Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 45 · February 14
In the Procession
“Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.”
A Roman triumph could be smelled several streets before it could be seen.
Paul reaches for that parade and puts you in it, and the Bibles on your shelf disagree about where you are standing. The King James has God which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and you are riding. Several modern versions have God leading us as captives in a triumphal procession, and you are walking in front of the chariot. The Greek verb is the one for leading a triumph, and its object is normally the one being led. No weight can be put on the word itself.
Stay with the procession, which survives every version. Something is moving through a city, somebody else set the route, and you are in the column either way. What Paul is interested in is the smell hanging over the whole thing: maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place.
Then he pushes it somewhere uncomfortable. For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish. To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. A triumph smells of victory to the city and of the end of everything to the men in chains, and nobody in the parade chooses which nose receives them.
Notice where the man writing this was a few lines earlier. He is at Troas with a door opened unto me of the Lord, and he cannot work: I had no rest in my spirit, because I found not Titus my brother. He leaves the open door and goes looking for his friend. The thanksgiving comes out of that.
Walking down a street this week you will have no way of telling whether what came off you was life or death to the person you passed. The parade is going through the city regardless, and the incense was never yours.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 45 is Never Fails (1 Corinthians 13:8).