts such a procession leading in the king-bridegroom; everyone carried his own light. That is the world the parable presupposes. (Well documented.)

But the night is more than custom; it is dramatically indispensable, for only at night is oil the decisive factor. By day no one needs a torch; in daylight the shortfall of the foolish virgin would remain entirely invisible — the sun is shining, after all. Only in the dark does the oil become the test. Only in the night does it separate: whoever has light walks along, whoever has no light falls outside. And the midnight makes that test maximal — the hour at which the torches have burned the longest, the first load of oil is most depleted, the reserve truly matters. (Weighed reading that the night is functionally necessary for the point.)

Here lies a word for you. A night is coming. There comes an hour when the sun of ordinary, easy piety sets — when the warmth of the congregation is no longer there, when the glow of others no longer lights you, when you stand alone with what you yourself have. A trial, a suffering, a time of God-forsakenness — or the coming of the Bridegroom Himself. And in that night only one thing counts: do you have your own oil? By day you can drift along on the light of others. In the night you cannot. That is why the night is a grace — it compels you now, while it is still day, to fetch the oil you will need in the dark.

The cry, and the separation

And then, at midnight, the cry sounds. "Behold, the bridegroom is coming! Go out to meet him!" (25:6). Ten sleeping women start awake. The hour has come. And all ten do the same thing: "Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their torches" (25:7). All of them. Wise and foolish together, in the sudden excitement of the coming, trim their torches, arrange the cloth, fan the flame. For a moment they still seem alike.

But now the difference falls, and it falls hard. The foolish see what the wise do not need to see: their torches are going out. The oil is gone. What burned so beautifully sputters and dies. And then: "The foolish said to the wise: Give us some of your oil, for our torches are going out" (25:8). Hear the panic. Hear the too late. The hour has come, the bridegroom draws near, and they stand with a dying torch and must borrow what they should have brought.

And the answer of the wise sounds hard, until you understand why it must be so: "No, lest there not be enough for us and you; rather go to those who sell, and buy for yourselves" (25:9). That seems merciless. But it is realism of the sharpest kind. Some things you truly cannot do for another. The wise virgin cannot pour over her oil — not because she will not, but because shared oil is enough for no one; two half-full torches both die out. And deeper: the readiness at issue here is not transferable. You cannot, on the threshold of the coming, still lend someone your faith, your years of walking with God, your supply built up in silence. That is not hardness. That is the nature of the thing.

This is perhaps the most solemn word in the whole parable, and it may not be softened. Readiness is personal and not transferable. There comes a moment when no one can do it for you anymore. Not your parents, however pious. Not your congregation, however warm. Not the people around you whose torches still burn. Whatever the oil precisely is — more on that shortly — it is yours, or it is not there.

In Depth — What is the oil?

Here lies the great question on which the interpreters always stumbled: what does the oil represent? The honest answer begins with a limitation — the parable itself does not define the oil. It lets it function as that which keeps the torch burning, and leaves it to the reader to understand from the whole of Scripture what that is. (Well documented that the parable does not define the oil.)

The oldest and most widely held reading connects the oil with the anointing oil, and thereby with the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament, kings and priests are anointed with oil, and that anointing coincides with the coming of the Spirit: Samuel anoints David, "and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward" (1 Samuel 16:13); the Servant speaks: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me" (Isaiah 61:1); in Zechariah the oil flows from two anointed branches into the lampstand, "not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit" (Zechariah 4:6). The foolish have the torch — the outward form — but lack the Spirit who keeps the flame alive. This explains why the oil cannot be borrowed: the Spirit is an indwelling gift that no one can possess for another. (Weighed reading.)

The church fathers sometimes read it otherwise. Chrysostom saw the oil as mercy, which you do not borrow from another at the last moment; Augustine read it as love, the charitas of 1 Corinthians 13, which must truly come from within. Both explain the non-transferability sharply: my deeds, my love I cannot post to your account. (Well documented that these patristic readings exist; disputed which is correct.) But perhaps the most text-faithful reading is the one that does not narrow the image to a single thing: the oil is the living faith sustained by the Spirit — not a flame you kindle once and then forget, but a supply that must be kept burning. This reading does not exclude the Spirit-reading but encompasses it. However you fill in the oil, this stands fast: it is a state of readiness that sustains the duration, personal and not lendable, and it must be acquired now. (Weighed reading that the oil is the enduring readiness sustained by the Spirit.)

The closed door

And then it happens, and it happens fast. While the foolish run off to buy oil — into the night, in search of a merchant who opens his door at midnight — the bridegroom comes. Right now. Right at the moment they are away. "And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding, and the door was shut" (25:10).

That sentence has two halves. The first is pure glory: "those who were ready went in with him to the wedding." There is the feast, the open hall, the tables, the music, the joy that lasts for days — and they go in with Him. Not behind Him, at a distance. With Him. At His side, taken up into His joy. This is what all the waiting was for, what all the oil served.

And then the second half, four words that sound like a bolt: "and the door was shut." Not slowly drawn closed. Shut. As in the days of Noah, when the Lord "shut him in" (Genesis 7:16) — the same motif, and the Olivet Discourse already calls up Noah himself (Matthew 24:37–39): a door that shuts at the decisive moment, with salvation inside and judgment outside. The ark and the banquet hall share that one shape. There is an inside and there is an outside, and between the two falls a door that no one opens again.

For see what happens when the foolish come back. They have bought their oil — too late. They run to the banquet hall — too late. And they stand before the closed door and pound: "Lord, lord, open to us!" (25:11). Hear the despair, and hear the double call — "Lord, lord" — which throughout the whole Gospel is the sound of those who appeal to nearness and prove not to possess it. And then the answer, solemnly introduced, inexorable: "Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you" (25:12).

I do not know you. Not "you are too late for the best places." Not "you miss a reward." Not "you should have come earlier, but come in." I do not know you. The language of the broken relationship, of the closed door that stays shut.

And see the full shock. It is people with torches who are left standing outside. Not passersby, not strangers, not those who had never heard of the feast. Women who were supposed to walk in the procession, who were invited, who had waited along the whole night. They stood so close. One vessel of oil separated them from the feast — and that one vessel they had not fetched when they still could. This is not a story about how far you can stand from the door. It is a story about how close you can be and yet miss it. The tragedy is not that of the absent one; it is the tragedy of one who walked along, lived along, sang along — and at the decisive hour discovered that the flame he held for his own was borrowed and going out.

In Depth — Ouk oida hymas: "I do not know you"

The words with which the bridegroom rejects the foolish virgins are ouk oida hymas — "I do not know you" (25:12). No statement of ignorance, as though he truly did not know who was knocking there. It is a formula of rejection, of the breaking of relationship, solemnly weighted by the amēn legō hymin that precedes it: "assuredly, I say to you." (Well documented.)

And it does not stand alone. It binds together three of the most fearsome texts of the New Testament. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says to those who say "Lord, Lord" and even prophesied in His name, cast out demons, and did wonders: "I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness" (Matthew 7:21–23). In Luke 13, those who knock at the closed door and appeal to table fellowship hear: "I do not know where you are from; depart from Me" (Luke 13:25–27). And here: "I do not know you." (Well documented that these three texts are verbally and thematically related.)

Hear what they say together, for it unmasks all false assurance. Nearness is no guarantee. Confession is no guarantee. Even ministry in His name is no guarantee. You can cry "Lord, Lord" and stand outside. You can have sat at the table and find the door shut. You can have carried a torch and hear: I do not know you. For what counts is not what you did in His name, not how close you stood to Him, but whether you are truly known by Him — a relationship, not a label. That is what the parable warns against: not against the gross sin, but against presumption — the assuming that you belong because you walk in the company, while you never fetched your own oil.

The insiders who were left outside

That parallel from Luke 13 shows how old and how serious this word is. Someone asked Jesus: "Lord, are there few who are saved?" (Luke 13:23). And Jesus answers with a narrow door and a master of the house who rises and shuts it. Those who then knock outside appeal to their nearness: "We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets" (13:26). And yet: "I do not know where you are from; depart from Me" (13:27). And then the staggering thing: they see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom, and people "from east and west, from north and south" who sit down at the feast — while they, the expected insiders, are cast out (13:28–29).

Do you hear the echo of the ten virgins? The master who rises and shuts. The knocking latecomers with "Lord, open to us." The formula of rejection. The definitive exclusion while inside the feast sounds. The same scene, painted twice. And it bears a fearsome warning: it is not the outsiders who are surprised here, but the insiders. Those who sat at the table, who heard the teaching, who assumed all was well — precisely those stand outside, while people no one expected go in. The piety that lives off belonging is precisely the piety that is unmasked here.

And that touches a great mystery that sounds throughout this whole series, and for which Paul himself uses the word mysterion. For Luke 13 is about, read more deeply, Israel and the nations: children of the Kingdom cast out, while Gentiles from the four quarters sit down. That is the drama of Romans 9 to 11. "Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel" (Romans 9:6). "A partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in" (11:25) — and Paul expressly calls this whole process a mysterion. The closed door and the seated nations are not merely a threat; they stand at the heart of God's hidden plan of salvation.

But let no misunderstanding creep in here. This does not mean two peoples with two ways of salvation, and it also does not mean that the church has replaced Israel. Paul depicts it in one unforgettable image: there is one olive tree. One noble tree, with one root, of which the believing Israelites are the natural branches, and onto which the believing Gentiles are grafted as wild branches (Romans 11:17–24). Abraham is "a father of all who believe" (Romans 4:11). One tree, one root, one Bride — all true believers of all ages, Jew and Gentile, together one body that goes in with the Bridegroom. And the cut-off branches are not "another people" with a fate of their own; they are the unprepared, cut off through unbelief (11:20) — the foolish virgins of the story, not a second way of salvation. This is an illuminating background, not a floor plan that the parable itself draws out — it speaks of torches and oil, not of branches and roots — but it shows how deeply this one scene is rooted in the Kingdom.

Salvation or privilege — and why this does not break the cornerstone

Here honesty is in order, for this parable cuts deeper than some others in this series. In other parables it was about reward — about the denarius, about the talents, about "enter into the joy of your master": there the position of the believer stands fast, and what is at stake is what he made of his stewardship, the fruit that survives the fire or does not (1 Corinthians 3:13–15). But this parable speaks a harder language. "I do not know you" is no language of missed reward. It is language of non-recognition. The closed door is no shorter place at the feast table; it is outside the banquet hall. Whoever wants to soften these words to "you miss a privilege but you are still in" does violence to the text — for "I do not know you" is precisely the language of Matthew 7:23, and there the exclusion is unmistakably the exclusion from salvation itself.

Let that stand in its full seriousness. The warning points toward exclusion, not merely toward loss of reward. And it must be so, for otherwise the "be watchful" loses its weight. And it would be cowardly to weaken this parable into an admonition about missed crowns.

But — hear this well — this does not break the cornerstone of this whole book. The position of the true Bride stands fast in Christ: for those who are in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation (Romans 8:1). How can that go together with a closed door and "I do not know you"? Like this: this parable is not written to shake the assurance of those who are truly in Christ, but to unmask the false assurance of those who are not. It is directed against presumption. Against living off belonging. Against the torch without oil, the name in the baptismal register without the life, the confession without the Spirit. The foolish virgins are not true believers who miss a privilege — that would be a second-rate salvation, and Scripture knows no such thing. No one who is truly in Christ is left standing behind the closed door. The foolish have no oil; they were never truly ready; their light was borrowed.

Do you see what the parable then does? It drives you to the honest question, away from complacency. Not: "am I still in?" — as though the true believer lay in bed afraid every night. But: "is my oil my own? Do I burn on my own fire, or on borrowed light?" The warning does not exist to break down your assurance, but to unmask your false assurance and drive you to the real readiness. Whoever is truly in Christ need not fear the closed door — but precisely that person takes the warning most seriously, because he knows that it is possible to carry a torch without oil.

In Depth — The Bride and the guests

Who are those ten virgins? It is tempting to say "the Bride" — but that is precisely what the text does not say. The bride herself does not come into view in the parable at all. The ten are bridesmaids, the company that goes out to meet the bridegroom to escort him with light. They are not simply the bride; they are the procession around the wedding. (Well documented that the bride is not named in the parable.)

That opens a reading that is the leading line throughout this whole book. A wedding has both a bride and invited guests — "Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb" (Revelation 19:9). And in this reading the distinction falls thus: whoever goes in with the Bridegroom is the Bride — the one body of all true believers, together with those fallen asleep who rise first (1 Thessalonians 4:16). It is not a separate, finer kind of Christian that goes in while ordinary believers are left outside; that would be the second-rate salvation that this whole book rejects. It is the true Bride, who was ready, who had oil, who goes into the feast with Him. (Weighed reading as a broader theological placement; disputed whether this text itself states that distinction.)

And here the honest note. This parable does not state the Bride/guests separation. It knows only one door and one separation: inside and outside, ready and not ready. The broader wedding framework is read into it from Revelation 19 and Romans 11, not derived from Matthew 25. The parable supplies the shape, not the floor plan; it illuminates the broader picture, but it does not order it. Whoever reads honestly holds to that: the parable says that the ready go in and the unprepared are left outside — and that is enough, that is the full seriousness, even without its deciding about bride and guests. (Disputed; this pericope does not bear the Bride/guests separation of itself.)

The merchant is still open

And now it comes, and this is where the whole warning leads, for it is no threat but love with open eyes. Note when the door shuts. The door shuts at midnight. The door shuts then — when the bridegroom comes, when the decisive hour has arrived. But — and here you must catch your breath — it is not yet midnight.

See the wonder hidden in the parable. The foolish virgins could get oil until the last moment. The wise said it themselves: "Rather go to those who sell, and buy for yourselves" (25:9). There was a merchant. There was oil to be had. The problem of the foolish was not that oil was unobtainable — it was that they began too late. They went to buy when the bridegroom was already coming, and so they missed the coming while they stood in the shop. But the oil itself had always been there to be had. Had they fetched it by day, they would have had it.

Do you see what this means for you, for tonight, for this ordinary week in which you live? The whole warning exists to drive you now to the oil, while the merchant is still open. The door is not yet shut. It is still day. The oil is still for sale, still to be refilled. You can fill your vessel this very evening. You can, this very night, stop living off borrowed light. You can trade in the secondhand piety — the faith of your parents, the warmth of the congregation, the afterglow of an old experience — today for oil that is truly your own. The shop is open. The Bridegroom still tarries. This is precisely the hour for which the parable was written: not the hour of the closed door, but the hour before it.

And where do you buy that oil? From the Merchant who says: "Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price" (Isaiah 55:1). From the Spirit, who wills to indwell and keep the flame alive. In the quiet communion with God that no one can carry on for you — the prayer in the inner room, the Word that you yourself eat, the walking with Him in the ordinary days when no one is watching. There oil is acquired. Not in one evening of enthusiasm, but vessel after vessel, day after day.

And note the paradox of that merchant: the oil costs "without money and without price," and yet you must go to the shop for it. Grace is free — but it is not received by one who stays seated. The foolish virgins did not fail because the oil was too expensive; they failed because they did not go for it while it was still day. It is the difference between the person who always meant to pray and the person who prays; between the one who says "I ought to live more in the Word" and the one who opens the Word; between the one who mistakes the Sunday warmth for his own fire and the one who, on weekdays, alone, in secret, fills his own vessel. The latter has oil. He stands ready, even when the night stretches on, even when the feast comes only years from now.

Do I have my own oil, or do I burn on borrowed light?

Here I must turn the pen on myself, for it would be dishonest to write this chapter as though it were about someone else.

I know the borrowed flame from within. I know how easy it is to live on the afterglow — of a conference that years ago changed everything, of a time when God felt near, of the warmth of a hall full of people singing. I know how you can feel pious because you walk in the company, because you say the right things, because you belong to the procession that carries the torches — and how beneath that you can forget to fill your own vessel, day after day, in the quiet, unseen work of prayer and the Word. And if I honestly think ahead to that midnight, the question is not whether a Bridegroom is coming — He is — but whether I will then burn on my own oil, or whether I will discover to my horror that the flame I held for my own was the light of others.

But precisely there is the turning point, and that is why this is no word to crush you. It is a word to drive you to the merchant, this very day, while he is open. The parable is not written to make me panic over a door that is not yet shut. It is written to make me fill my vessel this very evening — to take me away from the borrowed flame and to my own supply, while it is still possible. And it is still possible. That is the whole grace of the hour in which we live: it is still day, the shop is open, and whoever goes now will have oil later.

Watch, in every season

It all leads to one sentence: "Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming" (25:13). No date, but a posture. And, after all that went before, a more precise posture than "stay awake" — for all slept, and it was not held against them. No call to watch-for-one-night, but to watch-in-every-season. A readiness that sustains the whole duration, with one's own oil, because the coming falls at the hour no one expects and the door shuts after it.

Three things bear the seriousness, and all three stand fast in the text. One: the delay is real. The Bridegroom tarries longer than anyone reckoned, and a readiness calculated only for the short term fails. Therefore do not live from hand to mouth — lay in reserve, for the night may last long. Two: the reserve is personal and not transferable. At the decisive hour no one can still lend what he himself should have brought. Whatever the oil is, it is yours, or it is not there. Three: the door shuts, and the rejection is "I do not know you" — not "you are too late for the reward," but truly being not-known, despite name, confession, or even ministry in His name.

But let the last word not be the closed door, for that is not where this parable wants to have you. Let the last word be the open door of today. The running Father of Luke 15 and the closed door of Matthew 25 come from the same mouth, and that mouth loves you infinitely. Precisely for that reason He says it aloud: stay. Do not let your torch go out. Do not sell your place at the feast for one evening of ease. Go fetch oil, this very night, while the merchant is open. For at the end of the night there awaits no judge who lies in wait for your faults, but a Bridegroom who turns at the threshold of the banquet hall and looks at you and says: come in.

That is the glory that bears this whole parable, and it is greater than all the sharpness encountered along the way. Not the fear of being left outside, but the longing to go in with Him. The cry at midnight that makes your heart leap. The procession that takes you up. The flame above your head that lights the way. The open hall, the set tables, the feast that lasts for days. And the Bridegroom in the midst, who wants nothing more than for you to be there — ready, with your own oil, with a torch that burned through the whole night.

So make sure you have oil. Not out of fear. But because you smell a feast that you would not miss for anything. And because the door is still open now, and the Bridegroom still tarries now, and the merchant still waits now.

Go, and buy oil for yourself — today, this ordinary day, while it is still day. For a midnight is coming, and a feast awaits, and He wants to take you in with Himself.