Face to Face with Our Lord

"I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered."
GENESIS 32:30
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Face to Face with Our Lord
This is the joyful climax of this contest. For now Jacob returns from hell to heaven, from death to life. It was certainly a very fierce and difficult ["contest"] which he had hitherto sustained. So he gives thanks to God and confesses his distress. Now he no longer wants this place to retain its former name but calls it Peniel, as though he meant to say: "It should not be called a struggle or vision of hell but a vision of God." Therefore he says: "I have seen the Lord face to face." "And now I see clearly," he says, "that the wrestler who tested me was God Himself. Why was I so terrified? Why was I so alarmed? I did not know that this was the Lord my God." . . . He Himself, our Lord Jesus Christ, tested Jacob not to destroy him but to confirm and strengthen him and that in this fight he might more correctly learn the might of the promise. Indeed, He added this strength and power to Jacob that he might conquer and joyfully praise the vision of the Lord.
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