Compliant

"You have wrestled with God and with men, and you have won," Genesis 32:28.

Jacob wrestles with God, and wins? What is this? Well, to be sure, the Bible says that Jacob actually wrestled through the night with another man. That unnamed man who found Jacob unbeatable, he's the one that told Jacob he'd won against God. Jacob received his ruling and called for a blessing. So, the unnamed man's blessing became a name change: no longer was Jacob, Jacob, but was now Israel, the God-wrestler. (So his children became the God-wrestler's kids, right?) To make sure this God-wrestler wouldn't forget, with a mere touch the man without a name dislocated Israel's hip joint so that he limped away, but alive, from the match. God might allow a win to a mortal, but with it God wrests a daily reminder of who controlled the match.

Visiting with a brother or sister today, we receive God's ruling that we are the offspring of the God-wrestler, God's new Israel. And, together, no longer wrestling but giving thanks to God, we receive forgiveness through his son, the compliant one.