Hm. Reckless love as the mega-hit worship song and its lyrics have reached
millions and
it's inspired over a dozen emails our way in just the past month like this one from Tim a
Regular listener to the podcast Pastor John hello over the past couple of months. I've been hearing the song reckless
Love playing over and over in churches and on the radio
One of the main lines in the chorus celebrates the overwhelming never ending reckless, Love of God.
My question is, is this a biblically and theologically
Correct way to describe God's love? Is the term reckless too reckless?
I don't want to sound too judgmental
But every time I bring this up I get called the Pharisee for focusing on just one word rather than the message of the whole song.
Just hoping you could shed some light because I truly believe that words matter
Especially in songs of worship and praise my response to this concern
Needs to be expressed to two different groups of people
Pastors and need worshipers on the one hand and I'm lumping those together as worship service shapers and the congregation
on the other hand the shepherds who feed the flock with songs and the sheep who are asked to
Savor the truth and the music that they're being fed.
I have two words for that for the pastors and lead worshipers and then something for the rest of us.
First, we live in a time of unprecedented wealth of
Christian music and there is no shortage
whatsoever
of older songs and newer songs and fresh renditions of older songs that are
rock solid in their biblical content and creative and fresh and powerful both in their lyrics and
in their tunes. Which means
that pastors and lead worshipers are never boxed in
to using theologically defective or musically dated songs if you don't want to.
If you want to be theologically and biblically faithful
as a lead worshiper and feed your flock with the richest of
biblical food, and the most engage of tunes
There is a wealth of old and new to choose from so that you never have to sing something
theologically defective or misleading or unhelpful.
The second thing I want to say to pastors and lead worshipers is that it is your primary responsibility
To build into the minds and hearts of the people
Truth that portrays Christ and the father and the spirit and the way of salvation
In biblically faithful ways so that the people's minds engage with spiritual
Reality, not just imaginary things; and so that people's hearts are moved
Toward authentic spiritual affections rooted in that reality,
That's your job.
Now the congregation a word words of the congregation
The concern that Tim is raising for us here in this question that he asked
What does a congregation or an individual in the congregation do if a song is being sung that we think has
defective lyrics?
Especially if we think the song is is theologically or biblically
defective not just poetically defective?
And Tim gives us this specific example of a popular song right now called reckless
love but there are many such problems in in many songs both old and
New not just new. So let me let me take this one for an example
As to how we might respond when this happens so reckless love has a refrain which ends like this
oh the
overwhelming
Never-ending reckless love of God now. I don't know enough about the theology of the author to know
What aspect what dimension of the meaning of reckless he intended.
But I'm so aware that today. There's a kind of theology that sees God as
Not knowing the future and therefore treating him as though he could take real risks since he doesn't know what might happen
In which case the giving of his son might be described as reckless?
You might give your son and salvation not succeed
I mean
There are a lot of people who believe this who believe that God doesn't know the the future
Exhaustively and therefore he's taking real risks because he doesn't know what the outcome is gonna be at least not in the short run
So if reckless were to fit into
that
Theology, I would regard it as heretical
Now I hope the author did not intend it that way
in fact, it seems to me that there's good evidence in the song that he didn't mean it that way but
but the reason the word
reckless raises the question is because in modern English
You have to work really hard to put a positive meaning on the word reckless in relation to God
because if you just click on a
Good theasaurus online and look at all the meanings associated with reckless here they are
audacious, brash, carefree, careless, daring, foolhardy, hasty, ill-advised,
imprudent,
negligent, thoughtless, adventuresome, adventurous, any whichaway, breakneck,
Daredevil, desperate, devil-may-care, fast and loose, feckless, hairbrained, headlong,
Heedless, helter-skelter, hopeless, hot-headed, inattentive,
incautious, inconsiderate, indiscreet, kooky, madcap, mindless,
overventuresome, playing with fire, precipitate, brash, regardless, temerius,
uncareful, venturesome, ventures, venturous, wild.
Now,
that is the general sense that one gets when one hears the word
reckless driver
uncaring about what other people
do. Or what he might do to other people.
But maybe the author used the word reckless in the sense that God's love may look
to an outsider foolish
and ill-advised, brash, breakneck, but in fact the foolishness of God is wiser than the
wisdom of men and
the recklessness of God is more assured of success than the most carefully executed plan of man, maybe.
In other words, maybe he's treating the word reckless the way Jesus
Treated the word hate
When he said you have to hate your mother and father in order to follow me. Well, it looks like hate
To a lot of people when you follow Jesus and leave your mother and father
Behind, so what should you do?
Sitting in the congregation; If you don't like this word reckless and you have all these negative connotations in your head
One of the things you do is look at the lyrics of the song
to see if there are evidences of how the word might be construed or
Intended, here's a couple of examples.
The song says before I spoke a word
You were singing over me
Now in my mouth, those are radically Calvinistic lyrics God only sings over his own people
He doesn't sing over those who are in rebellion against him. He sings over his own people Zephaniah 3:17
So if you are God's own people
before you spoke a word
That's unconditional election
Here's another example
Before I took a breath you breathed your life into me now in my mouth. That's a radical
affirmation of Calvinistic doctrine of sovereign grace
irresistible grace
Since the Bible doesn't teach that God breathed life into us before we were physically born.
I take the words "you breathe life into me" to be a reference to the new birth
so the song is saying
that
The new birth happened to me before I took any breath at all
meaning before I did anything
To signify that I had life, which is exactly what happened in the new birth. It is a sovereign gift of God
We don't make new birth happen. God makes new birth happen.
Now, I don't know whether the author is that Calvinistic kind of have my doubts
But I don't know but that's the way I would sing these words
If we ever did sing it because that's their most natural meaning, at least I hear them that way. Which then means
When I get to the word reckless
I'm going to put a meaning on it that ascribes to God
Absolute control over the object and circumstances of his love
Because that's what's implied in those previous lyrics.
And I hope that those who love the word reckless in this song
also love the Calvinistic theology and the rest of the lyrics.
So here's the point if, if you're in a church, that basically sings sound and helpful
lyrics and along comes a song with questionable words
then either stop singing if your conscience won't let you sing
or put a meaning on the words
That you are able to affirm.
Now, lest you think
I'm asking you to do something quirky or unusual with new songs that we don't do with old songs
consider one one last illustration
most gospel loving evangelical churches including mine when I go to
Love to sing Charles Wesley's and can it be?
great song, right
Yeah, but what do you mean when you sing he left his Father's throne above so free
So infinite His grace emptied himself of all, but love give me a break
He did not empty himself of all beloved. That is absolutely not true
He didn't empty himself of righteousness and wisdom and justice and holiness and and deity
Well
you can either protest the song to your worship leader and stop singing this Westland song or
you can stop singing or
You do what I do
You can you can take it as poetic license for
overstatement in a poem and
Construe it to mean he emptied himself of everything. He needed to emptying himself of in order to be as loving as he could be
Something like that. I don't think Charles Wesley was a heretic
Not like that anyway, but take the next verse
Most Calvinists love to sing the next verse though. It sounds exactly like what we believe right sovereign
irresistible grace to the dead imprisoned sinner long my imprisoned spirit lay fast bound in sin and
nature's night that's original sin thine eye diffused
a quickening a life-giving ray
I woke the dungeon flamed with light my chains fell off. My heart was free
I rose went forth and followed thee
When I sing that I'm singing like a full-blooded seven-point Calvinist
My chains fell off. My heart was free
I'm out of here because of the sovereign grace of God and that only
Charles Wesley didn't mean that
Charles Wesley being a good Wesleyan that he was not a Calvinist
Probably did not mean what I mean when I sing that verse he meant that God's prevenient grace
Overcame
original sin and
Struck off the chains of helplessness and put me in a position
where I with newly granted
Autonomous free will may or may not leave the prison
My choice his final and decisive I rose
went forth and
followed thee
That's not what I mean. When I sing that song so back to the pastors and lead worshipers
please do your job and do not ask too much of us sheep
As we sit here in the service give us songs
whose original meaning we can
Joyfully affirm because they are fully
Biblical don't give us too many just one or two like maybe and can it be?
Don't give us too many where we have to change the meaning in order to be faithful
Thank you Pastor John and this discussion reminds me of another popular episode
That we recorded where we looked at the the lyrics of a Christian song titled. What a beautiful name that was in an episode
We titled when worship lyrics missed the mark that was episode number 10 77
1077 check it out in the archive at desiringGod.org/askpastorjohn and there you can explore all of our now
1200 past episodes and
you can scan through a list of our most popular ones of all time and a list that's updated every day
and you can read full transcripts and you can even send us a question of your own you can do all of that at
desiringGod.org/askpastorjohn and of course if you want to get new episodes delivered to you three times per week
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Well, I recently ran a search of the APJ inbox of all the emails that we have for the words anxiety or anxious
and those terms appear in
620 emails incredible - - the struggle with anxiety we turn next when we return on Monday
I'm your host Tony Ricci and on behalf of John Piper and all of us at desiring God have a wonderful extended
Memorial Day weekend and we'll see you back here next week
You