God’s Clarity and Mystery

QUOTES FOR REFLECTION

“When Paul writes, ‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me’ (Gal. 2:20), that is not an enthusiastic exaggeration but a measured assessment. It is not an expression of overstated rhetoric but of literal reality. At the core of their being, in the deepest recesses of who they are, in the ‘inner self’ (2 Cor. 4:16), Christians will never be more resurrected, literally, than they already are. God has already done a work of resurrection in the believer, a resurrecting work that will never be undone.”

~Richard Gaffin, In the Fullness of Time: An Introduction to the Biblical Theology of Acts and Paul

SERMON PASSAGE

Genesis 32:22-32 (ESV)

22 The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. 24 And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. 25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 27 And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” 29 Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30 So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” 31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh.