Established and Sealed

A man sits on the edge of the bed at six in the morning and cannot find his grip on God. God has not gone anywhere, but his own hold on Him seems to have slipped. Yesterday it was there, and this morning he is patting his pockets.

The worry almost puts itself into words. If faith is what saves me, and the faith is mine, then my salvation is only as good as the worst hour of my week. Most believers have thought that at that hour, though almost nobody says it in daylight.

Paul answers it with grammar, which sounds dull but is not. Across these two verses he lines up four verbs, and he makes God the one doing every one of them: "Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God." "Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts." In every line, you are the one being acted on. "Stablish" was a business word, used for confirming a contract or guaranteeing a sale. A seal was pressed into wax to show who owned something and to prove nobody had tampered with it on the way. An earnest was a legal first payment on a purchase, money paid down that bound the buyer to come back and pay the rest.

Notice also why Paul is writing this. Some people in Corinth were saying his word could not be trusted, because he had changed his travel plans. His answer moves the whole question away from human reliability, his and theirs, and sets it on God.

So here it is plainly. Your grip is not what holds you. God set you firmly in Christ, and He marked you as His own. He put His Spirit inside you as a deposit, and that deposit binds Him to come back for what He has already paid for. He does not walk away from His deposits.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 162 is Found Faithful (1 Corinthians 4:2).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna