Daily Manna · Day 219 · August 7
Boldness and Access
“In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.”
Somebody stands outside an office door with a hand half raised, going over the first line again. It has been long enough now that knocking would need an explanation of its own.
That is the ordinary human thing this verse is aimed at. Boldness is parrhesia, a political word before it was a religious one: the right of a free citizen to stand up in the assembly and say everything, without fear of the room. Not brashness. Standing. And access is prosagoge, the term for being brought in and presented, the way a person is introduced at court by an official who has the right to do the introducing. You do not present yourself. You are brought.
The clause carrying the weight is this: by the faith of him. Not by your record this week. The confidence is grounded in Christ's faithfulness rather than in your performance of faith, which is precisely why yesterday cannot revoke it. And consider who first heard it. Paul is writing from custody to Gentile believers who, in the temple at Jerusalem, would have come up against a stone barrier carrying a notice that threatened death to any foreigner going further in. He has just spent a chapter on that wall being broken down.
So this is an invitation, and there is no queue for it. Bring him the thing you have been too ashamed to raise: the habit, the debt, the thought that keeps coming back. Say it plainly, without the throat clearing, and do not apologise for approaching. You were brought in by somebody with the right to bring you. Then, if you want to, go and knock on the other door.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 219 is Ye Would Not (Luke 13:34).