The Word Wild Did Something To Me

He was nineteen the first time he heard it and he is fifty two now and it is still doing work in him.

It was a good preacher and a good sermon and the man meant nothing but grace by it. He said, and you and I are the wild olive, brothers, we are the wild branch that got put into the good tree.

And every man in that room said amen, including him.

And something small went into him that afternoon and set like concrete, and what set was not the doctrine. It was one word.

Wild.

Because he grew up on land, and he knows exactly what that word means to a man with an orchard. Wild is the stuff that comes up at the fence line. Wild is a volunteer out of a bird dropped seed. Wild fruit is small and hard and sour and you do not pick it, and every farmer he ever knew used that word to mean not worth the ground it is on.

So for thirty three years he has held a picture of himself as second rate timber that got let into a good tree by the mercy of God, and the mercy part is true and he has never doubted it.

But underneath the gratitude, way down, is a grade. And the grade says: you are the poor material in this arrangement.

He would never say it out loud. He barely says it to himself. And it is why he has never once, in thirty three years, put his own name forward for anything.

You know that word.

Maybe it was wild for you. Maybe it was a different word from a different Sunday and it did the same work. Maybe you have carried a quiet grade about yourself so long you have stopped hearing it as a grade, and just call it being realistic about who you are.

Nobody meant it as a verdict. The man in the pulpit meant grace and he was right to. Words land where they land, and a word that means one thing in a book means another thing on a fence line, and nobody in that room knew it had landed at all.

What the man with the knife actually meant

Here is the verse the word came out of, and there is something in it that never gets read out.

For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert graffed contrary to nature into a good olive tree: how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be graffed into their own olive tree?Romans 11:24

Contrary to nature.

That is the phrase to sit with, and it is not an insult, it is a description of the operation, and it is the single most encouraging thing in the sentence.

Because here is how grafting works in the actual world, then and now. A grower takes a cutting from the good tree and puts it into a wild rootstock, because the wild root is hardier and the good branch has the fruit. Good wood into wild root. That is the normal direction. That is what nature does.

And Paul says: that is not what happened to you.

The direction was reversed. The wild branch went into the good root, which no grower would ever do, because there would be no point, because the wild branch would produce wild fruit.

Unless the root is so strong that it changes what the branch bears.

You are in a tree where the root is strong enough to change what comes off the branch, and that is why the operation was done backward. That is what contrary to nature means in this verse, an operation no grower would attempt because only one root on earth could carry it (Romans 11:24), and it is the Holy Spirit who is the sap making it work, so the outcome does not depend on the quality of the wood.

The word was about origin, not quality

Now take the grade out, because it was never in the sentence.

Wild by nature means uncultivated. It means it grew where it grew, without anybody planting it, outside the walled part of the farm. It is a word about where a thing came from.

It is not a word about worth, and it is not a word about strength, and any farmer will tell you that the wild stock at the fence line is usually tougher than anything in the rows.

You were described by where you came from, and nobody anywhere in that verse graded your timber. Scripture says God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty (1 Corinthians 1:27), and it is the Holy Spirit who has been doing exactly that since the first week of this, which is not a thing you do with material you consider second rate.

And nothing on this page is an argument with the man who preached that sermon. He was preaching grace and grace is what the passage is about. You have not been sitting under bad teaching for thirty three years, and there is nobody here to be angry with. The word says charity suffereth long, and is kind (1 Corinthians 13:4), and it is the Holy Spirit who has been keeping that sermon working in you for three decades while one word sat crooked underneath it.