The necessity of this duty is suggested in the Greek text, βλεπετε ουν _see then_ or _therefore_, take care of this as a matter of the highest concern and greatest importance; it is that on which your all depends. He adduces a cogent reason for this--“Not as fools, but as wise.” As if he should say, It is your _wisdom_ to walk circumspectly, and not to walk so would be your _folly_: to walk circumspectly is the wisdom that God recommends to you, and which is adapted to make you truly wise, both in this world and in that which is to come. The word _redeeming_, εξαγοραζομενοι, literally signifies _buying time_. The term _buying_ is proper in reference to civil contracts, but it is here applied morally. Properly speaking, time cannot be bought: it is a commodity for which all the treasures in the world would not be an equivalent. Its price is above rubies. But the term imports the great value of time, and intimates that we should be willing to suffer any privation or inconveniences, rather than lose it. _Redeeming_ properly implies the laying down a price for re-purchasing or recovering that which was ours, but which has fallen into the possession of another. A captive sometimes is redeemed out of the hand of an enemy. Now, in this sense, to redeem time already past is impossible, for when once gone it is irrecoverable. So that by _redeeming_ time, nothing else can be understood but a diligent and prudent improvement of it, which is the only way in our power to counterbalance the loss we have sustained by our former neglect. The effects of our past negligence should be counteracted by double diligence in future: we should do much work in a little time. This is to redeem that time, concerning which we have allowed worldly business, unprofitable visits, sensual indulgence, carnal recreations, and vain thoughts, to rob us, and, as it were, to take and keep us captive. To redeem time then is to be diligent in future, wisely improving it so as may make amends for our very culpable remissness. Future diligence is, as it were, the price of redemption paid down for what we had mortgaged into the hands of those things which we have suffered to deprive us of it.