Established and Sealed

A man sits on the edge of the bed at six in the morning and cannot find it. Not God. His own grip on God. Yesterday it was there and this morning he is patting his pockets.

The objection almost writes itself. If faith is what saves, and faith is mine, then my salvation is only ever as good as the worst hour of my week. Most people have thought it at that hour. Almost nobody says it in daylight.

Paul answers it grammatically, which sounds dull and is not. He stacks four verbs across two verses and hands every one of them to God as the subject. He which stablisheth us. Hath anointed us. Hath sealed us. Hath given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. You are the object in every clause without exception. Stablish is a commercial term, used for confirming a contract or guaranteeing a sale. A seal was pressed into wax to mark ownership and to prove nothing had been tampered with in transit. And an earnest was not a symbol; it was a legal first instalment of a purchase price, money down that obliged the buyer to return and pay the rest.

Notice also what Paul is doing in this letter. He is defending himself against Corinthians who said his yes could not be trusted because he had changed his travel plans. His response is to move the entire question off human reliability, his and theirs, and put it on God.

So, plainly. Your grip is not what holds you. God stood you up, marked you as his, and placed a deposit inside you that commits him to come back for what he has already paid for. He does not forfeit 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