The Crippling Power of Jesus

In Gen. 32:24-32 we read this marvelous and mysterious passage:

Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. Then he said, "Let me go, for the dawn is breaking." But he said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." He said, "Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed." Then Jacob asked him and said, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And he blessed him there.

So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, "I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved." Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh.

Therefore, to this day the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew of the hip which is on the socket of the thigh, because he touched the socket of Jacob's thigh in the sinew of the hip.

Hosea 12:4 tells us that the man that Jacob was wrestling with was an angel. Whether the limp that he was blessed with as he crossed over Penuel was permanent or not we do not know. Heb. 11:21 tells us, "By faith Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff." Whether he was leaning on the top of his staff because he was old and dying or because he still limped is uncertain.

What is clear is that he had striven with God and men and had prevailed. He sought a blessing and the blessing that he got was a changed identity: "Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel . . . ." The "no longer" indicates that that was permanent, whether he continued to walk with an obvious limp or not. Yet the Biblical narrative continues to call him Jacob, not Israel. Here is the duality in the unity. Outwardly he was the man in the same skin: Jacob. Inwardly he was a prince with God. The divine disabling had accomplished that forever.

In Rom. 6:5-7 we read of another divine disabling, one that affects us personally: "For if we have become united with [Him] in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with [Him], in order that our body of sin might be rendered inactive, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is acquitted from sin" (emphasis added).

The word translated "rendered inactive" in the emphasized portion of the verse above is katargeo: to render idle, unemployed, inactivate, inoperative (to cause a person or thing to have no further efficiency; to deprive of force, influence, power). It is similar to the idea in the Lord Jesus' parable of the laborers in the vineyard: "And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the market place . . ." (Matt. 20:3). The word translated "idle" is argos and it means free from labor, at leisure. In fact, the word katargeo is derived from the word argos.

The apostle Paul develops this idea further in Rom. 7:5: "For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions [translated "motions of sins" in the AV], which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death." But something has happened to us: "But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter" (Rom. 7:6). We are no longer obeying because of an outward demand but because of an inward reality, a wellspring of life within us, the indwelling Spirit of the Lord Jesus.

More than mere word play, these Biblical records are showing us the way to emancipation and victory, not through anything that we have done, but through what has been done to us in Christ. Like Jacob, we have been crippled and our identity has been changed. Outwardly, we may or may not appear different but inwardly we are as different as death and life.

This is the negative side of the cross: our divine disabling, our body of sin being rendered inactive so that it just doesn't rise up to commit sins. It has been dealt a crippling blow. The positive side is a new identity in Christ:

Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience, and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them. But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old man with its evil practices, and have put on the new man who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him--a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all. (Col. 3:1-11)