So many preachers and teachers eviscerate the lesson of Jacob by making him out to be the bad guy. It can sound pious to say that Jacob is an example of salvation by grace, but in saying that Jacob’s struggles are not an example of living by faith, Christians deprive the Church of a lesson and example that they need more than they want to admit.

J. I Packer wrote an incredible book that remains a classic today called Knowing God. But in it he exemplifies this damaging misreading of Scripture. He claims that Jacob had “all the opportunist instincts and amoral ruthlessness of a go-getting businessman.” He says that he needed God to convert him from unbelief, as he puts it, “instill true religion” into him. He writes, “Jacob must be weaned away from trust in his own cleverness to dependence upon God, and he must be made to abhor the unscrupulous double-dealing which came so naturally to him.”

But when God confronted Jacob, he did not rebuke him for his struggles, but rather blessed him. The simple fact is that Jacob was never held to be in the wrong for struggling with Esau in the womb, and when Isaac sought to go against God’s will and give the birthright to Esau, it was his wife, Rebekah, the boys’ mother, who hatched a plan to prevent Jacob from being robbed of what God had said was his.

The bottom line is that it was God, not Jacob, who chose impossible and tyrannical circumstances for Jacob’s entire life. By standing above Jacob and moralizing about him in the name of salvation by grace, the Church is robbing herself of what the Bible says about living by faith.

Because the fact is that Christians are often not in control, not on top of the world, not in respectable circumstances, not part of the ruling class. They are put in places where they are underdogs, where they are the scum of the world, where they have to be as wise as serpents.  As Paul later writes, “we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things”

Paul refers to the crossing of the Red Sea as a baptism (1 Cor 10.1ff).  That same pattern is also seen in the crossing of the Jordan by Israel (Joshua 4, 5), which is also miraculous and accompanied by circumcision.  In fact, it is also seen in Deuteronomy 1.14, where the final passing of the last cursed older generation of Israelites is marked by the crossing of the brook Zered.

In Genesis 32 we have a river crossing in which the person gets a new name from God and undergoes a physical transformation–limping thereafter.  But the story also shows that Jacob is being born again.  In the womb he wrestled with his brother and would not let go, holding onto his heal.  Now at Penial he wrestles in the dark and refuses to let go.

This may explain why Jacob’s new name doesn’t prevent him from using his old one.  They are virtually the same name.  Jacob was named “heel-grabber” due to his tenacity in struggling with Esau.  And he is named “Struggler with God” because once again he won’t let go.

But now I’m afraid it won’t work.

Whilst playing Halo 3, you occasionally come across an overly aggressive player with terrible sportsmanship. Hes hellbent on embarrassing his opponents and acts as if no one else should be playing the game. But Xbox Live is a community and how much fun would multilayer be without the rest of the community? Not much. Yet some people would rather humiliate fellow gamers instead of simply enjoying playing with them in friendly competition

Read the rest of The Sun Stands Still: Tea Baggins.

Passage: Genesis 32 (ESV Bible Online).

Later in Jacob’s story it is shown that he has not only prospered to become a great company, but enough to become “two companies.”  Yet that claim is ambiguous because it also reveals what is stated in the beginning of this chapter in Genesis: that Jacob’s camp is accompanied by a camp of angels (the chariots of fire that Elijah will later see; divine bodyguards).

But another way the divine and human correlate is that Jacob’s struggles with men are revealed to be struggles with God.

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.  He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had.  And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.  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.  Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”  And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.”  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.”  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.  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.”  The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.  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 (vv. 22-32).

Jacob gets attacked by a stranger in the dark (in the ancient world there would be a good chance that the dark would be pitch black).  Who could it be?

Laban his father-in-law could have broken his covenant with Jacob and come up from behind him.

Laban manipulated and exploited Jacob for years, impoverishing his own daughters in order to remain in charge of his extended family as a greedy patriarch. Yet when Jacob, at the advice of his wives, fled from him, Laban pursued to make self-righteous accusations.

Maybe he has crept up behind in the dark.

Esau had a grudge against Jacob and was coming with 400 spears to meet him. Did Esau sneak ahead in the dark to personally attack Jacob?

Or what about Isaac? While Isaac had thought he was soon to die when he had blessed his son, he had not accurately predicted the end of his health. He was still alive. As a blind man, what better opportunity to attack Jacob except in the middle of the night. Make no mistake, Isaac had mistreated Jacob his entire life, siding with Esau over against God’s declared will and Esau’s own character.

So who was it?

It was all of them!

“Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

God is telling Jacob that all his life his struggles with all his enemies (including his wives who used him to compete with each other and to trade, and his sons later) was all a big wrestling match with God.

This has to be important.  He actually names His nation after this truth.

No one can fall from saving grace. You cannot simply say that apostates fall from real grace, without defining what that grace is from which they have fallen. This is the same kind of ambiguity that has plagued FV teaching from the start. What kind of grace is it? Is it common grace, special grace, or a tertium quid? I suspect they would call it covenantal grace. That’s a big help. What does it do? Does it save or not? Wilkins says yes in his article in the Federal Vision. It just doesn’t save permanently. This is still Arminian, and it doesn’t matter in the least that he affirms decretal election also. To say that anyone has temporary saving grace and then loses it is Arminian. Leave decretal election out of the picture for a moment. Let’s just talk about those who will fall away. If you define what they fall away from as real salvific benefits, then it is an Arminian scheme, however much it may be juxtaposed with a more Calvinistic scheme. Affirming Calvinism in one spot isn’t enough. It has to be thorough-going.

via Assurance and Apostasy « Green Baggins.

I’ve been out of this for months and come back to see that Lane is still chasing his tail.  It is sad to see.  It reminds me of the scene in The Last Battle when the dwarves refuse to acknowledge they are in Aslan’s country and insist they are prisoners in the stable.  (Sadly, unlike Lane’s targets, Lewis uses the scene to present Arminian teaching).

First of all, Lane is insisting on using the term “salvific” and “saving” and the like as univocal terms for final salvation.  Since God does not so restrict the use of these words, this is simply a pharisaical word rule that no one should allow to bind their conscience of speech.  God, after all, “is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe” (First Timothy 4.10).  I could show more examples but one is all that is necessary to establish the point.  Nothing in the Westminster standards requires a Presbyterian ministers to use salvation univocally (and if it did then the Standards would simply be in error, binding God’s people with rules God not only does not impose, but which He himself does not follow).

Secondly, the only way this argument will work is to go full-bore into the hyper-calvinism of the Protestant Reformed variety.  It is not PCA.  It is not Reformed mainstream.  It is not Confessional to mandate this rather novel and minority (mis)understanding of the grace of God.

God pours out his grace on many, including non-elect within the Covenant and Church.  Making God look stingy with his blessings involves not knowing what Spirit one is following.  Using convoluted and nonsensical rationalizations to make Calvinist ministers into Arminians is simply not in keeping with Christian behavior nor all the more with duties toward fellow ministers of the Gospel.

But now we will just see more of the same.  Say it again and again to yourself:  We are locked in a dark stable.  There is no sunshine.  There is no pleasant breeze.  There is no lion with a feast for all.  The temple of the Lord.  The temple of the Lord.  The temple of the Lord.