Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 88 · March 29
Then He Sat Down
“Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high;”
Most of us would say we believe the end of this verse, yet the way we live shows we do not quite believe it.
Hebrews opens with one long sentence about Jesus, and nearly all of it is movement. "Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person." Express image is one word in Greek. It means the mark a stamp leaves when it is pressed into metal, which is why every coin from one mint carries the same face. Then comes "upholding all things by the word of his power." He holds up everything simply by speaking. Then: "when he had by himself purged our sins." Purged means cleansed, and He finished that cleansing.
And then comes the verb the whole sentence has been moving toward: "sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high."
Think of a painter who has spent all day on a room. When the last wall is done, he puts down his brush and sits. Nobody has to ask whether the job is finished, because sitting down says it. Later in the letter Hebrews makes the same point about the priests of the old covenant: "every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins." They kept standing because their work was never done. Jesus sat down because His was.
Yet we keep Him on His feet. We live as though His cleansing needed topping up after a bad couple of weeks. We keep asking to be forgiven for what He has already forgiven, and we call that humility. Some of it may be, but a good deal of it is simply not believing that He really sat down.
So there is nothing you need to add today, and nothing you need to say. Read the words again slowly: "sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." Let them stay with you for a full minute, without adding a word of your own. The work is finished, and the One who finished it is seated there still.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 88 is Prepared for You (Matthew 25:34).