He is jealous for me,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.
And oh, how He loves us oh,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all
He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.
Oh how he loves,
Yeah, He loves us,
Oh! how He loves us,
Oh! how He loves us,
Oh! how He loves.
And we are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If His grace is an ocean, we're all sinking.
And Heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don't have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way...
Oh, how He loves us oh,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all
How He loves...
If you've been in a "contemporary" church service in the past 3 years or so you've probably heard this song played 150+ times (based off once a week attendance over a 3 year span minus a few misses). Among the Christian-emo cough cough I mean modern worship set it's a staple of spiritual ecstatic participation. It's the guaranteed hand raising sway inducer at the climax of corporate praise. Basically I'm saying it's very popular in its David Crowderian form (the original John Mark McMillan version wasn't as popular because of the infamous "sloppy wet kiss" reference). Because of that popularity I've decided to write about the problems I have with it. Well, that... and the conversations I've had with some younger friends of mine. Cut to the chase, its bad. Not good. Muy malo. I'm not doing a musical critique here. I'm not addressing the quality of lyrical skill. To do that would undermine what's more seriously wrong with this song.
The song is doctrinally wrong. It portrays God's love as having its root in our intrinsic value as opposed to His glory. It places God's jealousy and love prior to His mercy and grace. The love hurricane is producing the mercy wind which is blowing the human tree metaphor. The primary reason that God has given us mercy and grace is not because He loves us and values us to the level of the worth of that mercy and grace. In fact its quite the other way around. God loves you (at least in the way this song describes) because of His grace and mercy. What I'm saying is the cross purchased that kind of unconditional love from God. If Christ did not die for us we could not sing a note about God loving us to that degree or accepting us in any way. That of course leads us to ask why he gave us the cross? Meaning, if it took the violent death of His Son to bring God from the state of rejecting and forsaking us to the position of loving, accepting, and delighting in us, what in God's desire motivated Him to send His Son to be killed? Lets look at John 12:27-28.
27 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”
Now Romans 3:23-25a.
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness...
The motive of the cross was the glorification of God. This song puts the cart before the horse and in the process demeans God by giving Him man glorifying motives. It was not God loves man and values Him to the amount equal to the cost of His Son's life and so makes the transaction. That exalts man. It was God loves and values God's glory to the amount equal to the cost of His Son's life which makes God justified in accepting and loving unlovable, wretched sinners who will start the process of being transformed into God honoring, God loving people through sanctification and (eventually but assuredly) glorification.
Manely - Thanks for posting your thoughts on this song. I saw the link you shared on RTS's Facebook page. I too have heard this song several times over the past years and am quite baffled at the attention it has received. After reading some of John Mark McMillan's blog posts and interviews, I'm discouraged at how much praise he and this song have received from the Christian music industry. I wrote a little about that here (http://imunderwater.blogspot.com/2012/06/college-aged-friend-of-mine-recently.html). Anyway, Bob Kauflin clarified a lot for me of why JMM (and many other Christian musicians) is so widely received when he said, "Good music can make bad lyrics seem profound. Bad music can make good lyrics hard to hear. Music matters." I think in our current culture, where people are beginning to value form over content (which, historically, is a sign of a society's decay), there is a lot of work for the church to educate the body on good, Biblical art. I also think there are a lot of churches and ministries already doing great work in this area so be encouraged! We have much to pray about!
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