“I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ
has WROUGHT through me to win obedience from the Gentiles” (Romans 15:18 RSV).
This verse of scripture has burned in my soul as of late. And the word “wrought” is the key to
understanding its significance. Wrought
means, “to work fully, accomplish; fashion.”
It is derived from “opposition, distribution or intensity” and “to toil,
work or effect.” It is to “wrestle” with
the divine nature in our mortal bodies until a victor emerges. It is like Jacob wrestling the Angel of the
Lord all night long, until, at the breaking of the dawn, he emerges with a new
name (Israel) and nature (spiritual). Finally, we are dead, and Jacob (whom God
loves) has supplanted Esau (whom He hates); as a consequence, the true Israel
of God emerges from his wrestling match limping but spiritual.
When Jesus commanded the disciples to eat His flesh and
drink His blood (meaning they needed to eat His words—described as spirit and
life—John 6:63) He meant that they needed to feed on Him in the fullest sense
of what feeding consists of. They needed
to do more than merely “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8); they
needed also to digest Him to the point of becoming flesh of His flesh and bone
of His bone. They needed to taste (yes...seeing
that He is good), chew (mediating day and night; chewing the cud, ruminating on
His words), swallow (swallowing the WHOLE Lamb/Truth, even disagreeable parts),
digest (breaking it down; rightly dividing the word of truth) and nourish
(putting the divine nature into their human DNA).
And digestion (where food and nourishment is “wrought
through” to usefulness) is a form of wrestling or working out fully in the
belly what the body needs to nourish it.
The act of eating the whole Lamb (and with bitter herbs) is to feed on Christ
AND His sufferings (sweet in the mouth but bitter in the gut or visceral seat);
but if we are obedient (and clean our plates) we purge out the old Adamic
nature and replace it with the new/second Adamic nature—and all the way down to
a molecular level. This is otherwise
known as manifesting Christ in mortal flesh.
Proverbs 11:30 teaches that wisdom wins souls, and
assuredly, wisdom is only fashioned in the
depths of hearts that have long wrestled with truth, in hearts that have
“wrought through” in order to “win obedience” to their testimony of Jesus
Christ. Only Christ fully digested and
glory glowing out of divine DNA intertwined with human DNA (Christ incarnate
and inside man) is wise enough to win souls.
A full and nourishing feeding must nourish to the extent of molecular
structure; manifesting Christ in mortal flesh is God glorifying Himself from
the depths of the human heart outward to the flesh and bones.
Only preaching drawn out of the depths of the preacher’s
heart saves people deeply enough to genuinely convert them, and until a preacher
personifies what they preach, their preaching is too shallow to convert
anyone. Mental assent (superficially ascertaining
the message) without heart assent (ascertaining to the depth of conscience and
will compliance) plagues our generation.
I agree with Richard Foster: “Superficiality
is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a
primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater
number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”
I see, in contradistinction to Paul’s modus operandi, many
ministers speaking from shallow understanding with powerless effect. Paul even personified the gospel of Jesus
Christ to such an extent that he dared called it “my gospel” (see Romans
16:25). E. M. Bounds, in regards to Paul
calling the gospel his, said, “Not that he [Paul] has degraded it [the gospel] by
his personal eccentricities or diverted it by selfish approbation, but the
gospel was put into the heart and lifeblood of the man Paul, as a personal
trust to be executed by his Pauline traits, to be set aflame and empowered by
the fiery energy of his fiery soul.”
Bounds also said,
“The preacher must impersonate the gospel. Its divine, most distinctive features must be
embodied in him. The constraining power
of love must be in the preacher as a projecting, eccentric, an all-commanding self-oblivious
force. The energy of self-denial must be
his being, his heart and blood and bones.
He must go forth as a man among men, clothed with humility, abiding in
meekness, wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove; the bonds of a servant with
the spirit of a king, a king in high, royal, in dependent bearing, with the
simplicity and sweetness of a child. The
preacher must throw himself, with all the abandon of a perfect, self-emptying
faith and a self-consuming zeal, into his work for the salvation of men. Hearty, heroic, compassionate, fearless
martyrs must the men be who take hold of and shape a generation for God. If they be timid time servers, place seekers,
if they be men pleasers or men fearers, if their faith has a weak hold on God
or his Word, if their denial be broken by any phase of self or the world, they
cannot take hold of the Church nor the world for God...The preacher’s sharpest
and strongest preaching should be to himself.
His most difficult, delicate, laborious, and thorough work must be with
himself.”
In the end, ONLY THE WISE OR WROUGHT MAN WINS SOULS because
only the wise wrestle with God until God gets the mastery over him and rules
supreme in his heart. Wisdom is
justified of her children; limping but spiritually fruitful is better than
whole and pseudo-spiritually sterile.
