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;”
We do not really believe the last part of this verse, and our diaries show it.
Hebrews opens its argument in one sentence and nearly all of it is motion. Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person. Express image is a single Greek word for the mark a die leaves when it is struck into metal, the reason every coin out of one mint carries the same face. Then: upholding all things by the word of his power. Holding up everything there is, continuously, by speaking. Then: when he had by himself purged our sins. By himself, with nobody assisting.
And then the verb the whole sentence has been travelling toward. Sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Nine chapters later the letter explains why that matters, and it does it by pointing at furniture. Every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. Standing, because the work was never done. The tabernacle held a table, a lampstand and an altar, and no chair for the man on duty. This one sat.
We keep him on his feet. We live as though the purging wanted topping up after a bad fortnight, and we come back with the same thing again, and we call the coming back humility when a fair amount of it is disbelief that the sitting down was real.
Nothing needs answering here, and nothing needs agreeing to. The words on the page are these, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, and they will hold a full minute on their own, without a syllable of yours added to them.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 88 is Prepared for You (Matthew 25:34).