Of duty and due
“it is for him a most holy portion out of the Lord’s food offerings, a perpetual due” Leviticus 24:9
Aaron and his sons ate of the Bread of the Presence and were not guilty. In fact, it was not merely allowed them to eat, it was their right to do so. The words are strong: that they eat is law. These were privileged men indeed.
I wonder if we understand the privilege of our high position in Jesus Christ? Hid in him, we have God’s smiling presence not merely as our grant—it is that, grace upon marvelous grace—but as our due. The tokens of his love and favor cluster around us, chasing us down the pathways of our lives, his very justice driving them onward to bless us.
Nowhere can a Christian go to escape his favor; we are accepted in his beloved Son, and every good and spiritual thing is our due because of him. If he died for me, then I live in him, and live abundantly. His was the duty, mine is the due. Can it really be? Even so, and an exquisitely right and delightful thing it is to my God.
Away then with your silly pretenses of honoring God’s righteousness by walking on eggshells before your Father. His grace is a Pierian spring of which you must drink deeply, or not at all. Receive everything, or receive nothing.
The greatest right of all is ours in Christ: the right to God. Reader, do you question the truth of the interpretation? Have you never read?