Like a Sudden Trap for the Dissipated Soul
If you go to sleep spiritually, you will not be awake to discern the signs of his nearness. [This] is confirmed by the way Jesus speaks of the wise manager and the foolish manager in the following picture of the second coming:

Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom his master will set over his household, to give them their portion of food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that servant says to himself, “My master is delayed in coming,” and begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and get drunk, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and put him with the unfaithful. (Luke 12:42–46)

dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap.

The suddenness and unexpectedness is not owing to an any-moment view of the second coming. It is owing to the spiritual sluggishness of the human heart that is weighed down and dulled by the “cares of this life.” The appearing of Christ becomes a sudden trap not because it could happen any moment, but because the spiritually unseeing will be blind to Christ’s coming even if it happens five years from now, with serious warnings in between. To be spiritually asleep, drunk, or blind portends unexpected destruction even if it could be tomorrow or a decade from now.

Paul’s Warning to the Sleeping and Drunk
The apostle Paul combines both of the images Jesus uses to make the same point—the image of staying awake (Matt. 25:13) and staying sober (Luke 12:45; 21:34):

You yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep [μὴ καθεύδωμεν], as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober . (1 Thess. 5:2–6

appearing. “Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me” (2 Tim. 4:10). This is what Jesus is warning against. “Watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap” (Luke 21:34). Demas fell out of love with the appearing of the Lord Jesus and into love with this world. It made him drunk with the illusions of better things.

So in all our discussion of Jesus’s commands to stay awake and sober, we have really been talking about love for the Lord’s appearing. To be spiritually awake and alert is to be in love with the Lord’s coming. The alternative is to fall into the stupor of love for the world and blindness to the beauties of the coming Christ. This is the great answer to how we should live. We should live in love with the appearing of Christ. Living in love with the appearing of Christ is a great anticipatory pleasure. It is a great power to walk in freedom from sin. It is a great protection from deception in the last days.