Redeeming is a market word. It means buying something back, usually at cost, usually because it was lost or pledged to somebody else.
Applied to time, that is a strange image until you look at your week. Most of our hours are already pledged. Some to obligations we chose, plenty to things that acquired the claim without ever asking.
Sunday night, the week ahead is laid out on a calendar and every slot has a name on it. Then Friday arrives and you cannot account for Wednesday evening at all. One episode, then another, then a feed you do not remember opening.
Paul does not say make more time. He says buy it back, which assumes it has gone somewhere and can be recovered at a price.
This comes in the second half of Ephesians, where the letter turns from what God has done to how His people should live, and walk is the word it keeps returning to. Just before this, Paul has been contrasting darkness and light. Just after, he warns against drunkenness and points them to the Spirit instead. The concern is not efficiency. It is people living half awake, and the hours that slip away while they do.
Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk. Careful attention is the opposite of drift, and drift is the actual condition of most weeks. Nobody decides to lose an evening. It just gets spent.
Because the days are evil is the reason he gives. Not to frighten you. To explain why passivity does not hold. Left alone, time does not stay yours.
Look at tomorrow and buy back one hour. Decide now what it is for, and write it where you will see it. Then name the price, the thing you will not do in that hour, because redeeming always costs something.
