Seated in Heavenly Places

A man sits down at the back of a room where everyone else outranks him, and does not take his coat off, because he has half decided he will be leaving early.

Most of us bring that posture into prayer without noticing. We wait to be spoken to. We apologise for taking up space. We open with a paragraph explaining why we are not really in a position to ask.

Paul has just described what we were and it is not a flattering warm-up: dead in sins. Not underperforming, not distant. Dead, which removes the question of contribution entirely. And then three verbs, all done to us and all completed: quickened, raised, made to sit. Made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Past tense, finished, and the location is not aspirational; Paul has already used heavenly places in this letter for where Christ is seated. The seat is not near the door.

And four verses on he blocks the obvious misuse. We are the thing God has made, Paul says, shaped in Christ for good works he prepared in advance for us to walk in. So the seat is not a couch. It is a position from which work is done rather than a reward for work completed.

Here is the promise, and it is worth stating without decoration. Nothing this week moved that seat. Nothing you failed at this month cancels it, because it was never held on merit and there is therefore no performance that could forfeit it. It is yours in Christ, which means it is exactly as secure as He is.

So which is it that keeps you at the back of the room with your coat still on? A doubt that the seat is really yours, or a suspicion that it came on terms you might yet fail to meet? Paul has already closed one of those, in the same breath he raised the other, and it is worth working out which of the two you are actually carrying before you pray again.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 99 is Cast It on the Ground (Exodus 4:2).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna