Only a God who challenges and surprises you can produce awe and change within you.
If you find that your “God” only agrees with you and never challenges you, then I would urge you to consider if this is the same God of the Bible.

Western Worldviews Collide Head-On With Jesus’ Life & Teachings

If you are honest with yourself, then you have to wrestle with what the Bible teaches.

For instance, if you are a conservative in America, then you likely appreciate how Jesus stresses that there are absolute rights and absolute wrongs. They are not subjective. There are rules. But love our neighbors AND foreigners AND enemies? And how moral rule-followers don’t spend eternity with God? These are tough teachings to fully accept.

Or if you are a progressive-liberal American, then you might be in love with Jesus’ teachings on loving the underprivileged: the poor, the least of these. But saying that you are not your own? You are not the Lord of your own life? These are tough teachings to fully accept.

The Gospel is far too conservative for the liberal.
And the Gospel is far too liberal for the conservative.
Yet far too radical for the moderate.

If you don’t find Jesus’ life and teachings difficult to agree with and live out, then it is very probable that you are not reading the Bible.

Jesus teaches:
– Love those who hate you.
– Sell everything that you have.
– Blessed are the poor.
– Camels fit through a needle’s eye easier than the rich into the Kingdom of Heaven.
– Hell is real.

We could go on.

The truth is — this collision is not distinct to the West. “Liar, lunatic, Lord…” as C.S. Lewis articulated. Jesus is so radical and extremist compared to the world that He doesn’t allow us to take a moderate position on Him. There is no shallow end in this pool.

Jesus doesn’t allow us to be comfortable in our own ways.

Jacob Wrestles

This brought me to an Old Testament account in Genesis. Jacob was being hunted by his brother, Essau, and once he had sent all his things with fellow travelers across the brook, a wrestling match began that night. And the text says that it did not end until the “break of day.”

Who did he wrestle?

The person Jacob wrestled was described as a man earlier in Genesis 32, but later in Genesis 32: 30 we see “So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel,^{Peniel means the face of God” href=”https://www.esv.org/Genesis+32/#f7-“>7}saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.’”

So did Jacob wrestle with a man? Or did he wrestle with God?
Seems like an important distinction.

Is it one? Is it the other? Or is it both? Is there any mention of a “God-man” in the Bible?

Yes. The answer to the questions above is yes.

It is common thought among theologians and commentators that this “God-man” is Christ pre-incarnate. Remember, God the Son has always been and always will be.

Word Made Flesh

John 1:1-3
^“1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
² He was in the beginning with God.
³ All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that.”

“Word” is describing Jesus. The logos is a pretty loaded philosophical word in Greek. The “Word,” the “reason”, “discourse”, the “absolute truth” can all be used for logos.

Jacob wrestled with the God-man, the logos, the Word.

What does Jacob wrestling with God have to do with us?

There are texts in the Bible that we don’t want to be true. If there isn’t a teaching that touches a part of you that renders you incapacitated, like when the God-man touched Jacobs hip, then I wonder if you have read His teachings.

If you have never wrestled with Jesus, like Jacob, it begs the question: are you actually interacting with Jesus Christ?

I want to be like Jacob. I want to wrestle with Jesus and his teachings and be refined and conformed to Him through it.

Jacob clung to the promises of God in this dark time in his life. He spoke with God with candor and reminded Him what He promised Jacob.

The True and Better Jacob

Jesus is the true and better Jacob.

Both had birthrights.
While Jacob deceived his brother, Essau, for the birthright, Christ had his own “birthright” as God the Son.
Yet, He forsook it and did not consider equality with God to be grasped or exploited.

Like Jacob, Jesus received a wound on his side as well.
Yet, “by His wounds we are healed.”

Jesus’ wounds were not a result of Him being disobedient. They were a result of our disobedience.

But they were not in vain, because what man meant for evil, God meant for good.

By His Grace,

J.W.